by Nicole F.
Since 1901 Gillette has been a brand familiar to many adults in America. It’s slogan, ‘The Best a Man Can Get’ was constantly heard in their commercials and seen in their many ads. While the company makes shaving products for women, it has almost always catered more to men. This is a part of what made it so shocking when a few days ago they released an ad featuring a new tagline ‘The Best Men can Be’.
In this ad we see depictions of men at their worst. We see them objectifying women, encouraging violence, catcalling, and bullying others, all the while in the background is the audio from multiple news stories about the Me Too movement and about stories of children being bullied. Then we see something that I found to be honestly amazing. We see men start to step in and call out other men for their behavior. We see men teaching their children that hitting and hurting others is not the right way to handle things. We see the phrase ‘boys will be boys’ acknowledged as the excuse that it is.
For a long time our culture has viewed masculinity as men having no empathy or sympathy for those around them. If your child is being bullied and is a boy then they need to ‘man up’ and fight back. If you see a friend ‘hitting on’ a woman and ignoring her rejections, he’s encouraged to persist until she finally caves and agrees to what he wants. When men brag about having sex with a woman who originally wasn’t interested, that they had to ‘chase’, they are high fived and praised. The men of our culture value having power more than they value kindness. This idea that being a man is taking what you want and fighting for what you want, all while not caring about who you hurt in the process, is what we have always seen as ‘masculine’.
But that is finally beginning to change and it’s evident with this new ad. As more and more women have come forward with their stories, they have forced others to listen to them. Men can no longer ignore the impact of their actions and it’s becoming apparent to many men that this is a deeply rooted issue that needs to be resolved. Unfortunately there is still a large group of men that are very against this ad campaign despite the fact that no part of the ad is meant to be offensive or demeaning.
@Btswyers: “Been with your company for over 35 years, you just lost one of your most loyal customers. Don’t preach to me about how I should act!! Goodbye Gillette!!”
@LeoRules1: “Isn’t it time companies STOPPED PISSING OFF THEIR CUSTOMERS and kissing the asses of liberals? I know I won’t be buying your products any longer.”
@freedom_moates: “Hope it was worth losing thousands of customers for your stupid identity politics calling all men bad.”
@invertia20021: “Virtually everyone is laughing at your stupidity or actually pissed off and planning boycotts bacause of this ridiculous ad. This was a disaster of a campaign. The good news is Your left wing LIBTARD Wanna be PC move will cost you revenue.”
@smb2265: “Because the boys watching today, will be the girls of tomorrow.”
These are only a handful of the negative responses I saw while scrolling through the comments for the ad on Twitter. While scrolling I was surprised to see that majority of the comments left to Twitter were positive with the minority of the comments being against the ad. Curious, I decided to read the YouTube comments and found myself feeling more sick and disappointed than ever. I don’t want to include some of the comments I read from the Youtube video for those comments were far more toxic than the ones on Twitter.
As I was scrolling I’d noticed that there were very few comments supporting the ad. I decided to leave my own comment as a kind of experiment to see what would happen. I wrote that as a woman who has been forced to fear men due to the actions of men who had been in my life, I was refreshed to see an ad encouraging men to be kind. It was honestly pretty wordy, but it was honest and I made sure that it was not negative or directed at the male population as a whole. It only took twenty minutes for me to begin to receive responses on my comment. Almost all of them called me some form of a pet name, like ‘love’ or ‘sweetheart’ and all of them appeared to be meant to try and scare or shame me. One comment stated that if I had been assaulted in the past it was obviously my fault. Another told me that I was going to be ‘ravaged by migrants’, and one was simply someone telling me that I wasn’t cut out to date men. I responded to nearly all of the comments and did my best to remain positive and to continue to spread a message of kindness rather than perpetuating the hate. None of them replied to my responses.
What I think a lot of these men are missing is the true purpose behind this ad. It’s about stopping the cycle of abuse and doing our part to protect those around us. It’s about using their privilege to protect those who are in situations where they can’t help themselves. It’s about teaching your children that hurting others shouldn’t be the go to when solving problems with their peers. Instead they see this ad and they see it as an attack on men as a whole, ‘attacking a marginalized population’ as one YouTube commenter put it. I cannot stress enough how far from the truth I think that is. Gillette is a brand that is targeted towards men, so of course if they were to release an ad meant to spread a positive message it would be geared towards men, the same way Dove has release multiple ads for women encouraging them to be more empowered.
This ad is a step in the right direction towards promoting the idea that being kind and respecting others is masculine and admirable, but there is still a long way to go before there’s a day when men no longer view being masculine as being aggressive and assertive. Until then I just want to remind everyone to encourage kindness when you see it and to grow that same kindness and respect in your children. Responding to the negative with the positive breaks the cycle and while it may be hard to not clapback and call someone out for their ignorance in a way that makes them feel inferior, responding in a way meant to educate is far more likely to be heard.
Comments