It’s another depressing sign of the times. Gillette has become the latest victim of androphobia, a disorder that seems to be sweeping the land. As a result, their marketing department (apparently composed of hypoandrogenous boys and/or misandrous women,) is busy setting out to offend a sizable proportion of their customer base. I don’t know what sort of business school they attended, but it can’t be a good one. The video below chides men to drop their toxic masculinity in favor of some sort of more “civilized” maleness. What none of these dolts seem to understand is that it has always been men who have civilized the world. Otherwise, it would still be a matter of “rule of the jungle.” Men won’t let themselves be bullied in this way, but it’s important to understand what’s at stake. The Gillette Company was once a world leader, but it’s not the same company that King Gillette founded any longer. A long time ago, when I was a young man with barely enough whiskers to shave, I bought my first razor, and it was a Gillette. I’ve used Gillette razors all my life, but this advertisement tears it for me. I’m a man, and wouldn’t be mistaken for anything else. I doubt the women in and around my life would consider me “toxic” in any sense. The idea that the default conduct of men is to rape, rampage, pillage and grill everything in sight is absurd. When I first viewed this video, I kept waiting for the punchline. It never came:
Perhaps it is that Gillette is just trying to be noticed, and that this is some sort of marketing-department-generated publicity scam, but it doesn’t seem that way. It seems as though the marketing department has been taken over by people who don’t know what masculinity is, but certainly seem to have captured every bad stereotype about it. In much the same way that media loves to create caricatures of every group, but then disclaims bigotry, here Gillette has decided to portray men in the most negative fashion. Masculinity is all about violence and abuse, if we are to take this video seriously. According to this video, “men need to hold other men accountable.” It’s been men holding men accountable since Genesis.
I’m actually surprised that more women don’t react badly against this. They are the sisters, mothers, and daughters of men. Surely, they cannot agree that this portrayal, this bad caricature of men, is anything but absurd. One of the other things always implicit in this nonstop screed against the radical feminists’ view of manhood is that this is the default orientation of all men; if this is so, all women who choose men must be also fatally flawed. They never seem to understand the self-indictment implicit in this view.
The odd part is that the masculinity portrayed in this video is out of control. I’ve never associated “out of control” with the pinnacle of masculinity. In fact, the models of masculinity I’ve known were very much in control of their lives and their passions. I’m fairly certain that part of what my father set out to accomplish with us boys was to make us civilized, thoughtful, respectful, but only combative when self-defense or sport required it. If Gillette sees masculinity in the light they’ve portrayed it here, I don’t believe they know their customers, and can’t possibly serve them well. On that basis, I’m switching to Schick. If that company goes off the deep end, I’ll switch to a straight razor or grow a beard. I’ve been around far too long to permit some pubescent twits to insult me. I don’t need them; they need me.
Grilling is always good, by the way.
