As its tagline states, Gillette wanted to be considered “The Best a Man Can Get.” But now it may be “The Pest a Man Forgets.” This is after a new marketing campaign that encourages men to shave their “toxic masculinity,” but which may be shaving customers from the company and profits from its bottom line.
As the Wall Street Journal reports:
Gillette is embracing the #MeToo movement in a new digital ad campaign aimed at men, the latest message from an advertiser attempting to change societal norms.
The ad, dubbed “We Believe,” opens with audio of news about the current #MeToo movement, bullying and “toxic masculinity.” A narrator then goes on to dispute the notion that “boys will be boys,” asking, “Is this the best a man can get? Is it? We can’t hide from it. It has been going on far too long. We can’t laugh it off, making the same old excuses.”
The ad puts a new spin on the brand’s 30-year tagline, “The Best A Man Can Get,” challenging men to take positive actions, such as stopping other men, and the next generation, from harassing women.
The ad [below] will be hosted on Gillette’s YouTube page with paid digital and social support.
Gillette parent Procter & Gamble Co. is among companies that in recent years have used advertising as a platform to promote their stance on social issues such as gender equality, and polarizing political topics such as immigration and gun control.
But Procter & Gamble may be gambling with profits. Its ad’s theme that “men can do better” has apparently found great agreement, on Twitter, where most commenters are resolving to do better than buying Gillette. Here’s a sampling:
Then there’s this one from the most toxically masculine man I know:
Of course, most of the tweeters’ reactions are visceral, yet there’s much that’s objectively wrong with Procter’s preaching.
Uncannily, the ad comes on the heels of new American Psychological Association guidelines for “treating” (neutering?) boys and men that actually classify traditional masculinity as harmful (video below). Of course, this is how social engineers seek to destroy masculinity: They cast it as “toxic masculinity,” defining it as including some genuinely bad traits so as to effect the demonization.
In reality, P&G’s ad reflects many false suppositions. While the old nursery rhyme says girls are made of “sugar and spice, and all that’s nice,” studies have conclusively shown that women are more likely than men to commit/initiate domestic violence, and girls are more likely than boys to become violent in teen-dating relationships.
Research also indicates that women are “much nastier office bullies than men,” as psychologist Dr. Gary Namie, co-founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute, put it. Moreover, even the left-wing Guardian admitted last year that bullying was notably worse among girls than boys.
While counterintuitive to some, these tendencies have long been observed. Greek philosopher Aristotle noted millennia ago that women are more likely “to scold and to strike” while poet William Congreve famously remarked in 1697 (pre-“gender”-sensitivity training), Hell hath no “fury like a woman scorned.”
This isn’t to say America has a “female problem” any more than a male one — it has a moral problem. But the remedy isn’t demonizing what makes a sex what it is, but to help each one tame its characteristic weaknesses and augment its characteristic strengths. This is done via inculcation with, and modeling of, virtue, which refers to that set of “good moral habits.”
Yet Gillette offensively states in a tweet, “‘Boys will be boys’? Isn’t it time we stopped excusing bad behavior? Re-think and take action.” Of course, it’s more fitting to say “Liberals will be liberals” since up to 90 percent of the #MeToo-movement cases involve leftists, as the charts here evidence.
Thus, ironically, the men most likely to reject traditional masculinity and proclaim themselves “feminists” are also the feminine sex’s main abusers. This is no coincidence, as I explained here; after all, these are people who mistake virtue for vice and are not too nice.
The problem is that, just as Hillary Clinton perverted the African saying “It takes a village to raise a child” into a big-government metaphor, the misandrist crowd completely misunderstands “Boys will be boys.”
Yes, it means men are more likely to fight overtly (emotional abuse is a different matter) and will constitute most murderers. Yet something is overlooked.
Most all those rushing into burning buildings, fire and flood zones, vicious hurricanes, and all sorts of other disasters to save lives are also men.
Additionally, primarily male endeavor — scientific and medical advances and taming the natural world — has saved countless millions of lives throughout history. Men used to outlive women largely because many females died giving birth. But modern medicine birthed by men, almost exclusively, reversed this phenomenon.
Moreover, contrasting killer men with the male norm, the Federalist’s Glenn T. Stanton wrote last year, “When a man is praised for risking his own life to save another and asked to comment on his heroics, what is it he usually says? He doesn’t pump his arms in the air and announce how awesome he is. He will likely respond with some variation of, ‘I just did what anyone would do in that situation.’”
“He normalizes himself, and we don’t chalk it up as false humility,” Stanton continues. “He wants his actions to be seen as what any good man would do. Along with him, we believe that is what men do.”
Stanton points out that murderous men (e.g., mass shooters) are “perplexing” to us precisely because they’re exceptions.
So the true meaning of “Boys will be boys” is that, as a writer once put it, men are the wilder sex, which accounts for their dangerousness — but also their dynamism. You can’t have male inventiveness, innovation, civilization-building, and lifesaving without the explosive masculine energy that is their impetus.
Of course, explosive things can also be destructive; this is why, just as an engine focuses gasoline’s power, male energy must be properly directed. This requires, again, inculcation with virtue — and the cultivation of actual, bona fide masculinity.
The misandrist “Boys will be soys” goal involves neutralizing that masculine energy — and, rest assured, as it declines, so will civilization.
Image: screenshot from new Gillette YouTube video
