A “masculine” product under fire for going against toxic masculinity
You may have seen this image going around the internet as a meme since last year. This ‘Bro! Not cool’ meme surfaced ever since January 14th, 2019 when the Gillette YouTube channel uploaded a short film titled "We Believe: The Best Men Can Be". In one scene of the video, a man tries to approach a female passer-by only to be immediately stopped by another man. But, why exactly did this 1 minute and 45 seconds long video become famous?
On contrary to the advertisement that Gillette released back in 1989 titled “The Best A Man Can Get”, the video starts with images of remarkably troubled looking men as a narrator refer to bullying, sexual harassment, and toxic masculinity. Instead of showing clips of masculine men’s dreams like how the old advert did, this one depicts a series of very ugly and negative behaviors, including bullying, fighting, sexual harassment, and blatantly interfering with a woman speaking in the workplace. The ad goes on to state it is time for men to stop making excuses and to renounce the idea that “boys will be boys.” Gillette concludes that by calling for and showing images of men holding other men accountable and emphasizing that the boys of today will be the men of tomorrow.
It took me on surprise when I saw that the new advert received a lot of backlashes. It currently has 1.5 million dislikes on Youtube and not to mention thousands of hate comments. Because it has been 31 years since the old advert was released and changes have been going around our society, it was expected that people would’ve agreed that gender norms should no longer exist. But apparently, I was wrong, and to be honest, it’s understandable.
Men have been expected to be masculine, physically strong, and dominant for as long as humanity can remember. Wrongdoings in which included violence and actions that degrade women have been normalized around our society. Simply, because ‘men will always be men’. It is also true that movements have been made to be going against this standardized society but, they were mostly by women and human rights activists or what the conservatives would call ‘leftists’ Therefore, for a well-known profit-oriented company, with their product being marketed towards masculine males, telling them what it is to be masculine or to scolding them for not doing enough to address an issue, might cause an issue.
Some of the responses on Twitter caught my eye,
I could understand Candace and Piers’ points of view. Sometimes it is hard to see the bad in things if you’ve been projected by it your whole life. But, let’s discuss what they might see as what shouldn’t be an issue in this video:
1. Scene of two young boys wrestling (0:33) It is safe to assume that Candace thinks kids wrestling is normal because it’s normal for young boys to have physical fights as that’s what they were born to be anyway, to be tough. Or probably those two young boys were just playing around and no one could get hurt. In my opinion, it is never okay to include violence, whether it’s playing around or not. Even though games and movies do play a part in depicting violence to youngsters, it does not justify them to do it in real life as it would be rooted in their young minds that it is okay to hurt others.
2. Showing dominance to hinder women (0:28) There’s this term called ‘mansplaining’. Wikipedia defines mansplaining as: “(of a man) to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner". They often repeat what the woman had to say just to show they’re righteous or would be heard more. Frankly, a woman could tell you just how many times they had to deal with this in their workplace or environment. This habit and many other things are not universal flaws of the male gender, just the intersection between overconfidence and cluelessness where some portion of that gender gets stuck. Therefore, by acknowledging this flaw, it is possible to prevent this from happening to our generation.
3. Sexually teasing women (0:25) Do I need to explain the wrong in this? It degrades women, it causes women to be easily targeted for sexual harassment, and it’s one of the many reasons 78 women are getting raped each hour, and that is in the U.S alone.
Despite all of that, there had been a discussion about whether a company like Gillette must address this issue. Quoting relevantmagazine.com, “But the second is that giant corporations are not to be trusted with the moral development of society, and the best thing they can do to correct our culture’s much-needed shift away from consumerism is get out of the way.”
Yes, having a profit-oriented company to be discussing this issue is like skating on top of thin ice for them. Some even speculated that this was a way of their marketing.
I’ll let a quote by Mark Borkowski answers this one, “It is no longer enough for brands to simply sell a product, customers are demanding that they have a purpose – that they stand for something,” he said. “Masculinity is a huge part of Gillette’s brand, and there is a recognition in this ad that the new generation is reworking that concept of masculinity, and it is no longer the cliché is once was.”
Toxic masculinity, bullying, and sexual harassment exist. These issues should be left in 2020. But it won’t be happening soon if nobody’s starting the conversation.
As Pankaj Bhalla, Gillette’s North American brand director said "We expected debate. Actually, a discussion is necessary. If we don't discuss and don't talk about it, I don't think real change will happen.”
"Because the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow," I shivered as a voiceover said at the end of the ad.
