Why Gillette’s toxic masculinity ad is annoying both sexists and feminists

The Procter & Gamble-owned razor company used its Super Bowl ad to weigh in on #MeToo.

Do brands have beliefs?

This is a question we’re forced to ask today thanks to Gillette’s latest commercial. It was created by the New York-based ad agency Grey and is called “We Believe.” And what the century-old, multibillion-dollar razor company, owned by the health and personal care giant Procter & Gamble, purports to believe is this: Its longtime slogan, “The Best a Man Can Get,” is ripe for an update.

In this new Super Bowl ad — released three weeks before the Super Bowl, as part of the YouTube-era rat race to get advance write-ups and possibly a viral hit before the super-expensive time slot even arrives — Gillette shows young boys bullying each other and beating each other up, older men touching women’s shoulders in business meetings, and suburban dads lined up at a never-ending row of charcoal grills saying, “Boys will be boys,” over and over while watching incidents of light violence.

The voiceover poses the question: “Is this the best a man can get?”

No! The commercial pivots. One handsome 20-something man asks another handsome 20-something man to stop ogling a woman in the street. One young dad asks his daughter to say, “I’m strong.” Another young dad is moved to break up a brutal fight between children in a parking lot. That is the best a man can get.

The ad has caused controversy across the comments sections of YouTube and the never-ending hellfeed of Twitter, in large part because it has offended many men. Plenty of the responses are sexist and racist, with dozens complaining that the ad makes white men in particular look bad and arguing that, basically, there is no such thing as “toxic masculinity,” but rather a tragic lack of masculine influences in schools and homes because women are so bad at holding on to husbands and selfishly insist on being the majority of public school teachers.

“Men are saying, we feel marginalized, criticized and accused rather than feeling inspired empowered and encouraged,” RedPeak branding firm executive Susan Cantor told the Wall Street Journal.

Pankaj Bhalla, Gillette’s brand director for North America, responded to criticism of the ad, in the Journal, saying “This is an important conversation happening, and as a company that encourages men to be their best, we feel compelled to both address it and take action of our own. We are taking a realistic look at what’s happening today, and aiming to inspire change by acknowledging that the old saying ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is not an excuse.”

Men who are angry about a commercial and calling for a boycott of a razor company in the comments of a YouTube post are also writing things like, “Gillette is desperately deleting critical comments for fear that people will know about what men are saying about this radical feminist advert.”

These arguments make no sense whatsoever. Still, this ad is a misfire, in that it is a blatant attempt to make money off a painful and ongoing collective action that has not even an indirect relationship to face razors. Is it likely that there were people at Gillette with good intentions and people at Grey who wanted to help realize them? Absolutely! However, it is inherently nonsensical to use feminism to sell men’s grooming products, or any products, as feminism is a political movement bent on dismantling current structures of power, which likely includes multibillion-dollar corporations like Procter & Gamble.

And unfortunately, it is impossible, maybe irresponsible, for a commercial to try to explain centuries of societal glorification of male violence or to make a compelling argument that proves women are people. This is an advertisement set to air during a football game on primetime television, and within those constraints, it can absolutely not depict — in a convincing way — the complex and never-ending story it seeks to profit from. (Not least because the only “crimes” against women it can reasonably show are catcalls and exaggerated butt honks.)

This is not the first time a Procter & Gamble brand has attempted to sell personal hygiene items by situating them in dubious feminist narratives. It previously did so with the 2014 “Like a Girl” campaign, which promoted Always tampons and invited teenagers to “run like a girl” in order to demonstrate internalized misogyny. The company’s deodorant brand Secret also has a running “Stress Test” campaign, which shows women getting ready to confront sexism in business meetings.

Gillette is not alone here, obviously. The temptation for brands to appear “woke” and engaged has escalated significantly in the Trump era. Last September, when Nike launched its 30th anniversary “Just Do It” campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, Sarah Banet-Weiser situated it in a history of “commodity activism,” writing for Vox:

This practice merges consumer behavior with political or social goals. Whether challenging police brutality or questioning unattainable beauty norms, branding in our era has extended beyond a business model: It is now both reliant on and reflective of our most basic social and cultural relations. … Individual consumers act politically by purchasing particular brands over others in a competitive marketplace, where specific brands are attached to political aims and goals.

Commodity activism can sometimes be good for business, she argues, but it can easily backfire. Female empowerment may be a fairly innocuous political motive, but criticizing men directly? Way too far. This is not the first time “toxic masculinity” has appeared in men’s grooming product advertising, and it’s not the first time men have lost their cool about it either.

In a battle between the fragile egos of men who watch and respond viscerally to commercials and the bottom line of a massive company, it’s tempting (and entirely acceptable) to not care about the winner.

But it’s also worth remembering that Gillette’s women’s brand, Venus, is best known for its “I’m Your Venus” commercials, which promise already tan and clean-shaven women that their new razor blades will make them “feel like a goddess.” Recently, venture capitalist Mike Dodd described the brand to Vox, calling it “an afterthought brand” based on “a ’60s ad man” idea of what women want. “It’s right there in the tagline,” he said. “You know, the best a man can get.”

Upstart Gillette competitor Harry’s — originally a direct-to-consumer brand, now with huge installations at Target and Walmart — recently launched the women’s razor brand Flamingo, in direct competition with the DTC startup Billie, both of which are marketed around making razors functional and cool and encouraging women to shave “when they feel like it,” without paying more than men do for tools that perform a fairly uninteresting task.

A decade ago, Gillette held 70 percent of the global market share for razors, and now it holds 54 percent. Those sales didn’t disappear; they went to those newer, savvier companies that don’t have 100 years of history making women feel bad about body hair and talking about men’s facial hair routines as if they were matters of import and action on the scale of a Fast & Furious movie. Now, it appears, the company would like those customers back.