Yes, Toxic Masculinity Is Real
Gillette made an ad suggesting that men could be better. It illustrated “toxic masculinity” through examples like a young boy being bullied by other boys, sexual harassment, catcalling, and a man speaking over a woman in a meeting. It’s a lovely ad, and one that calls on, in Terry Crew’s words, “men to hold other men accountable.” The men in it, who end the ad by breaking up fights, stopping their friends from making women uncomfortable, and generally behaving decently, seem like great guys. The ad implies that, in the modern age, this should be the new model for confident masculinity.
And boy, are some men angry about that. But I suppose that’s understandable. After all, I’m sure woman would be upset were there ads telling us to be better.
Oh. Wait. There already are.
There are no shortage of advertisements reminding women to be doting, selfless mothers; to be exquisite cooks; and joyful cleaners of laundry; and to never, ever, ever let our looks go.
When men claim ads never mention toxic femininity-by which they mean femininity that is used to manipulative-they don’t seem to realize that’s because it’s unnecessary.
Toxic femininity is a trait assumed of pretty much all women since Eve. It’s why women who come forward about rape are assumed by many to be liars looking for attention and money. If women don’t consistently, vigilantly prove themselves to be good mothers, it’s assumed they are unfit to be mothers at all. If a man cheats on a woman, many people still believe that it’s the woman’s fault for not “making the home so wonderful that he doesn’t want to wander.”
The slew of advertisements targeted at women telling them to be nurturing, to be delightful in the kitchen, to be impeccably made-up are all to help you avoid the perception of being one of those toxic females.
The difference is that all of those things-cooking, cleaning, childcare, cosmetics-are quite time consuming. Meanwhile “not catcalling women” and “not getting into fistfights” and “not bullying” as the Gillette ad suggests will actually save men time.
Piers Morgan who can be relied on to be infuriated by this kind of thing, expressed his anger tweeting “Let boys be damn boys. Let men be damn men.” All I can say to that, is that society is generally set up to curb natural impulses... say, the kind that make people fight one another. If we just let “humans be damn humans” we’d probably be stabbing each other constantly while peeing all over the place. Thousands of years of effort has gone into not allowing people to behave as freely as they might naturally. Given that it was pretty much a lost game since people started wearing clothing for decorative purposes, we might as well tell people it’s not cool to punch each other.
Others are claiming that the ad depicts straw men and that “toxic masculinity doesn’t exist.”
Well, if you’ve got an ad where boys are discouraged from bullying each other and men are discouraged from sexually harassing women, and people are responding by shouting “let boys be damn boys, let men be damn men” it would seem they are proving the ad's point: that those behaviors are pretty deeply embedded in masculine culture.
And if that’s the case, then, yes, it seems like this needs to be said loudly, and often. Because surely, no one, man or woman, thinks bullying, sexual harassment, or catcalling are good behaviors.
The ad is not “shaving away masculinity” as Fox suggested. It’s just saying that men can choose to go against peer pressure that tells them to act like “real men” through fighting or harassing people, to instead act like "real men" by respecting their peers and treating women like people too.
Gillette (who has presumably made this ad not only to stir up conversation but to also sell razors) seems to think there are more men out there who will want to be good, than there are men who will dig in their heels and shout that they should be able to harass anyone they want because: manliness. To that end, I can only hope that they’re right.
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