If you haven't been following the interwebs, there has been a big push to curb "toxic masculinity".
Well, it would seem that it is anything that would make a man be a man.
Sure, the social justice warriors (SJW) like to point to specific acts of aggression, mansplanning, achievement, strength or other bad man things. But, in reality, it is anything that would make a man a man.
Seriously... it is a word derived from some "gender studies" professor to define the stereotypical man. R. W. Connel gave it the label "hegemonic masculinity". R. W. is a female sociologist, which means her writings are unbiased and pure. [wink wink] As a social construct... well, the guy defining it is a Marxist, so there's no point in talking about what he believes it is, so let's move on.
Of course, things that make a man a man, are what women like in men. Like, eating meat.
Or, having facial hair.
Unless, they are some SJW and then they find all sorts of problems with facial hair.
You would think that a company like Gillette would want to keep people who shave their faces happy and advertise to those people. Heck, they could have used the "beards are bad" SJW issues to encourage more shaving. What would be the point of pissing off your customer base?
Anyway, some SJW moron at Proctor & Gamble decided that they should join the #MeToo movement and focus on "toxic masculinity", because nobody taught them that they were a moron and shouldn't just whilly nilly make decisions. Then, some other Yes Men (errr... people?) went a long with this hair brained political social trend and decided to push it on the most masculine of their subsidiaries.
Sure, Gillette sells lady razors, but, men tend to shave more often than women do. And, they have that slogan...
Yes, for years, Gillette has been trying to make men look their best and provide them with the best products to make them look the best. Sure, not all men took those products to look more manly, some even used those products to look more boyish or pretty, which is why we had the whole metrosexual thing back in the early 2000s'.
metrosexual - a young, urban, heterosexual male with liberal political views, an interest in fashion, and a refined sense of taste.
But, hey, men bought the advertisement and to be honest, their razors are great. I use Gillette and I enjoy the smooth shave I get from 5 blades.
So, that is a problem Gillette has. Once they went past 3 blades, the razors became a little too expensive for the average Joe to properly maintain.
Beyond trying to lower the price of the blades, Gillette even tried the whole, Made in the USA push.
Apparently that wasn't catching on or it was in the wrong direction for the SJW with too much pull in the company. So, Gillette has decided to end their 100 year run as a company. They decided, the best way to communicate to their customer base of men, is to tell them "They can be better." And not in a good way, in a less manly way. They can stop acting like men, trying to raise their boys into being men and just anything all together that has to do with being a man.
At last count, the video has 15,000 down votes.
And when one person used the "My wife's son." meme as a comment, at first Gillette liked it, until they figured out what it was, then they deleted it.
This is not going as Gillette expected.
In fact, I am considering going to a straight razor. I have started pondering it as SHTF scenario prep. Granted, there will probably be plenty of old Gillette razor cartridges around, but why bother with that, when you have a straight razor. Heck, one could even make a straight razor, if they learned to blacksmith.
If I do end up switching, I'll write-up an article on how easy or hard it was to change.
Get your old school text-based gaming on.Play Your Cards and Battle