Gillette’s Commercial and Girl Cooties

The conservative reaction to the Gillette ad on masculinity has been fascinating. TV personality Piers Morgan accused the Gillette commercial of suggesting that all men are “evil.” He went so far as to tweet, that Gillette “now wants every man to take one of their razors and cut off his testicles.”

Whoa. Did we watch the same ad?

Because the one I saw asserted that Gillette believed in “the best in men.” Yes, it showed the negative side of toxic masculinity, but it also showed empowering images of men encouraging their daughters, engaging with their sons, stopping fights, and all around being great guys.

It was as if conservatives couldn’t see beyond the first few images, leaving them frothing at the mouth in outrage. Fox News claimed that Gillette was “crapping on men.” Jo Rogan complained that the ad “makes every man look like a misogynist piece of sh*t.”

But to me the most unsettling take on the Gillette ad came from the popular conservative pundit, Ben Shapiro. On his podcast, Shapiro raged that the “real message” of the commercial was that, “Too much male presence has destroyed America.”

Um…wait. What?

He continued. “Do you want to know what has created serious problems in American society? It is a lack of men. Not the over presence of men, but a dearth of men.”

I have no idea how he got to that out of the ad, but okayyyy. Then he added, “Maybe the absence of a strong male presence providing guidance to young men [is how] you end up with toxic masculinity.”

Finally, a point that I could agree with! So then why was he so outraged over an ad encouraging men to step up and get more engaged in the lives of boys and with the world as a whole?

Then I began to understand what Shapiro was actually saying. See, if the problem is a dearth of men in our society, of a lack of male engagement, then the adverse problem is too many women in society.

Now his outrage was beginning to make sense.

Because in his worldview, wherever women are, men shouldn’t want to be. So it’s women’s fault that men are absenting themselves from engagement with their children, with certain careers, and with society as a whole.

“Seventy six percent of teachers are female,” Shapiro spat. “Eighty percent of social workers are female. Twenty three percent of children live with a…