A better image of men

15/01/19 . Blog

We’ve seen this sort of thing before: a corporation tries to hijack a political cause to boost its bottom line. The masters of the art were probably Benetton using HIV amongst other things to sell brightly-coloured jumpers.

So what should we make of the new advert from Gillette, below, that tries to harness the drive of the #metoo movement to flog a few razors? I have to say that I like it!

Now obviously I hate the basic underlying message of all these sorts of consumer ads: buy this and you’ll be a better person. The implication that I can and should be a ‘better’ me is irritating anyway - better than what? - but even if you bought that, you’d have to pretty daft to think a slightly closer shave would be the game changer.

However, putting that aside, I like the fact that it puts the responsibility for men’s bad behaviour at the door of men. The men’s rights activists can bleat all they want but those sexual assaults, the domestic violence, the everyday sexism, that stuff doesn’t ‘just happen’ like the tides or the seasons. It happens because men make it happen. We need to be honest about that. And why shouldn’t men call out the bad behaviour of others as in this ad? We don’t because we fear a smack in the mouth. But we probably should.

I don’t have skin in this game (quite literally, as I haven’t shaved for over 20 years) but it reminds me a bit of the outrage you get when a religion is gently mocked. How can a faith be so weak that it is undermined by a cartoon or a Monty Python film? So how can any man truly consider his masculinity is destroyed by an ad suggesting stopping kids fighting might not be a bad idea? Come on, boys, a little perspective here.

Sure, the ad is aspirational, cheesy and passes off sentimentality as genuine emotion - it’s an advert! - but to me if guys behaved a bit more like the guys in the ad I don’t think the world would be such a bad place, would it?

Jim Pollard, site editor

The Men’s Health Forum need your support

It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking.

In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to.

It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for.

We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing.

Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.

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