Dear Mr. Dad: Have you seen that new television commercial that aims to get men to treat women better? I think it’s great and even recorded it and am playing it for my husband and son. What do you think?
A: For those who missed it, the ad in question is from Gillette—a Procter & Gamble brand—and essentially invites men (and boys) to shave away their “toxic masculinity.” It’s a take-off on the tagline that the company has used for decades: “The best a man can get.” Personally, I’m disgusted by the ad and the bigoted thinking behind it. Why? Because it strongly implies that masculinity, by definition, is toxic, and that ALL males—or at the very least, all the ones who can shave—are jerks who need to change their behavior.
While there’s no question that some men—a tiny minority—behave in a toxic way, there is nothing inherently toxic about masculinity itself. The far bigger problem is a general SHORTAGE of masculinity. The overwhelming number of men who are involved in violence, gangs, drugs, and so on, have grown up without a positive male role model in their lives and have had no one to show them what it means to be a man or how to treat women.
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