Earlier this week, Gillette dropped a new advertisement called “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be.” Well, you would think they had dropped a match in a puddle of gasoline. 
Using all the slick production values a $17 billion corporation can muster—including a lush musical score and portentous voiceover—the ad directly affirms the #metoo movement. Scenes of men engaged in bullying and harassment culminate in a line of straight-faced guys stationed at backyard grills intoning “boys will be boys.” The ad then pivots with a brief snippet of a #metoo news reports. Voiceover: “But then, something changed. And there will be no going back. Because we? We believe in the best in men.” Next we see scenes of men intervening in bullying, breaking up two little kids fighting, and shutting down catcalling. “Not cool,” says a guy, as he holds his friend back from chasing after a woman on the street.  
Is it heavy-handed?
Is it preachy? Sure. I mean, it’s got a title and everything. 
Personally,
though, I’m pleased to see it. You go, Gillette! Of course, not everyone feels
that way. Some people are so incensed that they’re tweeting photos of their
Gillette razors tossed into the toilet. [Note: don’t do this. You can’t flush a
razor, so you are just going to have to fish it out again. Gross.]
I might
sum up responses to the ad, roughly, like this.
Some
men: You’re attacking masculinity! I’ll never buy your products again!
Other men: No, I think they’re just saying that men shouldn’t be a**holes.
Women: Thanks for asking men to hold other men accountable. We’re tired of doing
all the accountability work here.
One
objection to the ad, according to online comments and tweets, is that ads
shouldn’t tell us what to do, they should just tell us about the products. 
Sorry, but that is laughable. Ads are never just about the product. They draw on “social imaginaries” to trigger our desires and fantasies. They have always told us what to do, what to want, how to be. In a thirty-second ad, a husband surprises his wife with matching, gargantuan, GMC trucks, parked in the driveway of their splendidly stylish mansion. “I love it,” she says, jumping into the black truck. The husband is charmingly chagrined because the black one was supposed to be for him, the red one for her. This ad has no preachy voiceover, but it’s still meant to shape our values. We should aspire, it implies, to wealth, power, and freedom—all embodied in that home and those trucks.
Ads have
always engaged in behavior norming, including gender behavior norming. Gillette,
in this case, is just surfacing the usual implicit norming function of advertising,
making it explicit.
It’s worth wondering why. One possible answer: profits. I don’t imagine that the ad is purely a gesture of moral altruism. No doubt it was heavily focus-grouped and based on extensive market research. Markets can be effective listening devices, and Gillette seems to have made its calculation about where the country is heading. A sufficient majority of our market, they have concluded, is moving toward disapproving of “boys will be boys.” Gillette wants their products out there on the horizon, where we’re headed. Apparently, their calculation is proving correct already. 
Still,
the objection that ads shouldn’t preach raises another question. Why get
preachy now? Have we reached a place in American cultural life where the
institutions of supposed authority have failed so utterly in upholding a common
denominator of decent values that corporations feel they have to step in to
become our moral teachers? 
We’re supposed to learn values from our families, schools, churches. But when we look for models of admirable manhood, for example, in public life, what do we see in many of our male political leaders or church leaders? It’s painful to ponder.
The main objection to the ad—that it attacks masculinity—is easily answered. A criticism of toxic masculinity is not a criticism of masculinity. If you feel shamed by a shaving company, well, the ad is a call to self-reflection. Note all the shots of men looking in the mirror. The ad asks men to monitor their own behavior, hold other men accountable, use privilege wisely (as Kirsten Powers observes). And think of the children. The final shots depict a series of diverse young boys’ faces—and they’re all looking at you, man.
So exactly where is the line between “toxic masculinity” and masculinity in general? For a fair-minded and sensible consideration of that question, I suggest this article by Thomas B. Edsall of the New York Times, responding to the guidelines recently released by the American Psychological Association for working with men and boys. Edsall’s main point in the article is that Americans’ views on masculinity fall along political lines in rather fascinating (and not entirely logical) ways. 
While
examining some of the objections to and defenses of the APA guidelines, Edsall
requests comments from a variety of experts, and what emerges along the way is
a kind of masculinity sorting scheme. Some qualities typically associated with
masculinity are “toxic” and damaging to men as well as women. Other qualities,
however, add up to what we might call “noble masculinity.” Harvard psychology
professor Steven Pinker observes:
“One could argue that what today’s men need is more encouragement to enhance one side of the masculine virtues — the dignity, responsibility, self-control, and self-reliance — while inhibiting others, such as machismo, violence, and drive for dominance.”
As I read the more reasoned reconsiderations of masculinity in America, many from entirely secular thinkers such as Pinker, I’m struck by how consonant “noble masculinity” is with any good list of Christian virtues. It’s puzzling to me how some Christians hold so tightly to gender essentialism when Christian virtues aren’t gendered at all. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Love is patient and kind, not arrogant or boastful. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the right. The seven heavenly virtues are faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice, temperance, prudence. Men and women may, on average, fight somewhat different demons on the way to those virtues, but our destination is the same.
I’m
grateful for those people who are calling the church to account where it has tolerated,
protected, and even promoted distorted masculinity. We ought to have a much
clearer picture of what redeemed humanity looks like than a shaving products
company does. Do we?
				 
				
On Shaving and Shaming
Earlier this week, Gillette dropped a new advertisement called “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be.” Well, you would think they had dropped a match in a puddle of gasoline.
Using all the slick production values a $17 billion corporation can muster—including a lush musical score and portentous voiceover—the ad directly affirms the #metoo movement. Scenes of men engaged in bullying and harassment culminate in a line of straight-faced guys stationed at backyard grills intoning “boys will be boys.” The ad then pivots with a brief snippet of a #metoo news reports. Voiceover: “But then, something changed. And there will be no going back. Because we? We believe in the best in men.” Next we see scenes of men intervening in bullying, breaking up two little kids fighting, and shutting down catcalling. “Not cool,” says a guy, as he holds his friend back from chasing after a woman on the street.
Is it heavy-handed? Is it preachy? Sure. I mean, it’s got a title and everything.
Personally, though, I’m pleased to see it. You go, Gillette! Of course, not everyone feels that way. Some people are so incensed that they’re tweeting photos of their Gillette razors tossed into the toilet. [Note: don’t do this. You can’t flush a razor, so you are just going to have to fish it out again. Gross.]
I might sum up responses to the ad, roughly, like this.
Some men: You’re attacking masculinity! I’ll never buy your products again!
Other men: No, I think they’re just saying that men shouldn’t be a**holes.
Women: Thanks for asking men to hold other men accountable. We’re tired of doing all the accountability work here.
One objection to the ad, according to online comments and tweets, is that ads shouldn’t tell us what to do, they should just tell us about the products.
Sorry, but that is laughable. Ads are never just about the product. They draw on “social imaginaries” to trigger our desires and fantasies. They have always told us what to do, what to want, how to be. In a thirty-second ad, a husband surprises his wife with matching, gargantuan, GMC trucks, parked in the driveway of their splendidly stylish mansion. “I love it,” she says, jumping into the black truck. The husband is charmingly chagrined because the black one was supposed to be for him, the red one for her. This ad has no preachy voiceover, but it’s still meant to shape our values. We should aspire, it implies, to wealth, power, and freedom—all embodied in that home and those trucks.
Ads have always engaged in behavior norming, including gender behavior norming. Gillette, in this case, is just surfacing the usual implicit norming function of advertising, making it explicit.
It’s worth wondering why. One possible answer: profits. I don’t imagine that the ad is purely a gesture of moral altruism. No doubt it was heavily focus-grouped and based on extensive market research. Markets can be effective listening devices, and Gillette seems to have made its calculation about where the country is heading. A sufficient majority of our market, they have concluded, is moving toward disapproving of “boys will be boys.” Gillette wants their products out there on the horizon, where we’re headed. Apparently, their calculation is proving correct already.
Still, the objection that ads shouldn’t preach raises another question. Why get preachy now? Have we reached a place in American cultural life where the institutions of supposed authority have failed so utterly in upholding a common denominator of decent values that corporations feel they have to step in to become our moral teachers?
We’re supposed to learn values from our families, schools, churches. But when we look for models of admirable manhood, for example, in public life, what do we see in many of our male political leaders or church leaders? It’s painful to ponder.
The main objection to the ad—that it attacks masculinity—is easily answered. A criticism of toxic masculinity is not a criticism of masculinity. If you feel shamed by a shaving company, well, the ad is a call to self-reflection. Note all the shots of men looking in the mirror. The ad asks men to monitor their own behavior, hold other men accountable, use privilege wisely (as Kirsten Powers observes). And think of the children. The final shots depict a series of diverse young boys’ faces—and they’re all looking at you, man.
So exactly where is the line between “toxic masculinity” and masculinity in general? For a fair-minded and sensible consideration of that question, I suggest this article by Thomas B. Edsall of the New York Times, responding to the guidelines recently released by the American Psychological Association for working with men and boys. Edsall’s main point in the article is that Americans’ views on masculinity fall along political lines in rather fascinating (and not entirely logical) ways.
While examining some of the objections to and defenses of the APA guidelines, Edsall requests comments from a variety of experts, and what emerges along the way is a kind of masculinity sorting scheme. Some qualities typically associated with masculinity are “toxic” and damaging to men as well as women. Other qualities, however, add up to what we might call “noble masculinity.” Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker observes:
“One could argue that what today’s men need is more encouragement to enhance one side of the masculine virtues — the dignity, responsibility, self-control, and self-reliance — while inhibiting others, such as machismo, violence, and drive for dominance.”
As I read the more reasoned reconsiderations of masculinity in America, many from entirely secular thinkers such as Pinker, I’m struck by how consonant “noble masculinity” is with any good list of Christian virtues. It’s puzzling to me how some Christians hold so tightly to gender essentialism when Christian virtues aren’t gendered at all. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Love is patient and kind, not arrogant or boastful. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the right. The seven heavenly virtues are faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice, temperance, prudence. Men and women may, on average, fight somewhat different demons on the way to those virtues, but our destination is the same.
I’m grateful for those people who are calling the church to account where it has tolerated, protected, and even promoted distorted masculinity. We ought to have a much clearer picture of what redeemed humanity looks like than a shaving products company does. Do we?
Refugia Podcast Episode 38 So Much Joy: Linda Racine and Traverse City Presbyterian Church
In 2022, there were multiple policies or overtures passed focused on creation care, and it really put out an alarm, saying “It’s serious, folks, the Earth is really in trouble. So we need to take strong action.” And they were encouraging all churches to reduce their carbon emissions by at least 25% in the next four years and get it down to net zero or net positive by 2030. A group of interested folks at church looked at that and said, “Let’s do it. Let’s go for it.”
Refugia Podcast Episode 37 Land as Primary Text for Healing Community: Elaine Heath and Spring Forest
Elaine Heath is the abbess of Spring Forest, a new monastic community in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Spring Forest centers around communal prayer and meals, a vibrant farm, refugee support, and other ministries you can read about here. You can learn more about Elaine’s work as an author and speaker on her website, or in articles like this one from the Center for Action and Contemplation.
Refugia Podcast Episode 36 True Woo: Pete Nunnally and Water and Wilderness Church
Father Pete Nunally is the founder of Water and Wilderness Church, a Washington DC-based outdoor church and watershed community. You can read more about the model of Water and Wilderness Church here. Father Pete is a passionate and well-spoken advocate on his social media pages and other forums, as in this interview with Creation Justice Ministries.
Refugia Podcast Episode 35 Peacemaking at the River: Doug Kaufman and the Anabaptist Climate Collaborative
Doug Kaufman directs the Anabaptist Climate Collaborative, an organization that leads climate justice initiatives from an Anabaptist faith perspective. Doug and his team support Mennonite and other Anabaptist churches, helping to build networks, train leaders, and empower climate-related initiatives. Doug describes environmental work as a form of peacemaking, a way of countering the slow violence of actions that cause and exacerbate climate change. Thanks to Doug for geeking out with me on theology and offering some glimpses of Mennonite climate work.