If you haven’t seen the Gillette commercial speaking out against toxic masculinity yet, go watch it before you keep reading. It’s a moving commercial, and the message, which is basically to be a decent person and look out for those around you, is always good to have re-enforced by giant corporations. (Major shoutout to Nike’s ad with Colin Kaepernick to target the NFL’s and the general medias attempts to quiet those who speak out against racism!!)
However, it is ignorant (not to mention idealistic) to think these ads were created purely out of these companies wanting to do good and spread a positive, important, and meaningful message. At the end of the day, Gillette and Nike are or are part of huge corporations, with billions of dollars $$$ – dollars that were used to research whether it was financially feasible to release these ads knowing they’d lose conservative customers who disagree with the message, but could gain liberal customers who would specifically seek out their product. By releasing these advertisements, both Gillette and Nike were also saying that toxic men and racists don’t spend enough on their product to make a significant dent in profits post-production.
As comic and comedian @AwardsForGoodBoys put it on her Instagram account, it’s great that Nike and Gillette decided to put their money and resources into promoting positive messages, but should they really get rewarded for doing the bare minimum when our standards could be higher and, instead, we could collectively just expect brands we support to put out a decent message and take any side on issues? This viewpoint sparks a moral debate for consumers who want to support these messages, but also the point that they raise. Take Gillette, for example… a woman who is moved by the commercial might be inspired to buy Gillette products, but she could also take a stand for a smaller company, like Billie Razors, which is a company started for women with feminist ideals from the get-go, not just because they decided being a feminist would make them more money. Similarly, with Nike, a Black man could choose to buy their sneakers because of his decision to use Kaepernick in their ads, but he could also go out of his way to buy sneakers from a Black-owned business that supported Black people from the start. However, every company has its flaws, and we can’t take on all the issues involved in capitalism in a day when there’s no singular right choice. We just gotta keep fighting the good fight!
Images courtesy of @awardsforgoodboys on Instagram, https://mybillie.com/products/body-lotion, and usstarsinsider.com