Huddle up, men. I don’t know if you’ve seen the new Gillette commercial, but our worst fears have been realized. Radical feminists have mobilized and — under cover of darkness — overthrown the Procter & Gamble marketing department. We don’t yet know what tactics they employed or how they gained entry to the building, but our reconnaissance suggests they may have flashed their boobs at some point.
I see your skeptical faces and let me assure you, the battle lines have been drawn. While we were sleeping comfortably in our beds, these men-hating she-Satans have infiltrated male grooming, the last bastion of masculine identity. Where once our preferred brands served us visuals of flannel-clad men triumphantly holding dead fish, we’re now being subjected to images of male facsimiles holding hands with children and breaking up wrestling matches. We will not stand for this level of sissification.
If I may be so bold to ask, how dare they? How dare they suggest that men are anything less than perfect just the way we are? How dare they imply that there are some among us who might benefit from behaving more thoughtfully or with more compassion? Men don’t need advertisers butting into our lives, trying to dictate how we should look, feel and behave. We’re not women, okay?
This disgusting piece of virtue signaling propaganda is a direct attack on our entire gender, but more importantly, on each of us as individuals. Not all men are toxic. I’m not toxic. Brad’s not toxic. Frank’s not toxic. Bill’s not toxic. Pete’s not toxic. Steve is probably toxic, but he’s only like that because his bitch of an ex-wife won’t stop nagging him for child support payments. But Levi’s not toxic. Joe isn’t toxic. And that’s just the men in this room. I could go on and on.
Folks, here’s what we’re fighting for: the ability to continue doing the bare minimum. Just because some men agree that society has a problem with sexual harassment, bullying, and misogyny doesn’t mean all of us should be required to help correct it. Not all of us grope women or make sexually aggressive comments. Some of us just laugh about it afterwards! Why are we getting lumped in with everyone else? If one woman lied about being sexually assaulted, we wouldn’t immediately assume that all women were lying.
I mean, we would, but that’s a completely different story.
No, it’s time for men to stick together and toe the party line. If we admit there are some places where we, as a gender, might make improvements, what’s to stop humanity from demanding even more of us? If we disavow bullying, what’s to keep our wives from asking us to pick up our dirty socks or take out the trash or stop farting on them in bed? These are concessions we are unwilling to make and this is a slippery slope we’re navigating here.
I’ll tell you what, if Gillette wants to play like this, we’ll show them the worst a man can get. Forget boycotts — this calls for a full-scale man-cott of their complete product line. I’m talking razors, shaving cream, aftershave balm, and deodorant. By the time we’re finished not grooming ourselves, we’ll make our no-shave November beards look like a thirteen-year-old’s wispy-ass soul patch. We’ll fight fire with body odor and we will triumph!
It’s time to take up arms, men. Grab your phones and prepare your Twitter fingers for battle. We shall defend our toxic masculinity, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the internet, we shall fight on the message boards, we shall fight in the Reddits and in the sub-reddits, we shall fight in the comment section — we shall never surrender our right to not improve ourselves. We will defend our status quo to the death! I’ve slogged up this molehill and I’m prepared to die on it.