Brut: The New Masculinity Police
Enjoy badminton? Use a facial product? Buy curtains? Watch out: An ad agency has decided these things are Not Manly. And before you get physically assaulted, you’d better pick up some cologne no one wears.
No kidding. This is the message behind Brut’s new ad campaign, “Some Men Just Need to Be Slapped.” On Brut’s Facebook page, you can choose between 10 different guys to slap with either a bottle of Brut or two other specialized items.
this game is just the tip of the iceberg of problems with the ad campaign, which implies that Brut can be used as an actual weapon against things sometimes associated with women (and wait, since when is badminton girlie?). The campaign still clings to that same narrow image of masculinity every advertiser has perpetuated for the past century, but this feels even more desperate than the rest. Companies and advertisers who can’t figure out how to appeal to men in this millennium aren’t gonna evolve quietly. No, they’ll fling a bunch of shit everywhere, stirring up as much hostility as possible to promote a fabricated gender war that exists solely to sell products.
It’s not that I support Charlie Sheen—it’s that I don’t agree with Brut telling you how to be a man. Do you identify as a man? You are a man—facial scrubs, cucumber, badminton and all. And letting me hit some half-baked version of Mike Sorrentino with a piece of salami isn’t going to change that.
