‘The best a man can be’? Understanding the toxic masculinity debate'

Nicola Bishop will present a paper discussing the recent Gillette ad campaign and the media furore that surrounded the switch from ‘the best a man can get’ to ‘the best a man can be’. At just under two minutes long, the advert tackles bullying, sexual harassment, inequality in the workplace, and sexism on screen, by promoting courage, humility, responsibility, and kindness. It says all of these behaviours make up that complicated construct, ‘masculinity’, and it challenges viewers to question what sort of behaviour defines how we view manliness today.

The response to the video, shown first on American prime time television, was intensive - 200,000 comments were made on YouTube within the first few hours of it being uploaded to the site. Many of these were men who denounced the company, articulating why they would refuse to buy Gillette products in future. This was clearly savvy marketing by a major corporation, albeit with a few nods to a shift in ethos – including hiring Kim Gehrig to direct the film and an intent to provide $3 million funding for groups that work with boys and young men. It is unlikely, though, that even Gillette were prepared for the response that they got. This talk discusses the campaign in light of recent debates on ‘toxic masculinity’ alongside reflections on the response that Nicola’s own article received on 'The Conversation', and will be followed by an audience-led discussion.

Dr Bishop's biography

Nicola Bishop is a senior lecturer in English at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research to date has focused on a number of interconnected areas, most of which began as a twinned interest in class and gender – or, more specifically, lower-middle-class masculinity. Nicola has published articles that discuss various topics in popular culture, including a summary of popular history on television, class in the novels of Agatha Christie, nostalgic book covers in the British Library Crime Classics series, and surveillance in the BBC’s Sherlock. She is currently involved in projects that examine rural landscapes on television, and Edwardian office buildings in contemporary society. Nicola has also written on various occasions for The Conversation about contemporary representations of masculinity on screen – including one article on James Bond, and another exploring the SAS in reality television. Her first monograph, Lower Middle Class Nation: The British White-Collar Worker in Popular Culture, 1850 –Present is due out in December 2019.