A report from Harry's, A Gillette competitor, showed us in 2018 what makes men happy. Gainful employment was the major criteria for whether a man would be happy or not.But the report also showed that men are moral and good and that they strive to be heroes, fathers, and father figures. They strive to be the best and to protect. But Gillette's ad depicted men as bad, evil, as "toxic."This is likely why the social justice ad was so controversial.Instead of highlight positive masculinity, it showed men as bad and as aggressors.
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Recently, Gillette published an extremely controversial ad that pissed off tons of people.
Many people viewed it as a negative, stereotypical depiction of men.
The ad, which targeted toxic masculinity, told men to do better, and a lot of people were wondering, why couldn't you just make a positive depiction of men doing great things?
The people who liked the ad or just didn't care said, so what?
Who cares if you tell men they should do better?
But as it turns out, a news story from Bloomberg shows that Procter & Gamble, the company which owns Gillette, likely knew this would be controversial.
That they were actually trying to build a new customer base at the expense of their old one.
The reason they knew this was probably controversial?
One of their competitors published a report in 2018 about what makes men happy and the general status of the modern man.
Reading this report was really interesting because I can see there's a lot of traditional masculine things that would make a guy happy, providing for a family.
In fact, being in a family makes men happy.
So upon reading this, I started looking at other data and it turns out women are actually becoming less happy.
Since the 70s, female happiness has been going down.
So I wanted to find out what was causing this, and I'll admit it's extremely, extremely complicated, and there are partisan political agendas across the board, which makes it extremely hard to understand.
But today, we're gonna take a look at the latest story about the Gillette ad, Harry's research, and look into the happiness of the modern man and woman.
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The Harris Poll published this Bloomberg story.
Gillette's ad angered old customers in pursuit of new ones.
Procter & Gamble's Gillette ad asked men to consider doing better.
As a result, at least some are willing to consider Gillette.
Though the early reaction seemed to be dominated by male umbrage, early data suggests the ad split two important groups for the brand, more than half of younger men.
A group the 117-year-old brand struggled with reacted positively, according to survey data from Harris Poll.
Their dads, though, were more likely to be offended.
Among millennials and Gen Zs, 57% said they'd be more likely to consider purchasing Gillette products.
Nearly two-thirds of Gen X men said the same.
Roughly the same proportion of baby boomers, though, felt the opposite.
We knew this film might be polarizing, a P&G spokeswoman told Bloomberg.
Conversations on these profound social issues can be difficult for all sides, but we believe they are important, and that by sparking the discussion, we can play a part in creating meaningful and positive change.
However, they point out, in comparison to Nike, only 6% of the responses to Gillette were positive, fewer than the 11% positive responses generated by the Nike ad.
The way to be modern is to take on a social issue, said John Gerzema, chief executive officer of the Harris Poll.
They were successful in getting the brand back into the culture.
But in my opinion, this is a very risky strategy.
In 2018, Harry's published this Masculinity Report, a bespoke U.S.
study for Harry's in partnership with Dr. John Barry of University College London, exploring positive masculinity in the 21st century.
The aim of this academic survey was to identify the values and priorities of American men and the factors which contribute to their emotional, physical, and mental health and well-being.
In a comprehensive, intimate survey of 5,000 male respondents aged 18 and 95 spread across the United States, subjects were asked to first gauge their Positive Mindset Index, PMI, Which was determined by asking men about their happiness, confidence, sense of being in control, emotional stability, motivation, and optimism.
Respondents were then asked about how satisfied they were with key areas of their lives, such as careers, work-life balance, relationships, money, physicality, and mental health.
Finally, To ascertain what kind of men they aspired to be, we ask them which core values they truly held dear.
The values American men most aspired to are those of everyday heroes.
Fathers, father figures, respectful co-workers, mentors.
These are hardworking, loving, friendly men with a social conscience, which is great news for the men, women, and children of America.
The report mirrored the Harry's Masculinity Report 2017 conducted in the UK on 2,000 British men.
But the American report went into even greater depth, asking questions on military service, gender identity, sexual orientation, political affiliation, employment status, educational level, and population density.
What's interesting is that it would seem that this data kind of plays into why Gillette would make an ad like that in the first place.
Because they wanted to target hard-working, loving, friendly men with a social conscience.
So I assume Gillette probably thought, if we tell men to be like the way they want to be, then maybe they will like us.
But in fact...
I kind of feel like they did the opposite.
They insulted men and showed them as none of these things, which is probably why they faced such a huge backlash.
The finding of the report actually showed that Gillette's ad was depicting an extreme minority of men.
Most men don't behave the way that video depicted them, so why would they claim that men need to do better when, in fact, most men actually do pretty well?
In their key findings, they say the modern American man is a moral man.
When asked what characteristics he aspires to, he chooses values that put the need of others over his own.
At the top were honesty, reliability, dependability, being respectful of others, and loyalty.
At the bottom was athleticism, having a perfect body.
In part two, they say, what gives American men the greatest sense of well-being?
And they say, men at work, the dignity of labor, Men at work are men at peace.
Everything else flows down from satisfying employment.
Men who have high job satisfaction are more likely to feel optimistic, happy, motivated, emotionally stable, in control, and confident.
Job satisfaction is by far the strongest predictor of positivity, being around three times higher than the next strongest predictor in every region and across the U.S.
overall.
And this isn't primarily about money.
Rather, making an impact on a company's success was the main predictor of job satisfaction.
96.4% of those with the top job satisfaction rating had normal or better levels of mental positivity compared to only 49% who gave the lowest rating for their job satisfaction.
It therefore stands to reason that getting men into gainful employment is the best route to improving their positive mindset.
This is not greed is good.
It is difficult to conceive of these findings as pathological expressions of greed, workaholism, shallow ambition.
And we can see on their chart, job satisfaction overwhelmingly plays a role in male happiness.
Health, income, age, being married, sports and leisure, military service are all way down on the list.
The report basically says that a married man in his 50s is the happiest man.
And what I found really interesting in this report is that it's kind of traditionally stereotypical.
That give a man a good job and he will be happy.
But it's hard to wonder when reading this.
With the rise of feminism throughout the United States, are women becoming happier?
And I was surprised to find they're not.
And it used to be inverted.
Women used to be happier than men, but something changed and now men are becoming happier than women.
And it's actually kind of weird.
In a study published in 2009, so this is old, keep that in mind, they said, the paradox of declining female happiness.
By many objective measures, the lives of women in the U.S.
have improved over the past 35 years.
Yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men.
The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries.
Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men.
These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging, one with higher subjective well-being for men.
One of the first claims I wanted to look at is that stay-at-home moms are happier.
Maybe it's that more women are working and thus they're becoming unhappy.
This story from Psychology Today says, The grass always appears to be greener on the other side of
the white picket fence.
Feminists say that stay-at-home moms are more likely to be depressed,
while neo-traditionalists say working moms are unhappy.
The feminists assert that being home alone with the kids leads to social isolation,
an important factor in depression.
Their opponents counter, that employment is stressful.
How is it not depressing to be at work worrying all the time about your kids?
The reason I highlighted that story is that it's damn near impossible to understand why women are becoming unhappy.
In this story from The Guardian, gains in women's rights haven't made women happier.
Why is that?
They take a kind of strange and feminist approach Where they actually claim that because men are incarcerated at a higher rate than women, maybe this makes women unhappy.
They say, although increased incarceration has affected African Americans more than others, even when all Americans are considered together, the rise in male incarceration between 1970 and 2000 has been held responsible for a 13% drop in US marriage rates.
The reduced pool of free men has also encouraged many women to accept marriage proposals from men they would have otherwise rejected, an effect that has been shown to be sufficient to shift the economic advantage of marriage away from women and toward men.
However, this is an insane premise, if you were to ask me.
First of all, if we're talking about men becoming happier than women, incarcerating more men would probably make them unhappier than women.
Also, they say there's a reduced pool of free men, and also encouraged many women to accept marriage proposals from men they would have otherwise rejected, but I'm not sure women would prefer men who would likely go to prison for committing crimes.
So, you could actually argue it's the inverse.
With more men going to prison, higher quality men are available.
But later in the story, they say, this inside-out result probably arises from different cognitive comparisons.
Women in liberal communities are less happy and notice discrimination because they automatically compare their opportunities and salary This kind of difference might explain the lessening happiness of American women.
women perhaps base their identities more firmly on their gender roles and think only of other women when they
evaluate their privilege and opportunities.
This kind of difference might explain the lessening happiness of American women. As women's rights and
opportunities have increased, it seems reasonable that women in industrialized countries
have internalized ever more complex and optimistic expectations and judged reality against these.
Asked how satisfied she is with her lot in life, the housewife of the early 1970s
probably just reflected on whether things were going well at home.
The same question today evokes evaluations across many areas of life.
Declining happiness among women may seem depressing, but whoever claimed an expanded consciousness brings satisfaction.
The issue is that women in the home in the 70s, they got what they wanted.
They won.
For a woman who wanted to be a mother and marry a good man and support a family, they did it.
Congratulations.
But now you have a lot of women who want to become CEOs, who want to reach to the top, and they're comparing themselves where they are now to where they need to be, and they're less likely to be happy.
If it is to be assumed that feminism is the cause for the unhappiness, that women would be happier in the home, then the increasing strides, the increasing amount of feminists, the increasing wages would probably only make things worse.
But if it's true that women have now begun comparing themselves to their male colleague counterparts and find themselves to be unhappy, then the increase in feminism and the increase in wages is probably going to do good things to bring about more happiness in women, but for some reason we're still seeing women become unhappy.
So I guess I can only throw it to you, and I know there's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna make assumptions, they're gonna say it's gonna be one thing or the other, and that's the only thing you can really do, because the data is rather conflicting.
Admittedly, I'm not an academic, I'm not a scientist, and I'm sure there are many people who study this for a living who could probably do a way better job of breaking this down.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
Why do you think it is that women have become unhappy?
And why do you think it is that Gillette was willing to make this ad?
Was it because they thought it would make men think they were becoming heroes?
Or is it because they wanted to just burn their old customer base and they didn't care?
