From the January 15 edition of Fox Business' Varney & Co:
Fox host on Gillette razor ad targeting toxic masculinity: “I don't understand why I have to be berated because I happen to be a man”
Brian Kilmeade: “At times,” men will “show an aggression. That is the way men are made up to be.”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
BRIAN KILMEADE (FOX & FRIENDS HOST): I don't get it. For me, in particular, yeah, men act badly sometimes, and they don't other times. But why are you going to scold the people that are going to buy your way too expensive razor that is for some reason locked behind that protective glass at stores, and you've got to ask a guy with a lot of keys to open up. I don't understand why I've got to be berated because I happen to be a man. There is a man, this thing is, men usually buy razors, these male razors, so for the most part I'm wondering, there are men that behave badly, but it seems as though this ad is skewed towards women who think men behave badly. I don't know, do the stats show that women buy the Gillette razors? Because if you want a man to buy a Gillette razor, don't give me 12 different illustrations of bad male behavior.
STUART VARNEY (HOST): It's an interesting concept though, isn't it? You come right at -- you jump right into a cultural and political issue. You take a side. You go public with it, and as you say, Brian, you are going after, to some degree, the people who buy that product. I'm not sure this is a workable ad but they have done it, but what do you think about the idea of toxic masculinity? The bullying, the dominance? I mean, that is a feature of being a man, and men do behave badly and boorishly like that on occasion, but this ad seems to me to lump all men together, as if they're all bad behavior kind of people.
KILMEADE: My sense is this: Yeah, men do behave badly, women behave badly, and there are things that could be done. If you want to raise a young man to be a gentleman, has to get up, be tough when you have to, have a steel in their spine but treat women with great respect, and bullying will never be tolerated at any age. But if you want two brothers, which is depicted in the ad, or two kids rolling on the ground wrestling, if you don't want them wrestling then don't have boys. Because, for the most part they will wrestle. At times they will get each other, they'll show an aggression. That's just the way men are made up to be. The other thing to do is, if you could do me a favor, if Gillette really wants men to act differently, get a PBS documentary. This could be brought to you by Gillette or sponsor Charlie Rose's show if he ever gets out of Siberia, wherever he is. Don't go ahead to make your ad a way to tell me how to behave badly. You make razors. I don't need life lessons from you. Number two is, I could be wrong, in that I thought the Nike ad would boomerang on Nike, when they told me basically I should look up to Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee as a backup quarterback on the 49ers, and the Nike stock went up.
Related:
Huff. Post: Gillette Takes On ‘Toxic Masculinity’ In Viral Me Too Ad
Previously:
Fox & Friends discussed a razor ad 24 times more than it discussed Steve King this morning
Fox & Friends host and guests lash out over Gillette #MeToo ad