Old Spice isn’t new to manvertising. It’s their standard game, which I’ve written about before. In fact, Old Spice is, in some ways, one of the few companies to make their message direct and clear; there’s no hiding the manvertising tactics here — they even call their ads “manmercials.”
My main point in those earlier posts was to illustrate how Old Spice was creating a market by fabricating anxiety about the need for gender differentiation, and constructing fear for men about their bodies. Their new campaign (written about recently by Jezebel) ratchets down a little bit of that fear but goes deep into manvertising territory; in fact, it might be the most prototypical example I’ve seen in quite some time, and worth another look.
Here’s the current ad:
You can also see more of this campaign at the Old Spice website and on their YouTube page.
It’s hard not to laugh at this. The “I’m on a horse” line is particularly absurd, and I do love absurd humor. Yet, that absurd humor is precisely what makes ad convey its message of gender differentiation: “Stop using lady-scented bodywash.”
Lady-scented bodywash?
There are a number of disturbing things happening here. First, and most likely to be overlooked, is the very carefully chosen language here of “lady.” That word choice connotes all sorts of images, behaviors, and differences, and is elided through the use of the humor. It’s the element least likely to be critiqued, yet might be the most important. A “lady” provokes a particular type of belief in gender that situates women as rigorously adhering to very particular standards and ideals, all of which clearly demarcate them from masculinity.
One of those is, of course, scent. Ladies don’t smell, sweat, or exert themselves. The choice of words here is clear: the bodywash is not for ladies, it’s scented like ladies. Men, on the other hand, exert themselves, sweat, and generally do things requiring soap.
And this is where Old Spice (and other companies) have fabricated a market. Scent has long been part of the cultural gender-differentiation project, in which behaviors, flavors, and aesthetics become articulated as “masculine” or “feminine.” For example, lilacs and lavender, no matter how good they smell (and they do) will never be associated with masculinity because their source, flowers, has also been gender-associated. Watch the commercial again: it never states what the soap smells like. The website video is even more clear: men should smell like “punching” and “jet fighters.”
This use of connotative description is a key part of manvertising: “punching” has no smell, but it does have an association with masculine behavior. The packaging, marketing, and aesthetics become the strategy in manvertising rather than the product.
Yet none of it is possible without the humor. As I’ve said consistently on this blog, the humor masks the criticism that boils right on the surface of this sort of ad. If the ad laughs at itself (and how can it not?) it cannot be critiqued. The exaggeration, deliberate absurdity, mockery of stereotypical masculinity, and effort to make itself silly is all a very calculated attempt to get across that core message: men shouldn’t smell like ladies. Gender differentiation is the real message; humor is merely the vehicle.
One final note: the address in this campaign is fascinating. The man is speaking, presumably, to a female spectator, and even attempting to make her jealous of his physique, charm, and good looks.
At least that’s what the narrative wants you to think.
I would argue that the address here is to other men, using the address to women as an effort to illustrate the potential sexual power of the product. The fantasy of speaking to women is actually aimed at other men, a means of conveying the manphrodisiac message I’ve written about before (in relation, oddly enough, to Old Spice). The attempted address to women also boosts the “humor” of the ad, creating an exaggerated anxiety that men aren’t good enough to live up to the product.
The campaign’s efforts to capitalize on gender anxiety, the fear that difference is culturally breaking down, is a core poart of manvertising: men should act like/smell like/look like/feel like “men.” But what does that mean? When metaphors like “punching” and “jet fighters” have to be used, the foundation starts to crack, exposing the illusion that there is any meaning to of any of it. Men can’t smell like “men” because “men” don’t smell like anything except what’s in the bottle. The picture above, from the Old Spice website, illustrates clearly the core of manvertising, which has a lot more to do with the fear that men have lost their place in a cultural hierarchy that didn’t criticize what masculinity means than it does with soap. “I’ve lost my mansmell.”
As if it ever existed as anything but privilege.
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