Satvik Agarwal

Akshita Todi
Introduction to Critical Thinking-002
23rd September 2019

Men will be Men

“…An outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when
there were no bears to kill.”-Betty Friedan

Image has been sourced from: Toxic Masculinity Stew, by Barry Deutsch

“Boys don’t cry!” “Mard ko dard nahi hota?” “He is no less than a playboy.” “Do
you know that girl, she is so sexy!”

Every man has heard atleast one of this sentence, if not, then he is the one who said it.
Why does this happen? Toxic Masculinity. What is it? Certain expectations from men that
have been passed on from ancient times, and now has propagated itself into people’s mindset
through the help of certain channels of media. One such example of media’s role in this is a
widely popular series of adverts that have been aired by Imperial Blue ,an Indian whiskey
brand for over 25 years now. Meant to be funny, the ads in the series have a recurring theme
of stereotyped male behaviour in different situations involving women. The slogan “Men will
be men” resounding in the end, intends to normalise it.

Firstly, it is so funny that a “unisex” product like alcohol has ads centred only on men.
It shows how men, especially of a particular class, have a social “tendency” to drink. On the
other hand, women are never portrayed as drinkers as it is taboo. Men who drink are shown
as a person with sexual prowess and are generally linked with power and hardcore manliness.
While women who drink are shown as having loose character and sexual intentions.
 One of their ads show how just the sound of heels, entice two men in the office, and
they start looking out of their cabin to get a glimpse of the women. When they find out that it
is a man, they shamefully retract. If this was on the flip side, and we would have seen two
women reacting like this to the apparent footsteps of a man, it would not have been funny,
due to their portrayal as sexual beings. Coming to my point, this ad promotes and portrays
men as sex-hungry creatures, for whom just a glimpse of a beautiful woman is bliss. These
concepts promote the peer pressure to engage in locker room talk among friends, a very crude
and inappropriate, but prevalent aspect of the masculine “experience.”

Another “requirement’ of being a man is, the need to be interested in atleast one sport,
and to be physically strong and knowledgeable, primarily in the mechanical aspects of daily
life. One ad showed how a man switched the television to a sports channel, as he is a man.
How could he enjoy the movie his wife was watching earlier? Another ad shows how a man
shamefully starts repairing a complete stranger’s car tire, to show off his “skills” and impress
her. Another ad shows how a man piles up the weights on his barbell, which he clearly can’t
lift to impress a woman in the gym, who was passing by. These instances instigate a thought
in the men watching these ads of how women are impressed with the concepts of strength and
ability to use tools.

On a more desolate note, now chocolate boy, then struggling actor Kartik Aaryan
stars in one of their ads, where he is in a parking lot and sees two beautiful girls walking
there. Although he owns a standard hatchback, he pretends to own a Ferrari, just to impress
those girls. Men always have this pressure to look successful, rather than be successful,
especially in the case of wooing girls. He already feels inferior and undermined with his car,
his income level. To actually have a chance to make an impression, he is ready to cultivate a
false identity. The societal pressure of “being settled,” especially for men, is very intense at a
very young age in the Indian scenario. It leads to a lot of mental pressure and anxiety,
ultimately affecting oneself psychologically.

Nearly all social problems have an oppressor and a victim. Something unique to toxic
masculinity is that everybody is a victim to it. A man was born a person with no social
constructs on how to behave. Eventually, someone told him, or he noticed it. The person he
got that information from was influenced by someone else in his childhood. Thus, these
victims, ultimately become the oppressors. No one knows when will this vicious cycle come
to an end. The only solution is to bring change within ourselves and our children. Ads
like Gillette’s “The Best Men can be” try to do so by emphasising on how “The boys
watching today will be the men of tomorrow.” Sadly, the dislikes in this video are nearly
double the likes, so we can see that we have a long way to go.