Here’s How Much Gillette Respects Women
Peter D'Abrosca
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Meet the Formula One Grid Girls.
Scantily clad, they were – and sometimes still are – known for traipsing about in next-to-nothing during the opening ceremonies of Formula One Racing events. The practice was banned by Formula One’s new owners in 2018, but some individual race organizers bucked those orders and kept the grid girls for their races.
In 2011, razor company Gillette, which this week joined the social justice circus, sponsored the grid girls at Formula One’s Easter Races Zandvoort, an annual event in The Netherlands. Here are some images – strictly for research purposes – of the wonderful ladies of the grid sporting skintight Gillette advertisements.
Now, this reporter is no marketing expert. But it seems that Gillette plastered their logo on the rear-ends of the grid girls, as if they expected men to be ogling at the women. That sounds a bit… Toxically masculine.
In fact, in Gillette’s Monday video about toxic masculinity, the company specifically identified men “checking out” women as the type of behavior that must be stopped, because as it explained, “the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow.”
So, what has changed between 2011 and today?
Gillette is not suddenly under new ownership. It has been owned by corporate titan Proctor & Gamble since 2005. Rather, corporate sentiments change over time, responding to culture shifts. That is most likely the cause of Gillette’s new advertising schtick.
So what, specifically, was different about American culture in 2011 that is different today? The answer to that question is social justice.
In 2011, there weren’t blue-haired, man-hating “feminist” freaks running amok on college campuses calling for the death of the straight, white male. And that culture, if it existed at all, had certainly not steeped into the mainstream press, where straight, white males are second class citizens. There had been no #MeToo movement, where the sexual deviants in Hollywood got to feel virtuous for slamming the culture of drug and booze fueled rapes and sexual-favors-for-work that they created in the first place. There was no boogeyman in President Donald J. Trump the “racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynist, pig,” who has been unfairly-linked to maltreatment of women, whom it was cool to stand up against.
If you think that Gillette gives a damn about “toxic masculinity,” or the #MeToo movement, or respecting women, you have been fooled.
Gillette cares about making money. And in 2019, when political correctness is reaching its peak and sensitivity is at an all time high, the way to make money is to play along with the social justice trend.
When the era of PC is finally doomed for good, Gillette will be back to slapping their logo on the asses of the skin-tight suits of grid girls.
Count on it.
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