Father’s Day Focus - Are Parents Interchangeable?

Introduction

It has become traditional, or more to the point inevitable, that on Father’s Day I reflect on my role as a parent. This year I was also plunged into reflection by a Culture Desk essay I read in the paper titled “Celebrating mothers who taught me how to father.” I’ve blogged before about whether fathers are necessary and what fathers are for and realized I’m not done grappling with these questions. In planning this post I reached out to my brothers, my wife, and my kids, and their feedback is incorporated in what follows.

(Above: the card one of my kids made me this year.)

The Chronicle essay

The essay in the San Francisco Chronicle is by Kevin Fisher-Paulson and describes how he learned how to be a father from three friends who are single mothers. These women, he asserts, have to be “mom, dad, coach, buddy, the works” and are thus in a great position to share their wisdom. I like the article but it left me a bit confused, because Fisher-Paulson is gay, thus his kids have two dads … so don’t they have to fill the role of mom, too? Aren’t he and his husband really learning how to father and mother from these women?

I was also a bit puzzled by Fisher-Paulson’s fairly traditional sense of what makes a father, given how nontraditional his family is. He cites a number of fathering skills the women taught their sons: barbecue, lacrosse, screen defense, how to install an outside heater. He concludes, “Some days I worry that I will not have taught my own sons how to be a father, that my boys will grow up without knowing how to change the furnace filter” but that “Deirdre, Jill and Sarah taught me that a son does not need instruction as much as he needs support.”

I came away with more questions unresolved than answered. The essay challenges—but also reiterates and thus runs the risk of reinforcing—stereotypes about which parent does what. (I don’t mean this as a criticism: challenging the reader without resolving everything is often what a good essay does.) So I’ve been pondering the matter of whether there is any consistent, demonstrable difference between the nurturing and other resources bestowed on a child by a father vs. a mother. Are parental roles interchangeable? Does the average kid get A, B, and C from Mom and X, Y, and Z from Dad, or is it totally mix and match?

Some obvious parental differences

Clearly there are fundamental biological differences I won’t ignore. To newborn babies, fathers fall into a large category (comprising about 7 billion people) of “not Mom,” meaning they’re not just useless, but in fact barely exist. My brother Bryan echoes this, describing how his wife “certainly had the upper hand initially,” as “it would be many months before the child even realized who I was and that I had anything to do with her at all, while she knew right off the bat where her milk came from.”

I don’t think this is a huge deal, though, in terms of the overall relationship between parents and kids. After all, the breast feeding generally happens before the child is capable of forming long-term memories. And while breast feeding is important, it’s not the be-all, end-all.

There are of course more minor differences. Moms are certainly more valuable in the realm of purses. As a single man, one of the things I looked to marriage for was to have access to my wife’s purse—not to put a lot of stuff in or anything, but because when I need, say, chapstick or a toothpick, there’s a chance it’ll be in there. Kids benefit from this too and in fact it’s far more likely they’ll want something—gum, loose change, cosmetics, a hairbrush—that’s in there. For all the societal changes we’ve seen, it’s almost unheard of for a man to carry a purse.

Many men, meanwhile, still know how to tie a necktie. I taught my younger daughter, in fact, when she needed a necktie for a costume. And men are still on the hook for doing the household jobs that require brute force and drudgery, as detailed here.

But seriously

Okay, I had a little fun there … just seeing if you’re still awake. Of course there are many more noteworthy differences. One, which my wife and both daughters agreed on and which I’ll concede I know myself to be true, regards physical safety. My wife is far more concerned with safeguarding our kids than I am. I’m not talking about home invasion or anything (though I keep a big Maglite next to my bed and fantasize about one day getting to use it) but about keeping the kids out of dangerous situations in general, whether it’s bad neighborhoods or risky activities.

(Speaking of home defense, I once sneaked out of the house in the wee hours of the morning, and just as I made it to the driveway the front door burst open, and there was my mom, in her nightgown, with a large frying pan in one hand and an iron skillet in the other, yelling, “Who’s out there?!” while my father stayed in bed, no doubt sleeping peacefully.)

Here are a couple of examples from my own parenting life. When our kids were very young, my wife found it tiresome taking them to the playground because she feared they’d fall off the slide or jungle gym or whatever, so she would supervise them closely which was exhausting. When I took them, I’d bring a paperback. Or there was the time I had my brother’s family over to visit and their three-year-old went straight to a giant pile of Lego my kids had out, and I asked, “Should I be worried about her choking?” In the same instant my brother replied “no” and his wife replied “yes.”

Another example of this different risk management approach: when I was coaching my daughter’s high school mountain bike team, we were all descending Mount Tam one morning and my daughter was riding more aggressively than usual. Not terribly surprisingly, she crashed. My reaction was twofold: as a father of course I was somewhat alarmed, but as a coach I was glad to see her pushing it a bit to improve her skills. (She wasn’t hurt.)

My wife contends that if the men had to carry those babies around for nine months in our wombs, we’d be a lot more vested. I think it’s also possible that, convinced as we males are of our own invincibility, we may well project that onto our kids.

Now, in terms of sports, math, home repair, and other activities traditionally associated with males, my family members all agreed that the teaching of these things simply falls to whoever is most capable. My brother Bryan described how, as a math major working in tech, he was naturally the one who taught the kids “how to employ the quadratic equation in real life scenarios.” (I hope this was a joke.) He also has the role of fixing broken things around the house, so he said “it was natural for me to show the kids how to take apart the dishwasher or zip-tie something together.” He was quick to add, “I did not discriminate when it came to these sorts of lessons, I was more than happy when the girls wanted to learn something ‘manly’ or fix something. In fact, I would often recruit them just because they were girls.”

Similarly, in my household I do the computer and IT stuff, am more helpful with math problems, and fix the bikes, and I do as much as I can to teach these things. My wife does most of the cooking and gardening, and thus the kids learn these from her. But it could easily be the other way around, in my family or any. My brother Bryan pointed out, “If our roles were reversed and [my wife] was the one running in the rat race, she may have had more practical influences on the kids (how to treat coworkers, how to get ahead of your peers, that kind of thing).”

This being said, it’s not hard to find lots of examples of fathers handling the math, home repair, and sports end of things. Could these truly be a man’s domain? It’s sometimes tempting to think so; just watch small children play and you’ll see predictable gender differences. When our family randomly came to own a toy B-52 bomber (maybe from a garage sale?) they didn’t exactly play war with it. I caught one of them tucking it under the covers of her bed and she announced, “I’m putting my little plane-y to bed.”

But really, can we call this an innate preference when society has been ramming domesticity down girls’ throats for generations, and destroying their confidence in their intellects, particularly where math is concerned? (It’s shocking how often my wife and I heard, growing up, that “girls can’t do math.”) I’m certainly seeing a lot of changes around these attitudes now. Whereas my mom was called a dyke for playing field hockey in high school, my daughters’ high school has a very robust girls’ sports program, particularly their champion girls’ wrestling and mountain biking teams. My older daughter is more science-y than I am, and she and her two best friends crushed it on the math section of the SAT. I don’t think anybody can make a credible case anymore that kids need to learn fix-it stuff, sports, and math from their dads.

A more complex suggestion

The most intriguing feedback I got on this topic was from my younger daughter. She proposed that perhaps a child learns shame from his or her father. This gave me a jolt, needless to say. “Do I make you feel ashamed?” I asked, incredulously. No, no, my daughter said, and went on to explicate the idea: she doesn’t mean it as a criticism; it’s more like the father wants to be more stoic, even to the point of denouncing shamelessness. The mother, on the other hand, may be more freely emotional, and is more likely to model tact than to confront people.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what my daughter meant—this conversation was in a loud restaurant, and we got interrupted, and I have a hard time keeping my teenagers on such a topic for long—but it’s a good jumping-off point for me. It ties into my visceral sense that there’s a traditional male behavior that does need to be modeled, now more than ever as it’s somewhat under assault, and it has to do with keeping a stiff upper lip. I’m not holding up stoicism as a major virtue; it’s more than I’m pretty fed up with this whole emo thing.

Now, I’m not an expert on the exact meaning of “emo” but I’m talking about guys who think being really modern by eschewing traditional male traits like fortitude automatically makes them better. It’s as though appearing vulnerable, and freely describing their feelings, gets them off the hook for suffering from arrested development and other versions of age-old male prickdom. I’d rather see guys bravely facing the music than begging for forgiveness because they can’t.

The singer Lana del Rey illustrates what I’m talking about. In her song “Norman fucking Rockwell” she totally rips on her “man-child” boyfriend, complaining, “Your poetry’s bad and you blame the news/ But I can’t change that and I can’t change your mood.” The fact of his writing poetry isn’t the problem; it’s that the poetry is bad, and moreover the boyfriend is too self-absorbed to realize it. She goes on, “Self-loathing poet, resident Laurel Canyon know-it-all/ You talk to the walls when the party gets bored of you.” Del Rey continues in this vein on the next song on the album, “Mariner’s Apartment Complex,” complaining that this boyfriend took her sadness (which is temporary) out of context, equating it with his own (which is perennial). But she offers him support: “You lose your way, just take my hand/ You’re lost at sea then I’ll command your boat to me again,” and concludes, somewhat surprisingly, “I’m your man.” No, this is not some gender change-up; the persona in this song is very much a woman. More to the point, I think she’s saying, “If you can’t man up, I will.” Just like the single moms in Fisher-Paulson’s essay, perhaps. If all moms were like Lana del Rey, perhaps my daughter wouldn’t equate such fiery criticism with fathers.

Does any of this even matter?

In response to my inquiry about parents’ roles, my brother Max took a step back and challenged whether there aren’t more important matters to contemplate:

The question about parental gender roles may need to be further contextualized. The question as you put it asks about the average kid. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 45% (2.8 million out of 6.1 million) pregnancies in the U.S. were unintended in 2011. Of these, 58% ended in birth. So the question isn’t whether a kid typically gets A, B, and C from mom and X, Y, and Z from dad. The average kid, if lucky, may get A from mom and Y or Z from dad, but rarely A, B, C, X, Y, and Z. The average kid has to grow up navigating a minefield of parental indifference and/or incompetence. 

I’ll add to this that more and more families don’t have two parents to begin with. According to the US Census Bureau, “Between 1960 and 2016, the percentage of children living in families with two parents decreased from 88 to 69.” So almost a third of children don’t have the luxury of wondering what resources derive from which parent. They only have one.

Max went on to say,

So the short answer is that gender roles in child rearing have much less bearing on the success of the child being raised than the child itself. It is ultimately the work of the kid that will determine success or failure. Sometimes researchers use twins to dig down into these matters, as a control group sort of tactic. … [One] example would be that of Remus and Romulus in ancient times, twins raised by wolves. Remus was eventually killed by Romulus, who of course, went on to found the city of Rome and the Roman kingdom. Although they both grew up with exactly the same advantages (although the sexes of the wolves have not been determined) one was wildly successful, while the other, poor old Remus, wound up dead … most would agree, less than successful.

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What’s Wrong with Wonder Woman?

Vlog

I offer this post as a vlog for those suffering from bibliophobia (fear of reading), along with anybody else who prefers to passively receive words rather than having to decipher them. If you tire of my face, I cannot blame you for closing your eyes and pretending this is a podcast. Be ready to open them, though, for the Wonder Woman photos sprinkled throughout.

Introduction

To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Wonder Woman as a concept. And there’s nothing wrong with Gal Gadot. (For that matter, I don’t see anything wrong with Barbie, but that’s another post.) The problem is actually with Wonder Woman 1984, the new movie.

I recently watched this with my family (as we somehow have HBO Max now). I frankly didn’t expect to enjoy it much, but in the event found it surprisingly annoying.

To be honest, I’d probably be writing about WW1984 anyway, simply so I could include some photos. Like this one:

Admit it: you’re enjoying albertnet more than usual right now. In fact, you probably decided to check out this post simply because the photo grabbed you. I get that. I’ve noticed lately that my local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, has a tendency to build stories around Wonder Woman photos. I read one about Hollywood’s strategy toward blockbuster movie launches during the pandemic—and I confess, I was pulled in by the Wonder Woman photo more than the subject matter. (I’m sure that was the point in including it, as neither Wonder Woman nor Gal Gadot featured prominently in the story).

There was another Chronicle story recently about one of the WW1984 producers switching to decaf in the afternoons (if I’m remembering correctly). This ran, of course, alongside another Wonder Woman shot. Needless to say the latest humdrum story, about WW1984’s opening week box office take, gave us another great photo. I decided albertnet really needs to get in on this action.

But actually, I have a serious bone to pick with this WW1984 movie, beyond standard-issue lameness, so read on. Here’s another photo, just to fuel you. (Rest assured, there will be more.)

Typical flaws

Needless to say, the movie had the usual flaws associated with movies based on comic books. (I hope I can say this without offending comics lovers; consider that these movies invariably could and should do better at the job of honoring your beloved childhood memories.) As I said, I didn’t expect to love this movie; I only watched it because my kids wanted to (and because as a human I’m absolutely hardwired to enjoy watching Gal Gadot in her awesome costume). But it was a particularly lame movie, not nearly as cool as the first installment. WW1984’s story was needlessly complicated, there wasn’t enough action, and the whole magic-golden-rope thing was lame to begin with. (If the original comic books had Wonder Woman on a pogo stick, would the movie honor that, too? Who cares about fealty to the source material? Jettison the damn lasso already!)

What particularly irked me was the lost opportunity to have a truly strong female hero. This movie (and franchise) had a golden opportunity here and they inexplicably fumbled it.

(In case you’re wondering, my concern with strong female representation isn’t some attempt to be “woke” or selfless or self-congratulatory. As someone who has benefited from the wage gap, unconscious bias around gender, and the ability to pee standing up, you might assume I should be fine with the status quo. But as a parent of daughters, I naturally want humanity to get its act together.)

Is it fair to demand a strong heroine?

When I broached this topic with my 19-year-old daughter, she initially stuck up for the movie, arguing that it’s a comic book action movie, not a work of art or a public service. Does every movie with a woman in it have to be progressive? She’s right, partly—though frankly, one of the big flaws of this movie was how it tried to be deep and have some higher meaning, which goal was far beyond the capabilities of its screenwriters, and nothing the audience asked for anyway.

As the conversation with my daughter progressed (and her sister, who soon joined in), they cried foul as well. We all agree that things started to fall apart the moment the love interest, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) showed up. Look, I get that the movie needed to have eye candy for all viewers, and I don’t have a problem with Steve per se, but Diana just got all soft and mushy as soon as he arrived. She stopped being badass and was mainly clingy and needy, pining for him (I know, bad pun, I couldn’t resist), which was distracting and annoying.

Was this really necessary? Is it that hard to develop strong female characters? We’ve certainly seen a number of great ones. Right off the bat we’ve got Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) in Mad Max Fury Road; Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) in True Grit; Judy Hopps in Zootopia; Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) in Silver Linings Playbook, Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) in Fargo, and Ava (Alicia Vikander) in Ex Machina. These are not highbrow films designed fundamentally as social commentary; they’re just cool flicks with great female characters who more than hold their own. Furiosa, far from swooning over Max, isn’t particularly interested in him and has bigger fish to fry (and bigger asses to kick). Mattie Ross, at age 14, upstages all the adults around her, calling the shots and never flinching. Judy Hopps, though a tiny rabbit, refuses to accept the lame traffic cop job given to her after she’d finished at the top of her police academy class. Tiffany puts a roomful of retrograde men in their place with the greatest sports-based diatribe I’ve ever heard. Marge Gunderson is just generally badass, this big pregnant unflappable Midwest cop. (I won’t tell you about Ava in case you haven’t yet seen Ex Machina, in which case you should do that right away.)

So why shouldn’t Wonder Woman 1984 give us a character who’s a real leader? Why should we settle for mere eye candy, like what we see below?

Well, I will concede that as eye candy goes, she’s pretty awesome … so I would have settled for merely ho-hum. But what we get is actually insulting.

The crux of the matter

So what exactly do I take such objection to? I shall now explain (and yes, there are tons of spoilers here). The basic plot of the movie is that there’s this “dreamstone” that works like a genie in a bottle. You ask for a wish, and you get it, but there are consequences such as becoming really weak eventually, just like the movie. The main villain, Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), whose looks must appeal to somebody because he gets way too much screen time, is all clever so his wish is to become the dreamstone, so he can grant wishes to others, with the caveat that Lord will now take whatever he wants from the person. (It’s even dumber in the movie than I’m making it sound.) Lord takes to the airwaves over military satellites to grant virtually everyone in the world their wishes, which almost causes a nuclear war. Diana thwarts Lord by lassoing his ankle and declaring to the world (by proxy, over the airwaves) that everyone needs to voluntarily rescind his or her wish and get back to truth and love etc., which backs out the bad magic.

So, this willingness to freely give up your big wish is the entire moral center of the movie, and the simple communication of it makes a bigger difference than all the punching, kicking, lassoing, and flying around that Wonder Woman could ever do. And yet, she never would have survived long enough to deliver this message if it weren’t for Steve. You see, Diana had her own wish, which was to have him back (since he’d died in the first movie). So he is reincarnated, inhabiting the body of some random guy (and by the way, this was in no way consensual, but the movie doesn’t seem concerned with that).

So after Diana moons over Steve for at least half an hour, while her strength gradually ebbs, he realizes that to continue on, and save the world, she needs to renounce her wish and give him up. She refuses. She becomes, in fact, stubborn and irrational and petulant about it (just like a woman, we’re apparently meant to conclude), and Steve has to very sternly mansplain the whole thing to her until she eventually capitulates. Only when she obeys him does her strength return. And then she takes his message and saves the world with it. Yay Steve! Way to save the day since obviously Diana was just botching the job!

What the hell is going on here?! Steve isn’t even a superhero! How does he have so much sway, and since when do superheroes rely on average joes to save their bacon? Imagine if Superman became paralyzed with anxiety and indecision until his life coach came and gave him a pep talk, or if Captain America became listless and dissipated and stopped being heroic until some glib politician reminded him how special the USA is. Ridiculous.

Meanwhile (and as my daughter pointed out), how realistic is it that the absolutely gorgeous Diana would be voluntarily single for forty years because she’d been so in love with Steve? Wouldn’t she move on? How heroic is it to be lonely for ever and ever because you heart belongs to one man (whom you knew only for a matter of days), who’s dead and gone? I think it’d have been so much cooler if Steve had shown up suddenly in 1984 only for Diana to say, “Uh, sorry Steve … I’m actually in a relationship.”

But wait, there’s more!

All of this would be bad enough by itself. But there’s also a weak female villain in the movie, which just stinks everything up even more. She’s this meek, nerdily pretty character named Barbara Ann Minerva who is very sweet but awkward, and her wish is to have the same charm, strength, and beauty that Diana has. This being granted, she immediately becomes totally evil. Huh? How does that work? Is that the natural consequence of empowering women—that they become total bitches?

There’s one scene in particular where Barbara, who is gradually turning into The Cheetah (no, she doesn’t seduce a younger man, this is apparently some pre-existing DC Comics character), is walking down a dark alley and some dickhead man, who appears to be homeless or close to it, starts coming on to her. (He’d done this before and Diana saved the day with a single punch to his solar plexus.) Furious, Barbara beats the crap out of the guy. She doesn’t just stop him, she proceeds to give him a total beatdown, kicking the shit out of him for what seems like several minutes. I don’t know how we were supposed to react to this, but it was as awkward for me as the torture scenes in Zero Dark Thirty. Granted, I don’t know what it’s like to field unwanted advances, but my daughters and wife were weirded out, too.

Again, there’s no reason this movie, with its $200 million budget, couldn’t have done better. Think of the great female villains we’ve enjoyed: Annie Wilkes (Cathy Bates) in Misery; Greta (Isabelle Huppert) in, well, Greta; Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) in Sherlock Holmes; Aunty Entity (Tina Turner) in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome; and May Day (Grace Jones) in A View to a Kill. These are intriguing, multi-dimensional characters or at least a lot of fun, or both. In the case of A View to a Kill, Grace Jones was the only good thing about the movie. Is WW1984’s Cheetah good for anything besides running around, beating on people, and shrieking? Well, she does fall in love with the other villain, the douchebag Lord, but that’s hardly endearing. The audience has zero temptation to root for the Cheetah, and I say this as someone who found the character of Satan oddly beguiling in Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost.

To make matters worse, the Cheetah in this movie isn’t even fun to watch. She doesn’t have the grace of a cat (which many ballet dancers totally do); she takes you into uncanny valley territory; and she’s pretty much the opposite of eye candy:

Look, WW1984 people, why go for anything like verisimilitude? It’s a person who’s also a cat … could that ever be realistic? Why try, when the viewers of this movie obviously have a weakness for pleasing images and that’s mainly why they showed up? You could have made the Cheetah more like Catwoman:

Sure, this Catwoman doesn’t look much like a cat; I’ve never seen a cat wearing leather. And yet, there’s something catlike—or, if nothing else, something awesome—about the Catwoman above. And speaking of eye candy, let’s have another look at Wonder Woman:

Why is she shushing us? Beats me, but I’m really not complaining. The modern Wonder Woman looks so good … how did they screw this up?

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Is This Peloton Ad Sexist, & Should We Care?

Introduction

A commercial for the Peloton stationary bike went viral recently based on widespread accusations of sexism. In this post I evaluate the ad, explore the question of its alleged sexism, and (more importantly) assess a much bigger problem illustrated by this flap.

The ad

You can see the ad here (at least for now; Peloton has pulled it down and might go after re-postings of it). On Christmas morning, an affluent man has given his fit, pretty, 30-something wife a gift of a $2,300 exercise bike. She gasps, “A Peloton?” The rest of the ad is the woman vlogging about her rides. She’s visibly anxious at first, telling her smartphone camera, “‘I’m a little nervous, but excited.” Then, “Five days in a row. Are you surprised? I am.” At the end the camera pulls back and she’s just shown the finished video to her husband; it ends with her saying, “A year ago, I didn’t realize how much this would change me. Thank you.”

After running for a while, the ad suffered (as detailed here) a widespread backlash across the Internet. The more people forwarded it in disgust, the more of a story it became. Eventually it had amassed a reported 3.7 million views, with 2/3 getting a thumbs-down, before Peloton yanked it. Of course, Peloton defended itself, and naturally a lot of anti-PC people joined the fray. 

Seizing the moment, the movie actor Ryan Reynolds, who is launching his own gin brand, did an ad using the same actress, making fun of the Peloton spot. In the gin ad, this same wife is at a bar with two girlfriends. As the scene opens, the wife just stares blankly ahead of her, for a solid ten seconds, as if pithed. Then she toasts “to new beginnings” (she’s no longer wearing a wedding ring) and aggressively downs an entire gin martini in one go, before enthusiastically accepting another from her friend who says to herself (and us), “It’s gonna be a fun night.” Clearly the wife has changed her mind about this gift and her husband.

Further fanning the flames, the actress went on “The Today Show,” along with Ryan Reynolds, to discuss the two ads. Lots of other mainstream media have weighed in, including the “Financial Times” of London.

So … is the ad sexist?

My initial reaction to the ad was that it’s pretty stupid, anyway. First of all, a $2300 exercise bike, which comes with a $50/month subscription to online spin classes, doesn’t strike me as a very good gift. For this kind of money, you’d have to really want it for yourself—which is itself a big if. I know a ton of cyclists and very few of them are interested in indoor workouts; those who are want to use their own racing bike, on a proper resistance trainer or on rollers, rather than this clunky gym-ass thing with its unisex saddle and corny aero handlebars. To shell out that kind of coin, you’d have to be really committed—but the wife looked surprised to receive it, and a bit apprehensive. I can relate … if my wife bought me a $2300 rowing machine or a fancy yoga mat, I’d have even more trepidation than the Peloton wife (as would my wife upon seeing my Year-of-Dana-Doing-Yoga vlog, which would be more unsettling than “The Blair Witch Project”).

That said, the ad didn’t get my heckles up particularly. The wife might have asked for the Peloton and is only pretending to be surprised to receive it. And as my wife pointed out, she might have played up her trepidation for her vlog, to seem more humble.

Curious about the opinions of other reasonable people, I polled my bike team for input, asking who found it sexist. One pal replied simply, “nope,” and another found it “no more sexist than any other commercial,” citing car ads where the man always drives.

Another of my teammates had this observation: 

Well, I’m not sure if it’s sexist but it’s definitely lame. What I find annoying about it is her fear and trepidation. It’s not like he just gave her a downhill mountain bike or a track bike. She’s going to be riding in her comfy home. Also, having gone through childbirth she knows more about pain than her husband. The fact that the ad makes her seem worried about that really makes her seem diminished, weak and lacking any confidence. Although they don’t show her husband out shredding it up on a bike or doing super ‘manly’ things, you get the impression it’s his role to bring her out of her meek little shell. [If I did my own version of this ad, she’d say] “Hell yeah, I’m going to crush this thing” or “Uh, I actually wanted a gravel bike.”

The “Financial Times” writer had a similar reaction, finding the ad “unintentionally sexist” based on the woman’s statement, “a year ago, I didn’t realize how much this would change me.” The writer points out, “Not only did her husband know better, it seems, but he was right to push her into becoming more toned.”

Moreover, just like with the clearly sexist Pinarello ad I reviewed awhile back, I cannot help but mourn the lost opportunity here: the ad creators should have reversed the roles. This would lessen the risk of anybody being offended, because fat-shaming is less often aimed at men. (The ad creators rightly identified the fat-shaming risk and made sure this wife was thin even before getting the bike.) In my experience men are more likely to blithely let themselves go, so for a woman to give her husband the bike just makes more sense. Males, who have historically enjoyed the power position and who also seem to think a few extra pounds just makes them cuddly and/or Falstaffian, can be expected to have a sense of humor about being overweight. I think an ad could tastefully play with that. Upon receiving the Peloton the husband could say (a bit too sincerely), “You shouldn’t have,” and then his wife could poke him in the soft belly and say, “Actually, hon ... it’s time.” He could then mount the bike with typical male swagger, only to have his first online spin class kick his ass. From there, his gradual apotheosis into a truly fit person would make a much more satisfying “personal journey” than the original Peloton ad is able to provide.

So why did this ad agency go with the dangerous trope of a guy pressuring his wife to get fitter? It could be unconscious bias. Perhaps the idea of a generous guy, who knows what his wife needs, came naturally to the ad creator, based on habitual, prevailing sexism.

My wife suggests a simpler reason for having the woman receive the gift: maybe the ad creators focused on an attractive woman just to get more people to watch. I asked her, “If the ad starred Chris Hemsworth, wouldn’t you watch?” She replied, “I don’t think that would work … he’s too large, he would dwarf the machine.”

A final note on the sexism question: frankly, I’m more disturbed by the actress’s interview on “The Today Show” than by the ad itself. While an entire creative team failed to detect the tone-deafness of the ad, the actress—as if conditioned by a society that blames women for everything—takes full responsibility for the public reaction. She declares, “Honestly, I think it was just my face. Like, I think it was my fault! My eyebrows looked, like worried, I guess—I don’t know, people were like, ‘She looks scared, she looks worried,’ and I’m like, oh no, my eyebrows, they moved!” The female interviewer immediately responded, “That’s absurd. If your face conveyed the wrong emotion, that’s not your fault. The director should have spotted the problem and re-shot the scene.”

As if! Alas, what actually happened was that the interviewer said, “I guess a lot of people have Botox and stuff and their eyebrows stay straight.” (She really said this—look for yourself.) Cripes, where is the support for this put-upon actress who was just doing her job as best she could? Where is the sanity? Oh no, a commercial offended people—must have been the actress’s eyebrows! Let’s prescribe a toxic drug to fix that! Not that I’m asking for the “Today” spot to go viral and launch a massive outcry. I think we’ve all suffered enough.

Should we even care about this ad?

Okay, time to back up and consider: is it even worthwhile to worry about any of this, when more than 3 billion people worldwide live on less than $2.50 a day? Well, it can be. To ponder anything deeply, on a legitimate intellectual level, has intrinsic value, so as long as we’re looking at a larger question (e.g., what sexism is and how it manifests in human behavior), versus trotting out some knee-jerk reaction based on an entrenched worldview we already had. But I take issue with how the reaction was fueled: Americans have been trained to react strongly to specific media moments, to the point that a clumsily-produced ad gets thousands of people attacking each other in the comments section of all the “news” articles celebrating and sensationalizing the supposed scandal.

A few examples of these highly charged comments (below the “Inside Edition” article here): 

• “Getting your thin wife a weight-loss gift is bad husbanding. No intelligent man would do that. The commercial is cringey and weird. She looks like she’s going to cry in almost every scene and seems so desperate for his approval, like a child or abuse victim. It’s bizarre.”
• “lol fat shaming serves to put pressure to live a healthy life. America has become overrun with fattys and it has become normalized to the point noone cares anymore. Put down that donut lardass!”
• “If a woman wanted an exercise bike, she’d buy one for herself. Similarly, if she wanted to lose weight/get fit, she would do so. The idea that she needs to have these things bought for her/introduced into her life, continues the idea of women being economically dependent and/or passive, unable to make decisions for themselves. Similarly, the focus on a woman’s body, having a man re-design it for her, and for her to express gratitude at the end, is a long way from 21st century feminism.”
• “I hope all the haters don’t buy a Peloton and burn them in protest , PS Trump would hate that”
• “What’s with women freaking out about nothing all the time. Wtf!”

The vitriol is thick … but of course this is nothing new. So much Internet content is just a launch pad for people to vent about their personal philosophies and disparage those who disagree. I just checked out a cyclingnews.com article pretty much at random (I selected the first one I stumbled on involving doping) and counted up the journalist’s words versus those of the commenters’. The result? This totally humdrum article about a doping proceeding, “Freeman fails to get tribunal charges dropped,” ran just 423 words, but generated 1,540 words of commentary (so far). A couple of the more inflammatory comments: “Just blame the Aussie. F*CK it seems to fit most narratives around here,” and, “You would think he was friends with the Clinton’s,” and in response, “And why did you leave out Trump’s corruption and lies?” You don’t have to look very hard to find people flying way off the handle, straying ever further from the original content. So it is with this Peloton flap … people are more incensed by the gender roles portrayed in the ad than they (apparently) are by the actress throwing herself on her sword in an actual TV interview that, unlike the ad, is not a work of fiction.

Whether or not the ad was sexist, the fact that it went viral, and that this is such a common effect, starts to lead us toward what I think the larger problem is.

The bigger issue

One of my cycling pals replied to my inquiry email with this comment: “By talking about this you/we have fallen prey to their marketing scheme. They made a somewhat controversial commercial and we’re spending time discussing it. Free publicity.” I don’t quite agree, if we construe “they” to mean Peloton. I don’t believe that the Peloton folks deliberately sought an ad that would get them free publicity by causing controversy. If they had, they wouldn’t have pulled the ad down once the controversy was sparked. Meanwhile, the fact that people are discussing this ad won’t necessarily lead to more people shelling out $2,300 for an exercise bike. Buzz might sell one soft drink versus another, but nobody is going to spend big money on a complicated product they only gained awareness of through a viral reaction to a poorly made ad.

That said, I agree that we’ve fallen prey—but the perpetrator isn’t Peloton, it’s Google, Twitter, and Facebook (and to some degree CNN). Consider what I (reluctantly) put you through earlier:

It’s impossible to follow scandals like this without wading through a lot of ads, and telling Google (and/or your social media sharing platform of choice) a lot about you. They are the real beneficiaries of Internet content going viral, and not surprisingly they’re the ones training us to get outraged, to leave comments, and to forward things along. To extend the virus analogy, they’re the ones who have turned the Internet into a giant Petri dish.

A recent “New Yorker” article profiles Roger McNamee, a former tech investor who now denounces Facebook and Google for “sowing discord among Americans.” McNamee, the article explains, published a number of op-eds in mainstream magazines pointing out that “the social-media business model thrives on divisive rhetoric: the more extreme the content, the more users share it; the more the algorithms amplify it, the more ad revenue is generated.”

Obviously ad revenue for news publishers is nothing new, and I’ve quoted CNN and the “Today Show” in this post. So how does social media fit in? Well, platforms like Twitter and Google make sure everybody sees everything. The Peloton ad ran for three weeks with very little reaction—in the “Today Show” interview the actress says initially her only comments were from friends and family saying “I saw your commercial!” The complaints, when they came weeks later, were all at once, out of nowhere. She hid out for a while, thinking “it’s gonna blow over,” but acknowledges, “it didn’t really blow over as quickly as I thought it would.” Well, making things go viral, and sustaining controversy, are things Google is really good at. (I can’t pick on Facebook because I don’t use it, but their role in our last election speaks for itself.)

I base my accusation on what I witness firsthand on Google. For example, let’s look at how I stumbled onto this whole thing to begin with: Google served up a link to the story, without my asking, when I opened a new browser tab on my Android phone. I didn’t think to capture the original click-bait but here’s one of the follow-up articles Google dangled in front of me:

I wouldn’t have even clicked the link, but after ignoring Google’s unsolicited news feed for months, I was starting to get pissed off and was already contemplating a blog post whining about all the crap Google has been serving me up. Particularly annoying was a bunch of stuff about Chris Cornell, the deceased former front man for Soundgarden. To some degree, I’d asked for this, because I did do a Google search on Cornell. (Noting a strange similarity between his song “Like Suicide” and the poem/novel Pale Fire, I sought to determine if Cornell had read Nabokov.)

Ever since that lookup, Google has offered me a drip feed, through my phone browser, of some ongoing soap opera about Cornell’s death, mostly just gossip that has nothing to do with my interest in Soundgarden music. Look at this crap:

Note also that article about some protest of bubble tea … what did I do to be presented with that? I’ve also seen a bunch of headlines about some spat between Eminem and Nick Cannon, whoever he is. This supposedly neutral delivery platform isn’t just guessing about what content might interest me; it’s trying to serve up anything that might inflame me. I asked my older daughter what’s in her Google feed, and she said mainly FUD-type “articles” sowing college-related anxiety, like “Are you in the right major?”

To come full circle on the Peloton ad: if I’d just seen the commercial, without all the bolted-on outrage and counter-outrage, I probably wouldn’t have thought much of it. I’d have shrugged it off like most stuff, and I think most other viewers would too. But when the Internet dispute engine got a hold of it and spun it up, telling us to weigh in and get indignant, we obeyed. The Peloton company and its products are innocent, even if this ad was hapless. It’s the Internet platforms, and their methods of escalation, aggravation, and amplification, that are turning us into a bunch of indignant scolds.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Is It Really Mansplaining?

Introduction

I’ll confess, I’ve been accused of mansplaining. This term has been gaining in popularity since Rebecca Solnit published Men Explain Things to Me, but the act of mansplaining is as old as the hills. In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, mansplaining is when a man, on the automatic assumption that he knows more than the woman he’s talking to, takes it upon himself to patiently and helpfully explain something to her, unbidden. Typically, he takes it for granted that a) her knowledge on the subject is lacking compared to his, and b) she is actually looking for guidance. To the extent his assumptions are unfounded, his explication is annoying.

Am I a chronic mansplainer? Well, that depends on where you draw the boundaries. To some, such as my teenage daughters, if a man explains something to a female, he’s automatically mansplaining. This post is about defining the boundaries a bit more accurately.

But first…

Before I get into what I believe is and isn’t mansplaining, I’d like to defend—to a point—the mansplainer. As I see it, his act isn’t rooted in “toxic masculinity” or any ill will toward women; that is, mansplaining is not equivalent to retrograde ideas like “a woman’s place is in the home.” The mansplainer is sincerely trying to help, and wants, I suspect, to seem useful and knowledgeable. He’s trying to impress, sure, but not to degrade. Of course, his assumption that the woman knows less than he, and desires his counsel, is degrading, but inadvertently. So the mansplainer is certainly clueless, but not, I think, malevolent.

As an example, consider this “New Yorker” cartoon showing three knights giving advice to Joan of Arc upon discovering she’s a woman. They’re all smiling earnestly, naturally expecting their counsel to be warmly received (never mind that Joan of Arc is a far more badass warrior than any of them).

Other types of -splaining

I would argue that many false charges of mansplaining stem from a simple lack, so far, of more precise labels. Just as the term “mansplaining” was itself long overdue, I think other terms ought to be created. I’m going to take a shot at this; after all, albertnet has been described as “the most influential linguistic-themed blog on the Internet” by … well, nobody. But still.

Dadsplaining

I was driving with my younger daughter on hard-packed snow recently, and explained to her about the Winter Mode in my car, and about using Geartronic to slow the car down via compression, rather than relying solely on the brakes. “Nice mansplaining,” she said.

Now, it is true that I’m a man (well, a guy at least) and that I was talking to a female. But was it unreasonable for me to assume that she didn’t know all about Winter Mode and Geartronic? Not at all … she’s only fifteen. One litmus test for mansplaining would be to swap out the recipient of the explanation: if I might just as well be explaining things in the same words to a male listener, then it’s not mansplaining. (And if I were the kind of old-fashioned dad who only explained car stuff to his sons and not to his daughters, the lack of explanation would be more sexist than what my daughter described as mansplaining.)

But what about the other assumption common with mansplaining: that the explanation will be automatically welcomed? Well, that’s where the fact of my being a parent comes in. The reality is, almost no information or advice given by any parent is welcomed by a teenaged offspring. As such, explaining how to drive in snow is no more or less welcome than showing your kid how to floss. So my lecture on Winter Mode and slowing the car via its transmission isn’t mansplaining, it’s dadsplaining. I assume my audience is less informed not because she’s female but because all teenagers are fairly clueless, and I offer the advice not because I expect that it’s welcome, but because giving advice is just what parents do. (The good ones at least.)

Coachsplaining

My older daughter is a cyclist. I once described to her how to position her cranks and pedals, and where to put her weight, when taking curves on a bumpy trail, contrasting this to how you carve a turn on a road bike. She instantly replied, “Way to mansplain, Dad.” Gee, knee-jerk reaction much?  I immediately dadsplained to her that when a cycling coach (which I am) describes a point of technique to a budding racer, that’s not mansplaining. “Would you have given that same advice to a boy?” she challenged me. I replied (honestly), “I would, and in fact I have.”

But is a coach’s advice always welcome? This depends on the athlete, I suppose. In the case of a high school cycling team, the athletes are teenagers, and it’s becoming increasingly apparent to me that teenagers don’t want to be told anything by any adult, even a coach. In this sense, the advice I’m providing—though it isn’t based on an assumption of feminine ignorance—does meet the standard for being unsolicited, so it’s perhaps half as annoying as mansplaining. So going forward I’ll plead guilty to coachsplaining if I’m called out by one of my riders. But is all coachsplaining also mansplaining? Definitely not.

(In this case, with my daughter, I was simultaneously dadsplaining and coachsplaining. One might argue that any advice from a dad will be taken as dadsplaining, which is true, but I think these terms are additive, not exclusive. She might be more inclined to follow the advice I provide in my coaching capacity.)

Geeksplaining

Before I get into geeksplaining I suppose I should clarify the sense of geek that I have in mind. One definition of geek is a person who bites the heads off of live chickens as a circus act. Another sense is pretty much synonymous with nerd or dork. But I’m talking about the modern sense of geek as “a person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept” (as the American Heritage Dictionary defines it).

My poor wife has had to put up with a lot of geeksplaining, because I’m an incurable bike geek. When I blather away on, say, the tricky matter of whether a compact crank should be off-limits to an accomplished cyclist, she has no choice but to gently cut me off by saying something like, “This interview is over” or “Don’t ever talk to me about bike gearing again.” In this case my bike-oriented monologue isn’t coachsplaining, because it’s obvious the information I’m imparting is useless to my audience. The problem is, sometimes I just can’t help myself. As William Wordsworth wrote, all good cycling lore is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Oh, wait—he said that about poetry, not bike talk. But the phenomenon is the same: I get overwhelmed with the pure technical satisfaction of bike arcana and just can’t keep it to myself.

At least geeksplaining isn’t sexist. Certainly it derives from irresponsible assumptions about the (would-be) listener, but the geeksplainer isn’t patronizing … his error consists of giving his audience too much credit for being able (and willing) to follow the explanation. My wife geeksplains too, usually on the topic of botany, and sometimes I get tired of uh-huh’ing and mm-hmm’ing and have to say something like, “Your mention of a single leaf blade vein reminds me of the single-chainring one-by-eleven drivetrains that are starting to dominate the mountain biking scene,” as a gentle reminder that I’m getting bored.

Kidsplaining

Do kids go out of their way to explain things to adults, on the assumption that we’re clueless? Well, they sure could; after all, there’s no way for us to keep track of, say, their rapidly evolving teen vernacular. But remember, at the root of mansplaining is a desire to be helpful. That’s essentially the antithesis of what it means to be a teenager. We adults, and parents in particular, will never be offered free information.

That said, teens do enjoy showcasing their exasperation at our ignorance. They’ll say, “Wait, you really mean to tell me you’ve never heard of ‘shipping’? Are you kidding me?!” or “You’ve never heard the word ‘swole’? Please tell me you’re joking.” They won’t tell us what these words mean, but they do take some effort to establish that they are far more knowledgeable than us adults.

There is one notable exception to this no-explaining guideline. When the subject of college admissions comes up, and specifically the incontrovertible fact that it’s waaaay harder to get into a good college now, you can count on an ambitious high school senior to kidsplain you half to death. (But you deserve it, since in your day top universities were practically giving away degrees and you know it.)

Blogsplaining

Is blogsplaining a thing? Are there wannabe writers out there who take it upon themselves to assume that there’s this vast Internet audience that knows less than they do about just about any topic, so it’s worth spewing forth a lot of (let’s face it) lightly or barely researched information because these vast hoards of readers are thirsty for it? Well, in that regard I think this post pretty much speaks for itself. Go ahead and light me up in the Comments section below. I know I’ve got it coming.

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A note to my readers

A milestone came and went recently that I forgot to notice: the tenth anniversary of albertnet!  I probably should have celebrated by putting up crepe paper and balloons and giving my readers free food, or at least a big discount.  But this is only a blog and it’s free, so (as I often tell my kids) you’ll get nothing, and like it.

Okay, fine, here are some balloons.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Ode on a Double-Edged Razor

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

Sometimes when I’m feeling grateful for a consumer product, I am moved to write a poem. This is one of those times.

The Poem

Ode on a Double-Edged Razor

“Cheap bastard” is a name I wear with pride

And yet I cannot stand to buy cheap crap.                               2

I love that special product that provides

A point where worth and value overlap.

My razor’s made of stainless fucking steel

Instead of plastic formed in fancy shapes.                               6

My blades are double-edged—the real deal.

I might get nicked, I know—but never raped.

You know who needs expensive lubri-strips?

A bunch of soft and craven would-be men.                           10

These cartridge blades in trays like ammo-clips …

It’s shameful how Gillette is playing them.

    A Feather blade shaves close beyond compare

    Rewarding anyone who grows a pair.                                14

Footnotes & Commentary

Title: Ode on

Though I’ve titled several poems (like this one and this one) “Ode to...” I think it sounds more literary to title a poem “Ode on….” For details on this English-major-y nuance, click here.

Line 1 – cheap bastard

How is it possible to be cheap and yet insist on high-end products? For one thing, you buy as few things as possible. I select durable stuff and use it forever, so I forgo having the latest-and-greatest of anything. (My 2006 Volvo still feels new to me because I retired my old Volvo at 360,000 miles.) Even with my favorite hobby, cycling, I apply this use-what-you-got ethos. Though 11-speed gear clusters are now commonplace on bicycles, and a patent has been filed for 14-speed, I am still on 9-speed. The shift levers I use came out in 1996 but they still work great. Who needs all those gears? I’ll just pedal harder/faster.

Line 2 – cannot stand to buy

As detailed here I really don’t like buying anything. I pity the burglar who hits my house … in so many consumer product categories I am willfully bereft.

Line 4 – value

Remember when “value” simply meant “the monetary worth of something”? Now it’s commonly used as a euphemism for “budget” or “low-end.” Avoidance of embarrassment is often used to upsell people (a tactic that probably works best on poor folks).

Line 5 – stainless fucking steel

I try to keep this blog clean, but frankly no other word than “fucking” would make this phrase connote exactly what I want. Call it poetic license.

Because the blades are so much cheaper for old-school razors, you can splurge on a really nice one. I bought a Merkur razor, for $23, made in Germany. It’s beautifully built and has a nice heft. The curved steel part that holds the blade down is a nice big hunk of metal so it holds a lot of heat. I run hot water in the sink, lather up, then place the razor head-down in the water for a couple of minutes. (This gives the shaving cream time to soften my beard and skin.) When I shave, the warm steel head feels good against my face.

Look how nice the Merkur is:

Shouldn’t all the objects we engage with be well-made and attractive?

Line 6 – fancy shapes

I cannot understand why consumers—grown men and women!—continue to seem impressed by modern industry’s ability to shape plastic into very complicated and fanciful shapes. How is this impressive when cheap kids’ toys are similarly crafted? Look at this modern razor … it’s grotesque.

The women’s version (of course Gillette decided women need their own) is even worse … it looks like some Disney Cinderella-themed toy my daughters had at age four.

Look at this totally weird razor:

And, because nobody should ever have to shave with something blandly colored:

Line 7 – doubled-edged

By double-edged I mean a flat piece of steel with blades along two parallel edges, like this:

The alternative, of course, is a disposable head that has two, three, or more blades like this:

There’s actually no evidence that having more than one blade makes for a closer shave. Cecil Adams, his column The Straight Dope, denies there’s any benefit. That hasn’t stopped the Disposable Blade Industrial Complex from getting into a number-of-blades arms race. I guess it’s understandable; after all, the American consumer has trouble with complicated value propositions but anybody can understand the more-is-better idea. On top of that, Gillette has made a number of neat little videos showing how the front blade lifts a hair up, cuts most of it off, and leaves the rest sticking up so the next blade can cut it. Click here to see one of the first such simulations.

Oddly, this idea went uncontested for many years until 2005 when Gillette came out with the M3Power razor, an electric vibrating version of the Mach 3. It made the same claim about lifting hairs up to better cut them, via a new version of the video. A competitor cried foul and Gillette went on trial; a U.S. District Judge ruled that ads claiming this benefit were “unsubstantiated and inaccurate” and in fact “literally false.” The sheepish response from the Gillette spokesperson was that “the computer-generated image of the razor lifting hair away from the skin was never meant to be taken literally.”

Amusingly, mockery of the multiple-blade design brought about a life-imitates-art scenario. In 2004, The Onion presented a Commentary piece facetiously attributed to the CEO of Gillette titled, “Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades.” Here’s an excerpt: 

The Gillette Mach3 was the razor to own. Then the other guy came out with a three-blade razor. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Mach3Turbo. That's three blades and an aloe strip. For moisture. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I’m telling you what happened—the bastards went to four blades. Now we’re standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three blades and a strip.

A couple years later, Gillette did come out with a five-blade razor, which is now their biggest seller. I guess there’s no end in sight; a South Korean company now has a six-blade razor. Look at this ridiculous thing:

The brand of that razor is Dorco; needless to say, they should spell it Dorko.

The traditional double-edged blade, meanwhile, has an undeniable benefit over modern blades: you don’t need to rinse your razor as often while shaving. You do four or five strokes, then spin the razor handle 180 degrees and do four or five strokes with the second blade (i.e., the other side of the razor head). You spend only half as much time swishing your razor in the sink.

Line 8 – might get nicked

It’s been a long time since a company directly addressed the underlying reason people will spend more money on a fancier razor: fear of shaving cuts. Norelco ran a series of such ads in the early ‘70s, like this one:

Probably this tactic was abandoned because a) conventional wisdom is to accentuate the positive, and b) nobody wants to tell customers that they don’t have the skill to shave without cutting themselves. But that’s exactly what these modern blades are about: because the blades are held at a specific angle by the plastic head that slides along your skin, you don’t have to figure out this angle for yourself. It’s pretty close to idiot-proof (though I still did occasionally nick myself back when I used them).

Yes, the retro-style razor is a bit harder to use, especially at first. My first couple of shaves were a bit nerve-racking. It takes some practice to hold the razor at the right angle, and I did nick myself a few times during the first few weeks. But hey, it’s not like we never get a chance to practice! I reckon I’ve shaved upwards of 4,000 times in my life (not including my legs), and I’ll shave at least 7,000 more times if I live to 100. By now I’ve shaved around 400 times with my Merkur and I’ve gotten quite good at it.

Line 8 – but never raped

Are users of modern razors being raped? Well, in the sense of being robbed, I would say yes. If you buy replacement razor blades at the grocery store, you’ll pay over $5 apiece. Even in bulk online (e.g., Amazon), a Fusion blade runs about $24 for  an 8-count, i.e. $3 apiece. The cheapest online price I could find for a modern blade was the (now outdated) Mach3 15-count for $26, or $1.73 each. On the other hand, my favorite double-edged blades, the Japanese-made Feather, cost $23 for 100. So modern blades cost anywhere from 7 to 22 times as much as double-edged. That’s a total rip-off.

Line 9 – lubri-strip

The lubri-strip has got to be an even bigger bunch of bullshit than the multiple blades. I mean, think about it: you’re using shaving cream or gel that lubricates the crap out of your skin. How much lubrication are you going to get out of a little strip of plastic?

Oh, I’m sorry, did I say plastic? In this video a spokesperson wearing a lab coat and speaking with a foreign accent (so she must be an authority) explains, “[The lubri-strip] has a sponge-like structure that is infused with highly water-loving polymers called polyethylene glycols or PEGs.” And that’s not all: there are now two lubri-strips per head, one before and one after the blades! Amazing! Never mind that the strip still looks and feels like a wet piece of plastic, and nothing slippery is oozing out of it.

If you use a razor with a lubri-strip, and don’t get shaving rash, it’s tempting to assume the technology is legit. I’m reminded of a joke: this guy on a city bus, to the bemusement of other passengers, is reaching into an invisible imaginary box, lifting out fingerfuls of imaginary powder, and flinging them into the air. A passenger asks, “What are you doing?” The guy responds, “It’s to keep away lions!” The passenger protests, “But there are no lions on this bus!” To which the guy responds: “See? It’s working!”

Do I miss the lubri-strip of my old Gillette razors? Not a whit. I suspect shaving rash is a fake malady, like ring-around-the-collar. Or it’s an unfortunate idiosyncrasy of some people’s skin, for which there is no easy remedy.

Line 10 – soft and craven would-be men

Okay, I’ll confess this sounds kind of harsh and unenlightened. But if I’m going to appeal to people to switch to cheaper retro-style razors, I have to take the battle to Gillette’s turf. That is, I must directly combat all the marketing that’s aimed at men’s insecurities, or my arguments will be beside the point. The fact is, Gilette’s job is to coddle men with a foolproof, easy-to-use razor—Fisher Price Baby’s First Razor, they might as well call it—without seeming to. So they use all kinds of macho imagery in their ads, along with the slogan “The best a man can get.” A man, mind you. These razors aren’t for women. If a woman tried to use them—well, that would be a disaster, like if she tried to use his grill, or his power tools.

Check out this ad. In a minute flat you’ll see just about every manly role under the sun: running race, tux-clad wedding party, football game, Army training, baseball game, astronaut mission, father with baby, Wall Street trading, discus throw, and boxing. And check out this ad for the Mach3. It shows a fighter plane going so fast the damn wings come off, and then the canopy, and then the pilot’s helmet, eventually all we have left is the pilot—i.e., the man—and his razor. And a whole lot of testosterone.

The ad for the women’s Gillette Venus razor, here, has a slower, more muted soundtrack and a notable lack of explosions. I’m pretty sure the word “curves” would never appear in a Sensor or Mach3 ad. And there’s no tagline “The best a woman can get.” That notion somehow doesn’t work—it implies something unfair, like “The best she’s able to get” or “The best we’re willing to give her.”

Is there any way to market men’s razors without appealing to masculinity? Makers of traditional razors would have a hard time appealing to frugality (for fear, I suspect, of insulting their customers). Bic did do a campaign, way back, with celebrity John McEnroe—“ I don’t have to shave with a 20-cent bic … but I do!”—but I think that’s the exception that proves the rule.

What if Gillette or a competitor decided to use the ideal celebrity to endorse their razors? Who would that be? That’s an easy one—we’d look to the ultimate man’s man, a licensed-to-kill brute who’s also an epicure. I’m talking of course about James Bond, who has taken the sartorial lead in so many other areas (suits, watches, sunglasses, etc.). The problem is, it’s just not believable that he would shave with a cheesy plastic razor with a lubri-strip. If you don’t readily agree, just watch this clip.

Not only is Bond not worried about shaving nicks, he’s not worried about Moneypenny inadvertently cutting his throat … even though, earlier in the movie, she accidently shot him. Now there’s a real man.

Line 11 – like ammo clips

I can’t get over this firearm-themed cultural messaging. The razor comes in a little holder, and in the back is a place where a five-pack clip of blades—like a magazine—snaps in. Why the extra plastic? I’m sure you’re meant to feel like you’re loading a gun. It’s all very masculine, all very reassuring, to the point of thou doth protest too much.

Look, men, there’s no fighter plane, there’s no gun … it’s a razor designed to keep you from hurting yourself. It’s like those little plastic-dipped forks they give to babies.

Line 12 – how Gillette is playing them

The marketing strategy Gillette and its competitors have embraced is selling us a razor (or “razor system”) that will only take their proprietary and pricey blades. It’s lock-in, the same market force that has us (well, most of us) still typing on inefficient QWERTY keyboards. As Wikipedia notes, “With manufacturers frequently updating their shaving systems, consumers can become locked into buying their proprietary cartridges…. Subsequent to introducing the higher-priced Mach3 in 1998, Gillette’s blade sales realized a 50% increase, and profits increased in an otherwise mature market.” Show me a company’s huge increase in profits, and I’ll show you a lot of people getting ripped off.

Incidentally, the latest innovation in razor blade marketing is Harry’s, which doesn’t charge as much for blades, but sells them on a subscription basis so you can never forget to change out your blades (i.e., you end up buying more than you really need). Harry’s advertises so aggressively online, I now see their ads on almost every page I visit, thanks to all my razor-themed Google searches.

Line 13 – Feather blade

I wouldn’t say that I’m an expert, but I’ve tried three brands of double-edged blade and I like Japanese-made Feather blades the best. They were recommended by a friend who has an English accent and thus all kinds of automatic cred. (I remember the exact conversation, years ago during a bike ride to the Hotsy Totsy club.) This guy’s dad had been into mining or something and traveled the world, and for a while had actual lackeys who would inherit his worn-out blades and sharpen them for their own use. My friend cautioned against getting caught up in the high-end retro shaving culture, which would have us mixing our own luxury shea-butter-infused shaving lather in a special purpose-built porcelain bowl, applying it to our faces with a beaver-hair brush, and buying an expensive silk dressing gown to wear while shaving.

Notwithstanding their traditional double-edged blades, Feather isn’t a totally old fashioned company. According to this timeline, they introduced a new blade as recently as 1995. (Actual new blades will naturally appear less frequently than gimmicks.) It’s not clear what was innovative about this blade; perhaps just some cool way of making it sharper. The Feather company makes scalpel blades, “microtome blades for pathology,” a “micro scalpel for ophthalmic surgery,” and a myringotomy (ear surgery) blade. So even if they don’t produce flashy videos to teach gullible consumers about polyethylene glycol lubri-strips, I reckon they’re experts at sharpening a very thin piece of stainless steel.

Line 13 – shaves close beyond compare

Believe it or not, the cheap, old-school razor blade does shave closer. I did a blind test to determine this. I shaved half my face with a Gillette Sensor3, and the other half with a double-edged Feather blade. Then I went to each of the three family members in my household and had them do a face-stroke test. All three ruled, without hesitation, that the smoother skin was on the Feather-shaved side of my face. And if their testimony isn’t good enough, just look at all the hair that the Gillette blade left on my face!

Naw, I’m just screwing with you. But the blind test was real. The results were unequivocal.

Line 14 – grows a pair

I’m not saying that it takes balls to face the risk of shaving cuts. Rather, it takes balls (not necessarily actual testicles, but nerve, basically, which is non-gender-specific) to overturn the conventional wisdom that all this fancy shaving technology is necessary or even beneficial.

Speaking of balls, I have to confess it’s kind of painful to think of them in the context of shaving. This goes back to my vasectomy—which saw me getting my scrotum dry-shaved with a 20-cent Bic. But that’s a whole other story.

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