Assvertising, Part Wev in an Ongoing Series

[Content Note: Rape culture; gender essentialism; hetercentrism.]

I have seen this Brut advert half a dozen times lately, and I don't normally watch programming for which it's a natural fit, so it must be in heavy rotation:

A young, thin, traditionally attractive white woman and a young, thin, traditionally attractive white man stand at a bathroom vanity getting ready to go out. She's in a little black dress; he's in a shirt and tie. "You better hurry up," she tells him, as she walks out of the bathroom. "We don't wanna be late." He splashes some Brut cologne into his hand, then slaps it on his cheeks. We hear her scream from the other room. She walks back in and is now in an advanced stage of pregnancy. "What the heck did you just do?" she asks, cradling her belly. Grinding guitar music as he picks up the bottle of Brut and lifts an eyebrow with a devilish grin. A male voiceover says, "Let your man out. Brut. The essence of man."

In the version I've seen running on television, which doesn't appear to be available on YouTube, not only is the man's female partner shown to be pregnant, but their dachshund is shown to be pregnant, too. Yeah.

Now, obviously, this isn't an ad designed to appeal to feminist women, and it might hardly be worth my time, except for the fact that I want to point out how deeply contemptuous of men this advert is, too, despite the fact it's ostensibly meant to appeal to them.

Men, per Brut, are all straight. All cis. All aggressively hypersexual. Their masculinity is centered in their genitals, and proven by their capacity to reproduce. They are all hostile to consent.

MRAs routinely complain about the "feminization" of our culture and assert that it's ruinous for men, but the humanization of our culture, which seeks to expand definitions of manhood, is hardly more offensive or contemptible than this gross, reductive, rape culture upholding characterization of the "essence of man."

And it ain't feminist women who are the primary gatekeepers of that bullshit. It's other men. About the last place on earth you'll find active feminists is in the executive wing of any advertising firm. These disagreeable stereotypes of men brought to you by The Patriarchy^TM.