When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters. Sometimes they'll include recommendations for other related newsletters or services we offer. Our Privacy Notice explains more about how we use your data, and your rights. You can unsubscribe at any time. Sign up fornow for the biggest moments from morning TV The ad from the shaving brand urges consumers to challenge a “boys will be boys” rhetoric by reworking an 80s commercial showing men in different situations, supporting each other and stepping in to stop harassment. However, Piers Morgan didn’t take too kindly to the advert and made his views well known. He and Susanna Reid came to blows over the subject as it was clear the Good Morning Britain presenters had very different views. Piers said: “What Gillette is now saying, everything we told you to be, men, for the last 30 years is evil.<doc-sep>Talk-show host Piers Morgan lashed out against Gillette on Twitter over the razor company’s much maligned new “virtue-signalling PC” ad targeting “toxic masculinity.” Morgan said that he has been a faithful customer of the company for 30 years, but now plans to cut them off once and for all over the advertisement. I've used @Gillette razors my entire adult life but this absurd virtue-signalling PC guff may drive me away to a company less eager to fuel the current pathetic global assault on masculinity. Let boys be damn boys. Let men be damn men. https://t.co/Hm66OD5lA4 — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 14, 2019 The commercial in question takes a critical look at manhood in the age of the #MeToo movement, running the tagline “the best a man can be” against a montage of men challenging each other to overcome stereotypical bad behaviors associated with “masculinity.” But many aren’t fans of the moral lessons the company is trying to push on them. Seemingly trying to get a headstart on his New Year’s resolution to be “as annoying, argumentative & insufferably right” as he was in 2018, Morgan went on a Twitter spree, arguing with everyone who was willing to engage. He called the “pathetic” ad a consequence of “radical feminism” aimed at telling men the problem lies in their genitalia. Let ME just be clear: you’re a man-hating imbecile and this pathetic Gillette ad is a direct consequence of radical feminists like you driving a war against masculinity. https://t.co/bCMja5P0ND — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 15, 2019 Its main message seems to be "don't HAVE a dick". https://t.co/VvD7HPFfqi — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 14, 2019 The spree of tweets includes several sharp-edged back and forths, where Morgan as per usual didn’t mince his words. Let me fix that for you, including the spelling of Gillette: Gillette comes out against men who buy its products. Piers Morgan, a long time customer, comes out against Gillette. https://t.co/c6LpfrqIIC — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 15, 2019 Awww, you make me want to cry. 😢 https://t.co/u0Gls874cu — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 15, 2019 At the same time, others pointed out that his rather extreme, and somewhat hyperbolic, reaction is somewhat reminiscent of the "pc-crazed snowflake imbeciles" he despises. No, I'm angry at a campaign to end Mankind.So on balance, quite a big deal. https://t.co/tNRdRwVk61 — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 15, 2019 Come of it Piers. You’re the biggest snowflake in Britain. The smallest issue and you’re off on your bandwagon. Go and lose some stress in a papoose! — Stuart Wilson (@Stuart_Wilson19) January 15, 2019 Others tried to imagine how the Gillette boycott would change Piers Morgan. BREAKING: Piers Morgan responds to new Gillette ad. pic.twitter.com/ooYsVfWqi6 — Have I Got News For You (@haveigotnews) January 15, 2019 On top of the mountain of tweets, Morgan says he is working on a column for the Daily Mail to express his outrage to the fullest extent. Gillette's rather unexpected decision to declare itself a moral authority in an America divided by hot-button questions over gender relations led to a significant backlash on social media. Aside from a torrent of Twitter comments, the original YouTube video has generated over 22,000 ‘dislikes’ within a single day with only around 6,000 ‘likes’. Like this story? Share it with a friend!<doc-sep>Gillette has come under fire from Piers Morgan and men’s rights activists for a new advertisement that challenges toxic masculinity and sexual harassment. The advert plays on the brand’s 30-year tagline “The Best A Man Can Get”, asking instead: “Is this the best a man can get?” in a bid to tackle sexism. However, the campaign which features news clips of reporting on the #MeToo movement as well as sexism in boardrooms, and violence between boys, has prompted an angry backlash, in part, by TV contrarian Piers Morgan. The Good Morning Britain presenter tweeted: “I've used Gillette razors my entire adult life but this absurd virtue-signalling PC guff may drive me away to a company less eager to fuel the current pathetic global assault on masculinity. “Let boys be damn boys. Let men be damn men.” Morgan, continued to berate the progressive ad on live TV where he claimed it suggested all men were “evil”. “What Gillette is now saying, everything we told you to be, men, for the last 30 years is evil,” he fumed. “Now you’re all evil people, you’re all toxic with your masculinity.” The 53-year-old’s rant ended with him labelling the ad as “repulsive” and telling Gillette to “shut up”. “If we did this to women, if I did a commercial tomorrow that showed the worst of women, all hell would break loose…” he said. “I think it’s repulsive…the implication we all have something to apologise for? Shut up, Gillette.” The advert has also enraged many men’s rights activists who have interpreted it as anti men. Among the objections circling on social media are that the video is “emasculating”, “virtue-signalling” and that it implies most men are harassers. “What a f***ing emasculating, humiliating ad. Talk about being bullied...most offensive thing I've seen in a long time,” one person wrote. Another added: “Spare me your virtue signalling. I am NOT part of the problem. That ad IS offensive because the underlying message is that ALL men behave like this. WRONG! !” The comments which insist that not all men are harassers call to mind the viral hashtag #YesAllWomen, which seeks to highlight that sexual harassment is a problem that all women encounter, whether or not all men are responsible for it, and encourages people to realise that sexism is not an isolated problem. The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Show all 12 1 /12 The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Anne Hathaway The 32-year-old actress said she has already experiences job rejections because of her age. “Now I'm in my early thirties and I'm like, 'Why did that 24-year-old get that part? I was that 24-year-old once. I can't be upset about it, it's the way things are,” she told Glamour. EPA The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Helen Mirren On news that Maggie Gyllenhaal had been turned down for being ‘too old’, aged 37, to play a 55-year-old man’s partner: “It’s f***ing outrageous. It’s ridiculous. Honestly, it’s so annoying. And ’twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. It’s so annoying.” Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Maggie Gyllenhaal Gyllenhaal revealed she was told by a Hollywood producer that she was too old, aged 37, to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man. “It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh,” she said at the time. Getty Images The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Meryl Streep Meryl Streep has helped fund an all-female screenwriters group called The Writer’s Lab to encourage more women to pen Hollywood scripts. She previously told Vogue in 2011: “Once women pass childbearing age they could only be seen as grotesque on some level.” Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Emma Thompson The actress said she thought Hollywood is “still completely s***” when it comes to treating women equally to men. ““When I was younger, I really did think we were on our way to a better world. And when I look at it now, it is in a worse state than I have known it, particularly for women, and I find that very disturbing and sad.” EPA The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Elizabeth Banks Banks said she was driven from acting to directing due to the lack of roles for older women in Hollywood. “"[Industry sexism] drove me to direct for sure. I definitely was feeling that I was unfulfilled and a little bit bored by the things that were coming across my desk. I mean look at Gwyneth Paltrow who has her Oscar [for Shakespeare in Love] and played fifth banana to Iron Man,” she told Deadline. PA The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Viola Davis “I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualised role in TV or film. I'm a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualised woman. I was the prototype of the ‘mommified’ role,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Liv Tyler The Lord of the Rings actress said she only get cast in roles where she is treated as a “second class citizen” at the age of 38. “When you’re in your teens or twenties, there is an abundance of ingenue parts which are exciting to play. But at [my age], you’re usually the wife or the girlfriend - a sort of second-class citizen. There are more interesting roles for women when they get a bit older,” she told More magazine. Getty Images The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Cate Blanchett The actress famously called out sexism on the red carpet at the 2014 Screen Actors Guild Awards. When a camera operator scanned her up and down, she said: “Do you do this to the guys?” In her Oscar acceptance speech for Blue Jasmine, she reminded the film industry that movies with leading women can still be successful.<doc-sep>What would the advertising industry do without Piers Morgan? Whenever they need a grumpy middle-aged man to be triggered, there he is, reliable as clockwork. He did it with Greggs’ vegan sausage roll, helping catapult their January marketing wheeze onto the front pages by complaining that it was a monstrosity. And he’s done it again with the new Gillette ad targeting toxic masculinity, which twists its familiar “the best a man can get” tagline to suggest that men can do a lot better than Harvey Weinstein and fighting in the street. It ends on a heroic note, with images of men in general and fathers in particular showing their sons a better way. But that didn’t stop Morgan dismissing it as “absurd virtue-signalling PC guff” that might drive him to get his razors elsewhere. “Let boys be damn boys. Let men be damn men,” he harrumphed on Twitter. The ad clearly has offended some male customers who take deep exception to being lumped in with gropers and thugs. It’s certainly a far cry from the approach of women’s brands, which generally seek to woo their customers with feelgood, body-positive campaigns rather than awkward truths. But if the aim was to generate oodles of free publicity by whipping up controversy, then like the vegan sausage roll it worked. Anything to get the brand name out there, in an era when customers fast-forward through the adverts while watching TV on catchup and use ad-blockers online. And crucially by pitting older men like Morgan against more woke millennials young enough to be their sons, it may have helped reposition an established brand that was in danger of starting to look old-fashioned as something more cutting edge. (It won’t have done itself any harm at all with mothers of teenage sons buying razor blades on their behalf, either). I've used @Gillette razors my entire adult life but this absurd virtue-signalling PC guff may drive me away to a company less eager to fuel the current pathetic global assault on masculinity. Let boys be damn boys. Let men be damn men. https://t.co/Hm66OD5lA4 — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 14, 2019 Gillette is solemnly insisting that it’s not just a stunt; that in addition to the ad it will be putting money into projects to “inspire and educate” men of all ages, and routinely challenge male stereotypes in the images and words it chooses. Like all marketing gambits, that should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt. And it should go without saying that one slightly mawkish advert for razor blades is not going to make a difference to London’s knife crime problem or force a perpetrator of domestic violence to change his ways. But the culture in which boys are steeped still matters, and it shouldn’t be left to women to make that point. This has to be an argument in which men themselves get involved, and the point where many men do start thinking about it is when they become fathers. We’re witnessing something deeply troubling about the expectations with which too many boys are being raised, something evident not only in the #MeToo revelations or in cases like the recent rape trial involving Irish rugby players but in men’s infinitely greater predisposition to committing violent crime. And that should worry parents of boys as much as it does parents of girls. Feminism has endlessly opened up horizons for girls, giving them permission to be anything they want to be. They are bombarded with messages about how it’s fine to be both smart and pretty, encouraged to visualise themselves in male-dominated careers and to push the boundaries of behaviour considered “acceptable” for women. That paves the way for girls who never fitted the pink princess stereotype to be far more comfortable in their skins. But expectations of boys have remained more rigid, to the detriment both of those who don’t fit the macho stereotype and of those who will grow up to be the victims of insecure male rage. “Let boys be boys” is an excellent principle. But only if we recognise the full range of things boys are capable of being, when we let them.<doc-sep>
Piers Morgan has gone hard on a new ad by razor brand Gillette, calling the whole shebang ‘repulsive’. What’s got the Good Morning Britain host so riled up about razors? Gillette released its latest advert that took on their 80s version, which, according to Piers, ‘stood for positivity…a man taking care of his kids, of his wife and girlfriend, boyfriend…he held his son, without a papoose. ‘He likes to win things, to strive to be successful to work hard…to be stoic to be tough.’ Its strapline read ‘the best a man can get’ – however, now the grooming giant has released a new ad that has got the GMB host hot under the shaven collar, as he claimed that the new ad suggested all men have been set up to be ‘evil’. Piers spent a good 15 minutes raging about razors (Picture: ITV) ‘What Gillette is now saying, everything we told you to be, men, for the last 30 years is evil,’ he fumed. ‘Now you’re all evil people, you’re all toxic with your masculinity.’ GMB showed the latest ad, which shows off a bunch of guys sticking up for one another, to ‘act the right way’, with others calling out bullying, mixed with a range of social media viral videos. This was interspersed with a bunch of ‘mansplaining’, sexual harassment and ‘boys will be boys’ scenes. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Charlotte Hawkins said following the ad: ‘That’s quite a sentiment.’ But Piers wholeheartedly disagreed as he felt it suggested: ‘Basically most men are pretty awful people. We’re overly masculine. Horrible little bullies, sexual harassers and we have to be saved from ourselves, we’re all dreadful people. ‘If we did this to women. If I did a commercial tomorrow that showed the worst of women, all hell would break loose…’ He added: ‘I think it’s repulsive…the implication we all have something to apologise for? Shut up, Gillette. ‘You spent the last 30 years telling us to be masculine. ‘There is nothing wrong with being masculine, now you want us to feel sorry and apologetic. Sorry, no, I’m not going to.’ Richard Arnold also said it didn’t sit well with him either, as social media began waking up and clocking into the debate with their own thoughts. Piers was far from done, though, as he continued: ‘Men are fed up with being told how awful we are. We’re not, as a breed, men are not all evil. Not all the way Gillette would like us to think we are. Please, forgive me, save me. No, shut up.’ However, the women of the panel felt a different way, as Charlotte said it was powerful: ‘We should all step up and do more, we should intervene if we see someone upset.’ ‘Why would you be against an ad that is anti-violence, anti-sexual assault…’ Susanna Reid asked. Punters also stuck up for the ad, as they challenged Piers’ view. There's nothing wrong with presenting an image of men who are aspirational, attract women, provide for their families & kick a football around with their kids. Masculinity. #Gillette has destroyed its image by portraying men as 'bad news' & encouraging them to be wimps #GMB @GMB — Marcus Stead (@MarcusStead) January 15, 2019 Omg what a caveman. All the advert is suggesting is that 30 years ago we used think a certain way and we should change with the times. We need to be our best selves #GMB — Rebecca Allen-Turner (@rebecca_catton) January 15, 2019 Why is stopping people fighting or telling you’re daughter she is strong not masculine? #GMB — simon motin (@motin_simon) January 15, 2019 The new #Gillette ad is to show that there is more than 1 type of man, contrary to their previous campaigns. And the brand acknowledges those men, not just the ‘masc’ men previously used. #GMB — J.A.M.I.E ™️ (@JLW1006) January 15, 2019 He did have those who agreed with him, though, as they added their own thoughts – plus, the current state of play on YouTube says the clip has 171k dislikes and 17k likes. ‘Gillette is getting burned here, which is a result of this ongoing war against masculinity, driven by radical feminists who was to expunge men and masculinity from the world,’ Piers said. ‘When a company like Gillette does this it’s working, it’s getting really pervasive.