About That "Man Enough" Ad

Identity politics for manly men is as juvenile as anything else.

When I first watched the “Man Enough” ad, I laughed. One of the men actually said, “I’m man enough to raw dog a flight.” I hope that was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but I fear that it wasn’t. If you haven’t seen the ad, you can watch it here. I found it less cringeworthy than most, perhaps because my standards are low. It’s a political ad. What do you expect? Cringeworthy ads are a proud American tradition. Some say they work better than boring ads. 

The ad is a laundry list of stereotypes. Rare steak. Neat bourbon. Gruff voices. National Review reported that the men were comedic actors hired by a former producer for Jimmy Kimmel. And yet, as far as anyone knows, the ad was not intended to be a joke. As Jeff Blehar mockingly pointed out, the man who claimed to “eat carburetors for breakfast,” apparently didn’t know that most cars no longer have carburetors. At least Lanre Idewu, the actor who plays a powerlifter, knows something about his topic. I don’t know whether he deadlifts 500 lbs, but he is a celebrity trainer for P90X. Blehar, who doesn’t pretend to know his way around the weight room, advises him to start at 100lbs. Since this happens to fall within my line of work, I’ll comment that many 70-year-old women can deadlift 100lbs, and that it isn’t out of the question that Idewu does deadlift 500lbs (or perhaps not – it’s hard to tell by looking at someone). 

What I found more noteworthy about his performance was his need to tell us he “braids the s—t” out of his daughter’s hair. Why the need to say it like that? It came off, as much of the ad did, like he was trying too hard. It was performative, which is the best word for the entire ad. 

What bothered me most about the ad was the posturing. Posturing about being a real man and posturing about not being insecure. The tone throughout the ad was challenging, as though the viewer had to prove something. We, the men of America, were being challenged to prove that we are just as manly as the men in the ad. And we were also being challenged to prove we aren’t insecure. The subtext being that our insecurity about femininity is what holds us back from voting for Kamala Harris. Why does Idewu feel the need to tell us that he braids his daughter’s hair? In order to let us know that he isn’t insecure. 

Why do these men tell us they aren’t afraid to let women do what they want with their bodies? In order to imply that any of us who oppose abortion do so out of fear. The people who put the ad together really believe that the reason many Americans oppose abortion is that they are insecure about women having control over their bodies, rather than that they are appalled by the killing of living human beings. The ad’s creators likewise seem to believe that American men are driven by insecurity and stereotypes, and that any men who aren't will be voting for Kamala Harris. 

Rather than solving the problem Democrats have with American men, this illustrates it. The constant implication that men are insecure drives male voters away. The arms race in some left-wing circles to prove that one isn’t insecure is worse than the competitive posturing in high-school boys’ locker rooms. I’ve been around young men who shave without shaving cream (or water) to prove how tough they were, and the pressure some left-wingers place on men to prove we aren’t insecure is just as juvenile and misguided. In both cases, the perpetrators are fumbling, trying to latch onto something they don’t quite understand. 

In the case of the creators of this ad, they are searching for an explanation as to why anyone won’t vote for Kamala Harris, and they have landed upon a version of the explanation leftists often land upon when they struggle to understand conservatism, which is that there must be something wrong with us. In this case, what is wrong with us is that we are struggling with feelings of inferiority or some similar psychological maladies which we cope with by being masculine and holding conservative principles. 

Like most American men, I’m secure enough in my masculinity that I don’t need to engage in performative rituals to prove to the world that I’m not insecure about it. I’ve voted for more women than men for president. I don’t need to vote for this Democratic candidate, and I won’t. 

I’ve never liked posturing. In some cultures, men are supposed to talk themselves up, but I learned at an early age it was better to hide a strong hand than to bluff with a weak hand. The tone of the ad reminded me of those men who are a little too keen on puffing their chests, or those women one occasionally meets who act as though they want to compete with men in some sort of masculinity competition, a phenomenon I always find very strange. 

With a few exceptions, posturing almost invariably smacks of insecurity. It isn’t the men watching the ad who feel insecure, but the men who act like the actors in the ad. The most masculine men don’t need to tell anyone, because it’s already obvious. 

Which reminds me of Donald Trump, who always smacked of posturing to me. Going back to 2015, Trump struck me as remarkably unmasculine, and I’m not alone in that assessment. He’s overweight and under-muscled. He lied about bone spurs to dodge the draft. He whines. He insults people, but often not to their faces. He gets angry, but has very little follow through. He wasn’t a successful businessman (he just played one on TV). Most people point to his vulgarity, but this only serves my point. His bark is always worse than his bite, and he makes up for in vulgarity what he lacks in self-confidence. Just like the man who needs to tell us that he “braids the s—t out of his daughter’s hair,” instead of just telling us that he braids his daughter’s hair, Trump tries to sound tough to mask the fact that he isn’t tough. If swearing made a boy a man, eleven-year-olds would be outstripping grown-ups every day.  

A society in which the two images of masculinity on offer are Donald Trump and the “Man Enough” ad is a society which has lost all but a faint outline of what it means to be a man. We have just enough of a sense of what it used to mean that we recognize telltale signs left behind in stereotypes, but without a clear picture of manliness, vague stereotypes are all we have. That so few in our culture today see them as hollow and shallow demonstrates how far we have fallen. John Wayne, Frederick Douglass, and Theodore Roosevelt are turning in their graves.

Ben Connelly is a writer, long-distance runner, former engineer, and author of “Grit: A Practical Guide to Developing Physical and Mental Toughness.” He publishes short stories and essays at Hardihood Books. @benconnelly6712