Old Spice and the Art of Manliness

In 2008 webzine Art of Manliness partnered with Old Spice to run a contest intended to be an annual contest, that has ended up becoming a one-time contest. People nominated men in their lives as the manliest. 10 finalists were chosen, and they ranged from a young rather working his tail off for his newborn’s support to a 9-11 first responder to a racist homophobic bigot.

You can read about the finalists and see the photos submitted here: Art of Manliness. A scroll down the images, including fathers with their children, a police officer with his wife, a man and his wife who has a prosthetic leg, and a few smiling, friendly faces. One stands out in a jarring way. It’s one I posted yesterday.

The very image of Imperialism.

Old Spice is a company that has prided itself on being inclusive of gays and others that are…less than desirable to Matt.

Now I could rehash what others have said so well, or I could link you to some well-written entries. I am going to do the latter.

First, read why a supporter supports Matt. Reasons include “he is so classy I’ve never seen him out of a waist coat”, to his wife running Ladies Against Feminism, a website that claims anything feminist is just plain wrong and puts the burden of men keeping their sexual urges squarely on the shoulders of women (basically “the rape victims is to blame”), to the non-reason that feminists (“and effeminate men”) hate him. Hmm, I wonder why feminists and effeminate men would hate someone who believes women belong barefoot and in the kitchen pumping out baby after baby and that effeminate men are hell-bound. Anyway, it’s appalling.

This Truth Wins Out article is the best article I’ve seen about Matt. I don’t think I could write a better one. There are links pricing his racism and homophobia. Greatful Dread also has an article with the same text, and I don’t know which posted first and which copied, so both are here.

The Gay Recluse posted an article as well.

She Takes on the World posted about how sad it is that this jerk was chosen as a winner when his beliefs (which wouldn’t matter quite so much if he hadn’t actually tried running for political office) include women should not be college educated or have hobbies outside the home, both important parts of the Quiverfull teaching. Hypocritically, his wife attended schools and even college and even stayed in the dorms. Their daughters, on the other hand, will not attend, and have been, and will continue to be, homeschooled. This will be a topic of another post.

Vision Forum put out a call to all its followers to vote for Matt, and as I recall, the reasons were to show the world a “true Christian” man and to not less “godlessness” win. More than three years later, and I can’t find this article. Google keeps bringing up other blogs. But with this force behind him, people being mobilized for his religion, it was going to be impossible for anyone else to win (though I did my best to rally up votes for 2nd-place Howie Farmer, hoping his 9-11 work would be enough to take down Matt, but a man putting his life on the line was no match for Vision Forum’s support for Matt and guilt of their followers). But at least a brief post by Doug Phillips for Vision Forum came up titled “Thank God for Real Men” (because first responders and police don’t count as real men…).

There are many more out there, but these three have enough, plus my daughter is starting to stir from her nap and I’m a mother who actually wants to spend time with her child doing things other than teaching her to grow up being a man’s doormat (if she grows up to marry a woman or no one at all, her daddy and I will support her). So I need to wrap this up.

Matt Chancey being chosen as a finalist has been a blight on Old Spice. Even though the company technically only sponsored the contest, their name, being a nationally-known name while the web-zine’s is not, is the one that has suffered worse.

Frankly, if Matt Chancey is who is considered to be the manliest of men, then I’m glad my husband, an accepting, hard-working, respectful, non-discriminatory person as pissed off as I am about Arizona cutting funding to Planned Parenthood to make sure money doesn’t accidentally indirectly support abortion even though it means cutting off all the other services, is apparently not a man. Frankly, no real confident man would be threatened by a woman having equality and a daughter having at least a high school education.