‘The man your man should be like’: Consumerism, patriarchy and the construction of twenty-first-century masculinities in 2010 and 2012 Old Spice campaigns

In times when masculinity has become a fluid, vague and sometimes endangered concept, representations of men in television advertising can provide important points of reference in the identity construction of young men. As many men in the twenty-first century seek to hold on to traditional masculinity through the products they consume, this article takes a critical look at the construction of masculinities in one of the most iconic advertising campaigns of the century: the Old Spice campaigns Smell Like a Man, Man and Smell is Power. By conducting textual analyses of the thirteen commercials that make up both campaigns, this study assesses the semiotic power of the commercials in the reinforcement of hegemonic masculinity and patriarchic ideology. The author argues that Smell is Power relies on men’s insecurities about their masculine self by using former NFL player Terry Crews as a spectacle of hyper-hegemonic masculinity, while Smell Like a Man, Man presents protagonist Isaiah Mustafa as a toned-down version of Crews by constructing him as a patriarchic, masculine object of female desire. As such, both Old Spice campaigns serve as an apt cultural guide on what it means to be a man in the United States of the twenty-first century.