The Marlboro Matrix

Matrix – a mold in which something is shaped

I grew up in a male matrix I didn’t know existed. From this mold came complex, invisible forces that shaped what I thought about everything, including and most importantly, what I thought about myself as a man. I didn’t see these influences because I didn’t look for them. It wasn’t until much later in life when I realized I needed to take a closer look at the dominating pressures that forged the man I became.

But men aren't expected to be heavy thinkers. Heady, bookish, intellectual men can be outwardly condescending and inwardly timid. Oversimplified American manliness is physical, not mental; confrontational, not negotiating; daring, not thoughtful; spontaneous, not intentional. It's meat and beer but not wine and cheese. Purebred masculinity doesn't have time to digest philosophy or theology or anything else of a cerebral nature. In this sense it’s actually anti-intellectual. There's only time to act.

What is this mold or pathway or chokehold – this code of American manhood I call the Marlboro Matrix? It is a systematic series of prompts and symbols that define and validate masculine identity in America. These intoxicating validators are words, actions, perceptions, precedents, pressures, and images that convince a man the masculine icons he embraces frame the authentic aura of a man.

The grip the Marlboro Matrix has on our culture – these masculine symbols and prompts – is perfectly reflected in American advertising featuring men. Advertising is a function of the culture in which it exists. It is art imitating life. And in this imitation a man’s identity, orientation, and behavior are forged.

The Marlboro Man was first used by the Philip Morris tobacco company in 1954 to infuse new vitality into a cigarette brand that was flailing through the use of a campaign called “Mild as May.” In the 1950s filtered cigarettes, like Marlboro’s, were considered feminine. They may have been mild but there was nothing about them that was masculine enough to attract male consumers. Marketing research confirmed the fact that while men would be willing to convert to a filtered cigarette they were reluctant to do so for fear of being seen as effeminate.

Advertising for Marlboro’s was focused on the health benefits of the filter, but it wasn’t working to increase market share. The ad agency in charge decided to take a totally different approach. It would create a rugged, exceedingly masculine role model who loved Marlboro cigarettes. The year before the Marlboro Man was born the cigarette brand generated $5 billion in sales, and two years after the new campaign launched sales were $20 billion, a 400% increase. By 1972 Marlboro was the best-selling cigarette in the world.

In the beginning the Marlboro Man was represented by a variety of occupations, but eventually he became a cowboy and remained a cowboy until the campaign ended in 1999. That cowboy – isolated and alone on top of that horse in the middle of a vast, desolate, friendless frontier – became the embodiment of masculinity in America.

The mindset that cowboy produces is the Marlboro Matrix at work. It is the code of American manhood that molds boys into men and drives them unconsciously to accept all things in the manly box and avoid all things in the unmanly box through attitudes and actions that become characterized as their own iteration of the masculine archetype.

The problem is that manhood cannot be bifurcated into manly and unmanly boxes. Actual manhood is a union of both, and it’s only our culture that divides them into desirable and undesirable quadrants. Yet, the undesirability is your perception of what unacceptable manhood looks like. The question is how do these attributes become objectionable? Who has decided that manliness is narrowly defined by whatever is socially acceptable as manly?

My manhood is purposefully a convergence of both manly and unmanly qualities. I don’t like big insects or snakes or reptiles, deep water or high heights. I wear pink. I like New Age music but don’t like classical. I like watching the Super Bowl and the World Series but I’m terrible at both football and baseball. I’m an intermediate tennis and racquetball player but awkward with a basketball. I don’t smoke or drink alcohol but love Mountain Dew and eggnog. I love animals and hate to hunt and fish. I own an AR-15 and two handguns and have a permit to carry. I love meat and shun salad. I like car shows over rabbit shows. I like musical theater but hate ballet and opera.

So, what kind of man am I? In what box do I belong?

I am a man unencumbered by the constraints of the manhood mold my culture has placed around me. I am a little bit of this and a little bit of that. One foot in one box and the other in another. I will be my own man even if it means wearing a pink, button-down Oxford with my AR-15 slung over my shoulder.