Last weekend saw the arrival of Toys-4-Big-Boys here in Citywest. A 3 day event centred around motors, tanks, games and a lot of various phallocentric highlights which would appeal to your average reader of Nuts magazine. As I set the tone for what follows I can already feel the contempt of a thousand eyerolls...
"Another feminist rant... yawn"
But here's the rub... I kind of wanted to go. I watch, and enjoy, Top Gear, I love James May's Man Lab and have been know to plonk down in front of the telly with a cup of tea to watch a marathon of How Things Work. I love Burlesque, I fancy girls, and dream of one day of having my own workshop where I can make things / blow things up. I suspect that there are a great many girls like me, but according advertising and marketing campaigns, or mass media... I don't exist.
My issue isn't that there are things like 'Man Lab' or Toys 4 Big Boys, it's that there is an absence of such programs marketed toward, or organised with, women. Toys 4 Big Boys ran alongside an event for the girls called Girls in the City. This show, directed solely at women, was described on their web site thus...
My issue isn't that there are things like 'Man Lab' or Toys 4 Big Boys, it's that there is an absence of such programs marketed toward, or organised with, women. Toys 4 Big Boys ran alongside an event for the girls called Girls in the City. This show, directed solely at women, was described on their web site thus...
"Girls in the City is all about beauty, fashion, fun, life improvement and inspiration for women of all ages, shapes and sizes".
Brilliant. Because all women want is a big fluffy pink event centred around clothes and shoes and... just in case I didn't have to think about it enough... body issues. I wish people who came up with this stuff would just fuck off and die. The funny things is, I have no doubt in my mind that the 'girl's' event was planned, at least in part by some wimmins. But it has become all to clear to me that when it comes to gender bias, women can be just as stupid and lazy as the menfolk.
Take for example the Flora Women's Mini-Marathon which I took part in earlier this year. Everything was pink or purple... and not in a way that was supposed to represent bisexual awareness. At registration I was presented with a 'goody-bag' filled with shower gel, deodorant and samples of cleaning products. Having deposited my belongings in the cloak area, I trotted along to the start line where for 40 minutes we had to put up with some woman shouting
"Come ON Ladies! Let's show these men what we can DO!"
and other such motivational slogans, through a megaphone to the play list from hell. It was like being stuck in some kind of mass hen night karaoke from which there was no escape. I don't know about you but if I'm gearing myself up to run 10K, I want to hear some Motörhead or possibly RATM... not an out of tune rendition of Sisters are Doing it For Themselves.
This kind of sex socialisation has, obviously, been around for a very long time. Still. it's always a bit of a disappointment when, as a child, you find yourself staring down the aisles in your local toy store at giant colour-coded-according-to-gender pigeonholes. I'm not one to hate on girly girls or butch boys, far from it I just don't get why all the FUN stuff is in the boys aisle? Science kits, telescopes, action figures, race cars, electronics.... while the girl's aisle is predominantly concerned with domestic service and fucking babies (not actually fucking babies... different shop entirely). Seriously, even as a child I was baffled by the needs of other girls to have a baby doll that actually soils itself (Now with super realistic poo!). Just No.
I got presents of some Barbie dolls around Christmastime when I was wee. Within minutes they were stripped and shaved so they looked like they were about to go to war. I made my first Butch Barbie. But it wasn't enough. I needed my dolls to DO something. My favourite doll was a She-Ra action figure... you could twist her waist and she would throw a punch. My kind of girl. And she looked pissed off which seemed appropriate for someone who was supposed to have waged war on the forces of evil. Every chance I got, I was over in Adam Daly's back garden finding new ways for She-Ra to beat He-Man and Skeletor into submission. (I know He-Man was supposed to be on my side, but the state of that hair... and don't get me started on the harness).
Fast forward 20+ years and my favourite shows all appear to be directed at blokes. And even if I decide 'Hey - I know it's for blokes, but I'll watch it anyway', I'm confronted by images of girls who are nothing like me or anyone I know, who have nothing to say for themselves, unless pouting and looking surprised for no reason is some kind of distress signal I'm not aware of.
So consider this a plea... to marketing executives, events managers and television producery writery type people.
Get some girls on the telly box doing science and blowing things up... kthxbai.
6 comments:
By forcing stereo types on people, by pigeon holing them marketing companies can make people believe that *this* is what they want/need or should be. This makes marketing to the stereo type easier.
By forcing pink and sparkly on girls and action man on boys, they can in the future continue the trend and make more money. The fringe or edge groups, while not targeted directly still see the adverts (while some may take offense) they still have the option of going. The advertising does not prevent them from going, and by going they start to be indoctrinated to the stereo type over time.
Marketing stereotypes is a long term strategy, it is also a very successful one.
/J
You're not wrong, these methods have been tried and tested. They are effective in producing conversions and sales but the question remains if it is ethical to continue to nurture and promote an industry that furthers discrimination and actually contributes to the dumbing down of women and girls in wider society.
As I say I'm not going to 'hate' on people who are genuinely interested in pink and fluffy pursuits, or in explosions and tanks for that matter, I'd just like to see more variety, more options and if it’s not over reaching, some more ethical business practices from the sales and marketing community.
I completely agree with your "rant" :P Especially in regards to the different aisles in toy shops, I still (at 23) find myself more attracted to the "boys" toy section than the "girls" (yes, I still look) because there is so much more in it that's interactive. The computer-based toys are always better, I'm sure there are plenty of girls who would rather shoot the bad guys than digitally dress up Bratz dolls or something!
In terms of marketing, the idea that men would be the only ones interested in drooling over fancy cars, boats etc is ridiculous. Coming from a house of, mostly, girls and everyone of them loving a bit of tech and a fast car or two, I think that names such as "Toys for Big Boys" should be revised. But I'm sure it would work both ways...guys like sparkly things too, right??
THANK YOU!!! That's exactly what I'm saying! I think generally marketing campaigns make a lot of people feel just a bit shit. They're like the propaganda wing of the cool-and-normal gang, when in fact the characters they create are total freaks of nature. It's like when you watch something like Conan the Barbarian and everyone has perfect teeth and hair and the blokes have been waxed to within an inch of their life... that’s a rant for another day.
It's interesting to note that when an advertising campaign breaks out of the norm and talks directly to 'real' people it tends to be a huge success and receive global coverage.
Interesting post and discussion. I too, for a long time, have disliked this kind of stereotyping - not so much because I necessarily would be interested in 'toys for the boys' (sometimes yes, sometimes no - just as with the glizzy + pink stuff), but more because I hate someone trying to stereotype me and tell me what I 'SHOULD' like.
While I agree with Jonny above that such an approach often is a key ingredient to a successful marketing campaign, I also think it is an approach that is very much behind the times: First, because the world is much more diverse (in tastes, attitudes, lifestyles etc) than it was when this approach to marketing campaigns was devised and secondly, because the new data mining technologies combined with the intelligence derived from large amounts of data collected by, for example Google or Facebook, provide the opportunity for better customer segmentation and thus much more targetted marketing that uses not just one demographic factor (e.g. gender), but several.
I've been to the Toys for Big Boys show a couple of times but never to that Girl show. Both times I went to TFBB someone inevitably asked me who I'd come with, as if girls are incapable of liking cars/bikes/gadgets off their own bat.
I agree with everything you've said here.
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