I assume non-gender bias at the start; I don't care what pronouns you use, and most of those "war of the sexes" ads are just plain funny.
Which is why I was totally surprised by an ad I saw today which suddenly made my "feminism" detector spike off the charts.
I can't find a pic of it online, so I'll have to describe it.
It's for some kind of smartphone.
A smug-looking geek-boy is standing there, with a gorgeous-looking girl with her arm wrapped around him.
The caption: "It's about how smart you are".
...
In case I need to state the obvious - clearly, being totally smart means that if you're a smart guy you get the hot-looking bird... but what makes him look smug is just as clearly *not* about how smart she is.
Disclaimer...
I like geek-boys, and for me it *is* more about how smart they are... but I'd hope that for the geek-boys it'd be about how smart *I* am too!
On further reflection, I think I'd be almost as scandalised if the ad showed a smug geek-girl with an Adonis draped over her.
What mostly annoys me is that it implies that the main benefit of being smart is to be able to entice the beautiful people to hang with you despite how plain-looking you are. In other words - even though it says it's about how smart you are... it's still about how pretty you are... :P
2 comments:
I'm also not a "militant feminist" but posts that start with a disclaimer that the author isn't a "militant feminist" irritate me. It seems to tap into the prevalent notion that such a thing exists.
Agreed. I use the phrase because so many people seem to think that "feminist" means "loud, obnoxious person with priorities out of whack who has nothing better to do with their time than to yell at people for saying 'chairman' instead of 'chairperson'"...
I want to distance myself from that stereotype.
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