You know you wanna ([info]shadowfallsoul) wrote in [info]boisroom,
@ 2005-11-11 12:20:00
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Has strongly gendered marketing ever made you feel uncomfortable with buying or using a product?

In most cases I don't really care, 'tho for some reason I'm more put off by strongly female targeted marketing than strongly male. On the other hand it could be that female targeted marketing tends to use the color pink heavily and I really dislike pink, with a passion (as in my gf tries to get me to buy pink button up shirts obviously designed for men for me to wear at work and while I can acknowledge it does look halfway decent on me, I won't buy one because I know I'll never wear it.) I often prefer if people simply don't gender me at all, as in, I tend to be as put off by grouping me in with the men as with the women, but I tend to present in a pretty masculine way. More to the point, a good friend of mine is a walking media blitz for a product called The DivaCup and introduced me to it many moons ago, I think the product seems great, and would work out great for me personally (being female bodied and not on hormones of any kind, and likely not starting anything of that sort for some time to come) in a number of ways. I can't however get past the initial squick feeling of seeing "woman" "ladies" etc and all that pink all over the marketing. I'll admit, the concept is a bit 'ick' inducing for me in general and I'm sure that adds to the uncomfortableness of the whole thing but I'm a bit frustrated with myself that this is proving to be more of a hassle than it ought to be. I can remember a few incidences where the clear appeal to the "manly-man machismo factor" of a product has put me off as well, but I can't think of anything this specific, or in the case of this, something that clearly had advantages as this does that I want to use.
I'm guessing eventually I'll simply suck it up and buy one but has anyone else, experienced something similar? How to deal with it, internally and externally? As an example, would it be useful to let the company itself know that they might actually loose customers, or that they might want to attempt to effectively market to the less feminine portion of the female bodied population?

x-posted to: [info]genderqueer & </span>[info]boisroom


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(Anonymous)
2005-11-11 10:13 pm UTC (link)
I am in agreement with you. Most definitely. I think that there are many of us who have had issues with marketing. What's that bumper sticker..."If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention."

Thanks for the tip on the Diva cup. It's sounds worth a try if you ask me. Especially for the gender issues. Except the problem that I have found is that if you are struggling with your gender, chances are you are probably struggling with your body as well. Then that leads to a level of uncomfortability in regards to actually having to "touch" your body. I don't know. Everyone is different. Personally, I love to touch my body! ;)

I think you should definitely take a moment to voice your concerns about the packaging/marketing aspect of things to them. They will never know unless you do. They may not do anything about it, but if you state your case clearly, they may consider it! It will, at the very least, make you feel better about being proactive about it.

Cheers to you!
Lisa

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[info]shadowfallsoul
2005-11-14 09:11 pm UTC (link)
Will do it. I guess the major thing is, I do like to speak with my cash when I can. I think the product seems great, and I'm going to write something articulate and well reasoned to the company. I probably will however give in and purchase one, which may not be the best way to go to get the message across but this being a small market, I can't simply go to a competitor.

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[info]andofaggins
2005-11-12 11:57 pm UTC (link)
i feel like marketing pink as a "female color" to begin with is very misogynist. also i think even very feminine women dont necessarily do or have to like pink. i also feel like if you are going to be offended or put off by anything it should be that in general, marketing companys are very screwed up and misogynist. marketing forces things down peoples throats every day, most people dont like that for many reasons. im sure its "a bit 'ick' inducing" for female bodied people who identify as female to see women and pink all over the place being marketed for "feminine" products. i guess what im trying to say is that this issue im sure has been brought up many times by many people who are offended by misogynist marketing but mostly dont get too far considering the people who market this products are rich, white, hetero males, who only see things threw a very narrow minded point of view.

im sorry if this comes off pissy or aggressive in anyway. i just really think its very unfair the way they market things towards women in general.

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[info]shadowfallsoul
2005-11-14 09:09 pm UTC (link)
Too true. I'd love it if we could get marketing in general to clean up it's act so to speak. Unfortunately unless people like you and me bring pressure to these companies, with our words and our cash, nothing much is going to move. In this case, the allmighty dollar is directly influencing what gets out there, if we say "we won't buy it" they're going to have to stand up and listen eventually when the marketing doesn't work.
We can't ignore it alltogether but seeing it for what it is and acting according to what we see is important.

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Devils Advocate
[info]mofabulous
2006-01-19 07:12 pm UTC (link)
How can you ask people to stop marketing stuff for women with the color pink. Pink is a feminine color. Its a soft delicate color. Which is the sterio type of women. No marketing is going to cover all women or all people even. But if you look on the larger scale the number of people that pink does not mesh well with is very small compaired to all the feminine women out there that love being a women and love wearing pink and being delicate.

Pink goes with women as blue goes with men

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[info]equality_rules
2006-07-13 04:26 pm UTC (link)
I think you should let them know and I totally agree when it comes to the DivaCup. I bought The Keeper (http://www.keeper.com/) simply because the website, is very simple and to the point. It is basically the same product, only made out of natural gum rubber (no risk of TSS) instead of silicone.

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