So, most people have at least peripherally noticed that over the last few years, really lazy marketing departments have been pushing versions of popular products in pink: iPods, radios, yes, even pink scrabble.
It's lazy marketing because it follows insane logic of "We don't have enough market penetration with female tweens, they like pink, let's make a pink version." I guess it worked well enough to keep it going for a while, and the appropriation of pink for breast cancer let them shift more pink crap with an air of piety...
But I'm guessing that they didn't shift enough, because out of nowhere the Pink Stinks campaign has appeared.
Pushing a really pathetic claim that all this pink crap oppresses little girls more than, say, the constant judgemental attitude of the press towards women's bodies (and I notice that Gok Wan, who seems to think empowerment means getting naked on national TV, is backing the campaign), Pink Stinks by some miracle seems to have got a really good press officer just in time for the christmas rush.
And all over the press, the blogosphere and twitterscape, lots and lots of manufactured stimulus response outrage from people who are NOT going to be dictated to, they WILL face down the PC brigade and BUY MORE PINK CRAP FOR THEIR LITTLE GIRLS THIS YEAR.
Because, you know, you fight DA MAN with consumerism. That'll show 'em.
And Pink Stinks will go away again until the next time the buyers overestimate demand for pink crap.
(Historical note: for Victorians, pink was for boys, blue was for girls. Honest. I've seen very silly evolutionary psychologists trying to explain why girls "naturally" prefer pink, because it couldn't possibly be a social construct. They are wets and weeds and I diskard them uterly.)
hahahahahha
ReplyDeleteAmen to that. I remember PINK LEGO when I was a little girl - in the hope it would attract girls to playing with the bloody stuff. Of course they wouldn't. It's for BOYS and geeks.
I worked for Lego for a short time as a playtheme creator and while I was there, they decided to ask women how they could get little girls to play with Lego. I told them my POV, as did about ten other women.
Now they have CLIKITS - so awesome. I totally play with it now.
My 6 year old dd LOVES pink and glitter and fairies and Disney princesses (she did NOT get this from me!) but she also LOVES Lego, particularly Lego City although she won't say no to Pirates, Star Wars, Power Miners or in fact anything that's Lego. Free Lego with a newspaper? I have to buy it. Advent Calendars? She's got got both! I had to buy an entire new bookcase to display her collection as she likes to keep everything made up and ready to play with!
ReplyDeleteIf there are two thinks she'll tell you off for criticising they are pinkness and Lego :-)
And hey, both my kids love clickits. So good for creating pink mutant glob things with waaaayyyy too many limbs.
ReplyDelete