Still not able to properly think this through

[shermarama]

Is there such a thing as a consulting feminist? Because I feel like I need to talk to one, on how I got to where I am, and where indeed I actually am, on gender issues. I don't spend a lot of time reading around the topic, and I'm not likely to either, but things come up where I find my experiences of being female, and of being a female that does

Comments

[katstevens]

I think that counts as zen! Obviously there is middle ground between all the types I mentioned above and everyone will have had a different combination of experiences. But knowing your own mind at that age AND being able to stick to your guns in the face of peer pressure is pretty impressive, I think.

Thinking about the Yorkie thing - I can't remember a previous ad where the Being Marketed To Men aspect was plainly spelled out compared to any targeted campaigns from their competitors (e.g. Flake was clearly meant to be for ladies in the nip, but they didn't directly say the words FOR NAKED WOMEN ONLY on the advert. Unless that was what the opera singer was actually singing about?). I doubt any other chocolate bar marketers had fluffy inclusive motives either but in the relatively-sane 90s it seemed like branding suicide to openly alienate half your market for NO REASON. Things have got much worse since then - bloody McCoys and their 'man crisps' were annoying me just the other day. And Martine McCutcheon and her probiotic yoghurt. Apparently men aren't allowed to eat yoghurt anymore! Kind of makes you want to put on a grey boiler suit and dismantle capitalism in all its forms, really.

[katstevens]

(Where I say 'can't remember a previous ad' I mean ads I saw on telly from the mid-80s onwards - obv there was all your 'BEER: IT'S FOR MEN, YOU KNOW' stuff before that)

[shermarama]

Having looked up the Yorkie bar thing I was reminded of their previous advertising - do you remember that? - which featured a big trucker eating a Yorkie while driving his truck, because it was chunky chocolate for manly men. But it wasn't specified as such as being Not For Girls. In the warehouse, looking at the huge piles of boxes of chocolate snacks of all types it just seemed quite clear that they were all basically chocolate, especially when you could see the companies jostling for the same sub-sections of the market - like when Time Out was launched and it was blatantly Cadbury's attempt to use the distinctiveness of the Flake (which wasn't really a big volume seller) to power a rival to Rowntree's Kit Kat, which had a whole pallet space to itself at the end of the aisle because we sold so many. It didn't really work, but it made for a Flake you could eat on the bus without getting escaped chocolate flakes melted into your clothes, at least.

[ext_79993]

While I was still at Birkbeck they tried to have a Nestlé boycott and the one exemption they had to make was Kit-Kats, not only was it a significant dent in their sales, it was the thing people complained about not being there. It really is unique. The limited relevance of that is that when the "It's Not For Girls" campaign started, it was my second reason for not eating Yorkies, the first being Nestlé's ownership of the brand.

As for the leg-splaying thing, I hope I don't do this but I had honestly never considered the audience effect until I saw Persepolis, which makes an implicit point of it while comparing restrictions on male and female dress in Iran. If men do do it deliberately it's a very odd way to show off since to me it implies, "oof, sweaty, let's get a draught past 'em". I think it may largely just be not thinking deportment's important, or you know, not thinking generally.

More relevant advertising point, maybe: the "BEER, IT'S FOR MEN" thing, did that shift first with the initial Boddington's ads with Melanie Sykes? It certainly seemed to me at the time that the point of those was "MAYBE WOMEN DRINK BEER TOO", though of course the subtext was "SO MEN, GET DOWN THE PUB IN CASE MELANIE SYKES IS THERE", which for one person I knew did actually occur (and she was in fact drinking pints).