Little boy blue meets little girl pink in stores
Why sales of gendered products thrive despite negative implications
Ladies, are those power tools putting hair on your chest? Guys, does your dainty breakfast toast carry the threat of testicular shrinkage? Fear not!
From a cordless drill “designed by a woman, for a woman” to “men’s bread” advertised with images of macho labourers, the lineup of gendered products increases by the day. And at a time when brands risk public flagellation for the slightest misstep, researchers say it’s of no small import that this trend not only persists but is growing.
“Research shows that having a lot of consumer choices is confusing for people; gender may be one way to narrow things down: I need to buy a wrist brace but there are 16 of them, so a (gender designation) makes it easier,” said sociologist Lisa Wade, who maintains an online inventory of what she calls pointlessly gendered products.
“It’s also extraordinarily profitable when companies can convince people that they need two copies of everything: one for girls and one for boys.”
On her website, Sociological Images, Wade calls attention to such merchandise as: “fairy hearts” sausages for girls; granite “man coasters”; Bibles that come in either pink for “princesses” or blue for “warriors”; “mansize” facial tissue; and even gendered twists on the Tooth Fairy (the male versions are a muscled group of weapon-wielding dental repo men).
Wade suggests the burgeoning presence of these things is, ironically, a reaction to men’s and women’s lives looking more alike than ever.
“If we cared less about making this symbolic distinction between males and females, this could all go away. But that distinction is the only thing the patriarchy has left to hang onto,” said Wade, an associate professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
Of course, marketers aren’t in the business of affirming stereotypes but rather making money. So when product packaging skews male or female, advertising scholar Barbara Phillips said it’s rarely pointless.
Take, for example, Lego’s “Friends” collection, which turned the unisex building blocks into a veritable episode of The Real Housewives (with arguably less plastic).
“Regular Lego is not gendered and can be used by anyone, but it’s primarily used by kids who like to build — and more of those kids are boys,” said Phillips, a professor of marketing at the University of Saskatchewan’s Edwards School of Business.
“For kids who don’t like to build, they introduced sets that were more for playing, not building, and those sets were targeted toward a market Lego didn’t own: girls.”
Harry Beckwith, a renowned branding expert, said there’s a snobbish, “look-at-what-the-idiots-aredoing-now” feel to the entire debate. He argues that the strategy is a valid one, and that there’s even a raison d’être for gendered shampoo — for dogs.
To wit, Tropiclean makes a “for him” canine lather described as conveying a “contemporary expression of masculinity.”
“Dog owners want their male dogs to smell like Daniel Craig and their female dogs to smell like Jennifer Lawrence,” said Beckwith. “If you disagree with the point, you have never owned a dog or you are part of a market segment that marketers don’t care about.”
Melanie Klein, professor of sociology at Santa Monica College, says the approach is highly effective. But she believes that’s only because gender-segmented products are such a part of our cultural wallpaper that few people question the practice.
“There was a little boy recently who was told not to bring his My Little Pony bag to school because it made him a target for bullying. ... Why aren’t we talking about the fact that he shouldn’t be bullied in the first place?” said Klein.
“When you peel back the layers, you expose the reality that (gendering products) isn’t normal or natural or genetic; it’s a social construct that’s taught and learned.”