Let’s talk about marketing, genderization and gender.
What’s marketing? Why do we need it for? Marketing is a discipline which object is to analyze the behavior of markets and consumers. Marketing analyzes the commercial management of companies with the objective of capturing customers and retaining them, making them loyal… while satisfying their “needs”. Needs they already had, or wishes that are created by marketing strategies.
Genderization is a concept in marketing. It is very important for marketers to determine the gender of the potential clients. After they’ve done this, they focus all the publicity of the product to that gender… Luckily for our society (and unluckily for traditional marketers) these strategies are beginning to fail. Women no longer belong to the kitchen, and they are even starting to also reject the idea of multitaskers who “can do both: perfect housewives, mothers and professionals”. Nah. Women want their lives back, and they don’t want to be told what to do. If they’re CEOs they don’t necessarily have to be wives or mothers to be complete. OR if they are not CEOs. They just want to be free from social mandates. This is why if we are still focusing on showing how a product is perfect for girls and only girls, we aren’t going to succeed with many of them.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re still lots of traditional people, but certain strategies are starting to get old and will soon finally stop working massively.
Gender division is radical when it comes to toy stores: hallways are divided in pink for girls and blue for children. In general, children’s department is full of solid colors and implies energy, audacity, competition; while girls section is full of soft colors and implies the idea of beauty, vanity and submission. Therefore, we are not surprised when a boy rejects a toy with “female” characteristics claiming that it is “girls.”
Sexist toys reproduce the stereotype of a patriarchal society in which a woman cleans and cares for while men construct, invents, and creates.
The message for the girls is: “How to be pretty”, the message for the boys is: “How to be smart and brave”.
This happens a lot with articles online. As soon as you start reading an article you can realize if it is for men or women, they’re written in different ways. But… should this be like this? And, are really only women reading “articles for women”? We don’t think so. Men also want to know a lot of things that are supposed to be “for women”, but sometimes they’re ashamed to admit they are interested in those “topics for girls”. This is of course because society has made them feel they would be inferior if they were girls. “You run like a girl”, people would tell you to mean you run slow or clumsily. But girls run fast and girls are strong.
As a society we are starting to question the roles men and women play. But not only that but also… what does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a man? Are there people who don’t really identify with one of these genders? In fact, they’re. Why? The answer seems to be much simpler than we think… because we have acknowledged the fact that gender is something rigid. We are now starting to separate the idea of gender and biological sex. But we still consider the idea of gender as something natural. Gender is not natural, it’s social, and it has been created by human. Gender is a concept, an idea. And so are gender roles, which are dangerous and unfair. Let’s be the generation which will get rid of them.
thanks to Meet and fuck
