Is Gender Targeting Always Necessary?
Literary editor Katy Guest published an interesting article in the Independent on Sunday declaring that the publication would no longer be reviewing children’s books aimed only at one sex.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Mr O’Mara himself [bookstore owner] told The Independent that theirBoys’ Book covers ‘things like how to make a bow and arrow and how to play certain sports and you’d get things about style and how to look cool in the girls’ book.” At the same time, he added: “We would never publish a book that demeaned one sex or the other.’
It is not like a publisher to leave a bandwagon unjumped upon, but Mr. O’Mara seems to have missed a trick. Hasn’t he heard of Suzanne Collins’ multi-million-selling Hunger Games trilogy, which has a female lead character and striking, non-pink cover designs, and is loved by boys and girls equally? For anyone else who has missed it, the heroine, Katniss Everdeen, is rather handy with a bow and arrow and doesn’t spend much time caring about looking cool.”
This doesn’t stop at kids’ books. Even though women make up the majority of fiction readers, books written by women are often covered in cake or ice cream-related imagery and set in pastels. Why are we only talking about kids’ books?
And why are we not talking about advertising? The kind of world wherein this happens:
Yes the people at Dr. Pepper are apparently sensationalist fratboys who can’t do fractions, but this still stung when it came out.
I often wonder when the decision comes into play to cut off half of the population in marketing. Sure some products are definitely going to skew female or skew male, but oftentimes that will have more to do with the way they’re marketed than anything inherent about the product.
Yes Dove and Old Spice are probably fine marketing different products to men and women. But is this ever necessary with soda? Why does my Coke Zero can always have some kind sports graphics on it? Are they trying to reinforce to the men drinking it that Coke Zero is manly even though it’s diet? Doesn’t that insult men and women just a little bit? I mean after all it’s delicious, flavored, carbonated water. It’s not actually for either gender.
Millennials are a generation that has seen huge strides forward in tearing down traditional gender roles. And people even younger than us are growing up with Facebook gender options like this:
The more inclusive products can be the more they’re going to appeal to millennials and the generation after millennials (who are going to be out spending money soon). After all, we’re generations that grew up surrounded by marketing. We’re smart enough to know when it’s unfairly cutting us off, pandering to gender insecurity and just plain-old offensive. Aiming at both genders is probably going to make your product more flexible, forward-thinking and stylish. Better than inspiring lots of “buzz” from angry people right?
-Becky Lang, Creative
Originally published at www.zeusjones.com.
