Senate Misogyny, Entitlement, and Pop Culture

oh snaps

dutch owned

 

perhaps the first time the dutch have owned anyone since indonesian independence

makin history itt

 

How dare you.

Plus, ungrateful Indonesians...

In any event, anakinfansince1983, I doubt Watto's kids will other someone in this instance. The issue shouldn't be prescriptive in the way those gender lines are prescriptive now - you don't remedy an imbalance by weighing the scale down in the opposite direction. So long as his kids know there's individual choice and freedom you can't rule that they will not care if a friend is a tomboy, or a boy in their class likes princesses, or whatever.

 

Agreed, and I would add - parents, don't be schmucks and buy into this gender stereotype crap because ultimately it won't be marketed if you don't buy it or cause a fuss on social media. Imposing outdated and damaging gender sterotypes on your children is liking imposing religion on them - it is a form of child abuse.

 

Yeah and honestly, that marketing stuff? It's by people who are showing a disconnect between reality and what they're positioning. My stepdaughter always wanted to look at my Star Wars stuff, she loved Supergirl, and once asked if she could take my Sideshow Sean Connery Bond out of the box to play with her Barbies. I said no, because frankly I didn't need all the pregnant barbies on my hands...

Be a good parent, who encourages a healthy attitude in their kids, and the market will respond.

 

The market will always respond, and that's exactly why complaining and taking issue with gender stereotypes in toys, and somehow raising awareness about it, is a worthwhile activity. Watto seems to incorrectly think it's a waste of time hence the slight discontent in here.

 

Glad you got the reference. I was waiting...

 

As I said, it really boils down to the low hanging fruit.

It's cheaper for them to market to the stereotypes, because it reduces their costs of R&D, and simplifies their marketing (because they don't have to think as hard, they just keep recycling the same old ideas). Remember, they want to make as much money as they can for the lowest cost/effort.

As things stand right now, they know that the boys/superheroes and girls/princesses approach works, and they make big bucks off of it. As long as that holds true, they have little incentive to change.

 

Their job is to spend as little as they have to in order to sell as many toys as they can. If, by using the gender stereotypes, they can successfully and cheaply snag 75% of the market, but it would cost them a lot more in the way of research and marketing to target the other 25%, they are going to focus on the 75% first, and maybe consider the rest as an afterthought.

That's not evil or lazy. That's doing their job. Toy companies don't exist to promote gender equality. They exist to make a profit by making and selling toys. They aren't non-profit social advocacy organizations, but for-profit businesses. Their bottom line is and has to be their number one concern, or else they face the possibility of legal liability to their shareholders.

 

It doesn't matter what you believe. You aren't the one handling their marketing campaigns.

For the most part, companies will market based on what they know already works. No one wants to be the company that has a disastrous marketing campaign backfire on them (think "New Coke"). The fact is that marketing superhero-themed toys primarily to boys works. The same goes for marketing princess-themed toys primarily to girls. It's not evil or lazy for them to stick with what they know works just because you disagree with it. (If anything, by labeling it as "evil", you trivialize the many things out there that are evil.)

 

No one wants to ever admit it, but people are uncomfortable with change. Especially when it's change that goes against notions you've had all your life about proper behavior for boys and girls. To be fair, we're all guilty of this to an extent. No one likes to be wrong about something.

Of course, that's why it's important to check ourselves and be aware of our actions and attitudes and how they may affect others.

 

All I'm saying is that your opinion doesn't matter when it comes to what marketing campaigns they choose to run. They are paying for the marketing campaign, and if they believe that it is sufficient to earn them a profit, then that's the only opinion that matters on that marketing campaign.

You are free to choose to buy or not buy their products on the basis of their marketing campaign, but you don't get to decide how they should run it unless you are the one paying for it. They believe their current methods work because they keep making a profit doing it. Until that changes, it doesn't matter whether or not you approve of it or not.

 

And in the toy company's case, I constantly see excuses made for them. For instance, transformers toys have always had a poor history with female transformers. As such, there are always those who jump at th chance to state how "boys simply don't buy girl TF toys!" which, even if that's true, seems to ignore that girls would definitely be more than happy to buy more than just Arcee for the millionth time.

And speaking of transformers, this always amused me:

 

If you think that you could do better, then why don't you go start or invest in a toy company according to your philosophy of how it should be run? If your approach is profitable, you should do quite well.

The thing is, you aren't their target audience. Evidently, there's enough of their target audience that they are able to stay in business and turn a handsome profit. I have no problem with that, any more than I have a problem with any other business targeting specific portions of the market. If they choose to ignore other, potentially profitable portions of the market, then that is their loss, and leaves room for someone else to step into the market and target those portions.

 

Tracey, if you don't like it, leave.

 

There's been a ton of progress in the toy industry, but there's still a lot to be made. I mean, these toys used to be totally acceptable, but today, you'd never find them on any shelf. Look at these people and tell me that toy marketers have children in their best interests.

http://www.wired.com/2013/11/measuring-social-progress-through-toys/

 

You can have whatever opinion you want. You just shouldn't expect it to make a difference or matter to them in how they run their marketing.

If you want your opinion to matter, you need to either be in their target audience, run the company, or be one of the shareholders. Those are the people who they either are looking to get money from, who make the decisions, or who make money from their marketing campaigns. If you aren't one of those groups, then they simply don't care, nor should they. You are irrelevant to their business goals.