(Hat tip to dreamwaffles.)
Autostraddle and Ms. Blog have the news about an interesting new advertising sins and the latest mutation of femmephobia. I mean, kind of news. It’s from, erm, two months ago. Ozy is known for many things, but zir punctuality is evidently not one of them.
If you click the friendly Ms. Blog link up there, you’ll find picture after picture of desperately masculine femme things. This version, although lacking in pictures, contains Ozy’s commentary and slow, italicized breakdown:
- Nail polish named “Alphanail” that says it is made by warriors and will get you laid more. Alphanail? You have to be joking. I guess Mystery does wear nail polish, though, so maybe they’re going for the burgeoning PUA market…
- Candles that allegedly bring out the dog in you, advertise their added danger, have James-Bond-esque packaging, and smell like success and motor oil. A dangerous candle that smells like motor oil is, strictly speaking, a worse candle.
- Paint named “names he’ll agree to,” including sucker punch, beer foam, and razor burn. Okay, that is just condescending.
- Irons that are robust power tools and have more power and performance. IT IS A MOTHERFUCKING IRON. How much power do you need? Are your clothes going to be unwrinkled on a molecular level? Is Tony Stark actually the Ironing Man?
- Bacon-flavored tea (three flavors!) in a testicle-shaped tea bag. I would comment on the weird bacon thing again, but I am too busy attempting to figure out why someone would make a testicle tea bag. Seriously. YOU CAN BUY A TESTICLE TEA BAG. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY
- Muesli packaged like a construction zone. That is it. I am broken. You people have broken me. I am going to run off to Australia and start a peacock farm and NEVER THINK ABOUT GENDER AGAIN.
But before I book the flight to Australia, I would like to point out that this list provides us a unique insight into American culture and enables us to create a list of things that are Manly and Not Manly.
MANLY
- Debunked ideas of how wolves work
- War
- Actually, violence in general
- Or really dangerous things in general
- Sex
- Dogs
- James Bond
- Cars
- Success
- Beer
- Razors
- Power tools
- Power
- Bacon
- Testicles
- Construction
- FUCKING TERRIBLE PUNS
NOT MANLY
- Beauty items
- Candles
- Interior design
- Household chores
- Tea
- Breakfast food that is not bacon (maybe that’s why stereotypical men like bacon so much! If they didn’t eat it they’d be starving until lunch)
Lists aside, I think this is fascinating simply because of how transparent it is. Marketers have realized that occasionally marking some stuff to women and some stuff to men means they sell twice as much stuff (e.g. shampoo), but much of the time it leads to them selling less stuff because the men don’t wear nail polish. So now they are trying desperately to present nail polish as a Dude Thing That Is Totally Dudely And Will Not Make Your Penis Fall Off, We Promise, In Fact It Will Make It Grow Six Inches.
James Bond as “manly”? OK, Sean Connery years aside, think about it: He’s very particular about his cocktails, and clearly spends a fuck-tonne of time and money on his appearance. What is it, cis het men of the world? Is “fussiness” somehow not when it’s James Bond? Is “preening” somehow not when it’s James Bond? This has perplexed me for years –when any other man is that fussy, he’s suddenly “gay’ or “fem” or some less-so degree of “sissy”, but when it’s James Bond, it’s all good.
Super duper late to the game, but you are sarcastically saying a true thing, which could misinform people.
Yes, your iron does unwrinkle things on a molecular level. If it doesn’t, then you forgot to plug it in.
Wrinkles in plant based textiles (cotton, linen, rayon) are primarily formed by hyrdrogen bonds breaking and reforming. The heat and moisture of an iron breaks those bonds again, while the weight returns the fiber to its proper position.
Science, baby! *puts on sunglasses* Textile science!
I wonder when this candle oil thingy backfires when men start checking if the oil in their car is candle scented and not buying brands that arent.
@Darque, it will also mean that we may actually achieve some sort of parity in consumer choice. I’m so sick of walking into a department store, having one small corner of it for all the men’s clothing and 2-3+ floors of women’s stuff along with a heavily female-centric “home” department. We have to pay the same exact markup that women pay for a much smaller, blander selection… we have to walk past 5-10 female-only shops before we get to one that caters to men in any way. They even do things like make female-only versions of stores that normally have… Read more »
If marketers take everything that women are doing and find a way to make it manly, more power to them. All it will mean is that I suddenly will find that there is a lot more shit that I will be able to do without having my man card yanked away by other people. This is a win win for me.
“@AB: You also probably don’t get nearly as many straight women raping gay men to try and “turn” them straight.”
What you get is gay-shaming and coercion, and in the case of gay-shaming if the approach is in public, that includes the threat of physical violence from thumbhead by-standers. Rapey enough for you? Some women are very threatened by a man they can’t turn to jelly with their invincible awesome sexiness. They take it as a challenge to their femininity or something.
@L, you can cover up your bathroom fart smells with “Vanilla Spice” or “Old World Romance,” and I’ll cover up my bathroom fart smells with whatever makes a “statement” about me. Jet Fuel sounds about right to me.
@AB: You also probably don’t get nearly as many straight women raping gay men to try and “turn” them straight.
Who the hell would enjoy the smell of fuel without the fumes? That’s like hallucinating without the euphoria: pointless and unpleasant.
Dungone:
I knew a guy who used to work as a flight test engineer at Boeing (in the commercial sector, but anyway). And he commonly referred to the smell of jet fuel exhaust as “The smell of freedom”… 🙂
@John Gottman Markley, I love the smell of jet fuel. No joke. When I was in Iraq, the only thing I had to use in the space heater in my machine gun bunker was jet fuel, so that’s what I used. I got used to the smell. I would love a jet fuel scented candle for my home. That would feel quaint and homey for me.
@John Gottman Markley, to be perfectly fair, after looking into this it turns out that Lavender, due to its supposedly antiseptic properties, was often used to clean the floors in hospitals and such. So I’m not surprised if lavender ended up as the prototypical candle scent, since people use candles to make their room smell “clean” and fresh. I think that rather than it being a flower, it was the genderfication of candles that brought down lavender along with it, coupled with the light-purple color associated with lavender that is used for women’s personal products – such as kotex tampons,… Read more »
@Mark Goblowsky: as you pointed out, the first thought for hair on your legs or the lipstick thing is not going to be dyke, although it might come to mind. We have this little cool idea in our culture of girl on girl fun, so if anything it’s more about that freedom, so if you are a lesbian, well in some ways all the better for my little thought process. I don’t think that’s always the case. There seems to be a pretty significant distinction between ‘girl-on-girl’ (primarily heterosexual, sometimes bisexual, women putting on a performance for the benefit of… Read more »
@Mark- I don’t think society’s ideas about ‘girl on girl fun’ applies to real life as such. I’ve noticed that girls with short hair (which seems to be one of the most common assumptions people have about how you can tell if a girl is a lesbian) get shamed for it. There’s a girl who works at the bar at my uni who has a short hairstyle and she says she’s constantly having people speculate on what her gender is, to her face. Another friend of mine with short hair has had a similar problem, with people in public asking… Read more »
Those are good points Mori, I’m wondering though if you might be from Britain though, because I know that it’s different there re: female appearances and orientation than they are here, and I have no idea what the fanatasy if there is one on the G on G thing is over there, strong connection, how does it interplay with overall viewpoints etc. We here of course are overwhelmed with images of feminine perfection, and I assume you are too. same as images of masculine perfection too, but that’s not as strong perhaps because women may be less visual then men,… Read more »
BlackHumor, “@dungone, John Markley, ballgame: I can turn the question back around at you: who says lavender is feminine?” You can’t turn the question around on me without claiming a false equivalence. I never said that any of the scents typical of scented candles were inherently feminine; I merely acknowledged that they are widely regarded as such, whereas you actually do make the claim that stereotypically feminine smells are “normal” for a candle, that deviations from this are ridiculous or bad, and that such deviants would not exist in an “ideal” world. But I’ll answer anyway: Most of the same… Read more »
Ha, this makes me think of How to Brush like a Man.
To me, a “motor oil” scent is sufficiently different and new to actually warrant being seen as something special, a new way of thinking about a candle. But when you look at the Dr Pepper thing, that’s a different story. For starters it’s the same exact shit as every other carbonated beverage, which are all the same to me anyway, but this one is portrayed as ostensibly different from the same exact thing in another can of the same exact thing. It’s like a real life rendition of Green Eggs and Ham and Dr Pepper is Sam I Am. But… Read more »
I honestly don’t know why lavender is gendered female now, since it used to be used as an antiseptic, for example used to treat wounds in WW1, but I do know you can get lavender tampons and lavender panties as well as some women’s perfumes that use it as an ingredient, so in general it is sufficiently feminine for better or worse. I see things such as candles as narrowly constrained by weird gender roles because I do know there are some alternatives. For example, these candles are meant to evoke the memento mori that appear in a lot of… Read more »
I’m a habitual fence-sitter, but this really is one of the easiest problems to see both sides of that I can remember ever having seen on this blog. When someone presents an odored candle that’s titled “Feakin’ Shark!” then they are probably making a joke about femme-phobia. “Now you too can have candles without being a small girl, bromonger.” But femme-phobia related jokes are sometimes made about areas that are pointedly amasculine to immasculine. Some nerd subcultures (comics, RPG’s, video games) have used defenses like “What? Some women like to see women in skimpy clothing, unrealistic figures, domestic jobs, or… Read more »
BlackHumor, it appears to me you answered your own question, i.e. ‘lavender has been coded feminine because of its association with coded-feminine consumer products like scented candles.’ But, it’s really not relevant to my point. I’m completely in favor of men buying and enjoying lavender candles! I, personally, would prefer a lavender candle to a motor oil one. I, personally, think a candle that smells like motor oil is pretty silly, even kind of stupid! However, my response to ozy still stands. There’s nothing wrong with motor oil candles. They’re not immoral, and their existence does not jeopardize gender egalitarianism… Read more »
“I don’t think that women are 2nd class as much as what femininity means and does that’s 2nd class, and by default, women are feminine and therefore 2nd class. Subtle distinction, but that’s why I think when a man does “femme” stuff, no matter how slight, he’s gone into the realm of “feminine”, not woman, and then drops from 1st class to 2nd. I think he’d probably be better off if he went full trans in that regard, then he’d be straight, uh, I think, and therefore all’s good again. ” Well, here’s the rub. If someone “goes full-on trans”,… Read more »
“@dungone, John Markley, ballgame: I can turn the question back around at you: who says lavender is feminine? ”
Oddly enough lavender as an herb has a feminizing endocrine effect. It has “estrogenic and anti-androgenic” effects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender#Health_precautions
However the scent seems masculine rather than feminine to me.
@dungone, John Markley, ballgame: I can turn the question back around at you: who says lavender is feminine? I doubt strongly that, in a world where candles were not gendered feminine, they would be things that smell MASCULINE instead of smelling GOOD. Because the current scents aren’t really feminine; the concept of a scented candle is coded feminine, maybe, but the reason lavender was chosen as one of the scents is not that it was somehow feminine before it was associated with scented candles but because it’s the kind of vaguely-pleasant-but-unintrusive scent you might want wafting around your house. Motor… Read more »
and btw, because I’m interested in linguistics and lexicology, when did the term arise, from where, and why did men’s genitalia become “junk”? Seems pretty derogatory to me, and pray tell why, any woman would want “junk” anywhere around her. That’s odd to me. There are derogatory terms for the vagina too, but junk doesn’t seem to come to mind.
@daisy. good points about what you’re supposed to look like, and what it means if you’re not. as you pointed out, the first thought for hair on your legs or the lipstick thing is not going to be dyke, although it might come to mind. We have this little cool idea in our culture of girl on girl fun, so if anything it’s more about that freedom, so if you are a lesbian, well in some ways all the better for my little thought process. But men to use anything outside of what the culture says men use and the… Read more »