[mffnbs]

> It's a remarkable fact -- makes me think of how it's historically been much more acceptable for women to adopt men's styles of clothing, but much less accepted for men to adopt's women's styles of clothing.

This is still the case today. I feel like the two are entirely unrelated, actually. If anything, we’ve seen the opposite phenomenon happen in every market. Buffalo Wild Wings commercials that cater to masculinity, Dr Pepper marketing towards men who typically don’t drink diet soda, hair salons that play sports, scents that smell like trees, etc.

[elliekelly]

How interesting because from my perspective (a woman) I feel like I'm seeing significantly fewer products that are marketed to/cater to traditional notions of femininity and instead there seems to be a trend towards inclusivity.

Tom Ford, Bvlgari, Calvin Klein, and Chanel all have uni-sex fragrances now. Chanel's is called "Boy" and CK's is very inclusively named "all". And there's a _huge_ trend in high-end cosmetics that makeup has no gender. CoverGirl even has a "CoverBoy" spokesmodel now.

And of course, any company that dares to "pink it and shrink it" will feel the wrath of Ellen and r/pointlesslygendered.

[mlang23]

The feminist movement managed to make femininity almost a swear word. Fascinating and very sad. As a male, I was always turned off by unisex products. I wonder how much profit these big companies make with this new marketing strategy. Is it really profitable, or are they just changing their products to avoid public shitstorms, hoping that the shitstorm avoided would have been even worse?

[maldeh]

Your musings here are legitimate, so long as you recognize your feelings as a single datapoint and don't mistake them for a general trend, or extrapolate them to the wider population.

As a counterpoint, I don't know of any friends or close acquaintances who would consider feminism or femininity a dirty word. To me, it's a fairly straightforward proposition:

Q: Are you pro- women having equal rights to men w.r.t. social structures, family responsibilities, economic opportunities, etc.?

A: Yes?

Q: And are you willing to take a second look at your social and professional conduct to make sure it doesn't put your female peers in difficult, awkward or uncomfortable positions?

A: Sure, why wouldn't I.

Hooray! you might be a feminist, it's not that hard.

Also, personally don't see what's wrong with unisex products, and I think it may be possible companies might possibly occasionally find the odd not-shitty cause they can back because their employees collectively believe in the positive message and that also aligns well with their goals, and not solely because of a small group of cynical PR managers running focus groups.

[dataduck]

I think you've kind of proved your opponents' points here: support for equal rights and dignity for women is something supported by feminism's opponents as much as it is by feminists, so it's a poor differentiator between the two.

I think I can do better. I'm pretty sure non-feminists would disagree with both of the following. How many feminists would disagree with either?

Q: Do you believe that The Patriarchy controls society and oppresses us?

Q: Do you believe that unequal rights under the law (e.g. Affirmitive Action) are necessary to correct the injustices you perceive in society?

(1) is the question that I would expect most clearly correlates with being a feminist (by self-identification); from an information-theoretical point of view, this would be what defines feminism.

(2) is the counter to your argument directly: women have at least equal rights to men in most developed nations; feminists blame differences in outcomes that remain on The Patriarchy, whereas opponents of feminism typically explain them by actual differences between men and women, dispositionally and otherwise (For example the "gender wage gap": https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/UberPayGap.pdf). Actual feminists typically argue against equal rights for women (for example demanding governmental pressure to change hiring ratios: https://nwlc.org/resources/affirmative-action-and-what-it-me...).

=---=

TBH I don't really care about unisex/gendered products. I'm not going to waste my money on Gilette's patronising garbage (I mean Stealth? Mach 3? And oh my word the prices. It's a razor for Christ's sake). Nonetheless, if people want to pay more for a product to have it branded for their gender, that's their business and none of mine or anyone else's.

[jkern]

For your first claim, I wish people would stop talking about feminism in this way precisely because it is such a generally accepted stance. The better question is in what ways does one believe men and women aren't structurally equal?

[skocznymroczny]

That's a naive look at feminism. Unfortunately nowadays many other ideologies jump on the feminism bandwagon. It's rare to see someone who is feminist without being also anti-law enforcement, anti-white men, anti-capitalist.

[pavlov]

The post to which you replied seems to address your concerns:

“Your musings here are legitimate, so long as you recognize your feelings as a single datapoint and don't mistake them for a general trend, or extrapolate them to the wider population.”

[watwut]

> The feminist movement managed to make femininity almost a swear word.

Being "like a girl" being insult is not something that started with feminism.

[kgwgk]

When have been women insulted for “being like a girl”? “Tomboy” could be insulting, though.

[elliekelly]

The “like a girl” ad campaign by Always was one of the first feminist campaigns (that I remember at least) to go viral: https://youtu.be/XjJQBjWYDTs

[mcv]

For a man to throw "like a girl" is generally seen as an insult.

[kgwgk]

Yes, but being feminine seen as something “bad” for women (which I thing was mlang23’s point) is much, much more recent. (I understand that women were seen as “inferior” due to some of those “feminine” traits. But I think they were insulted if they were not feminine enough, more than for being too feminine.)

[pengstrom]

> The feminist movement managed to make femininity almost a swear word. Fascinating and very sad.

I'm not sure I follow. Care to explain?

> As a male, I was always turned off by unisex products. I wonder how much profit these big companies make with this new marketing strategy. Is it really profitable, or are they just changing their products to avoid public shitstorms, hoping that the shitstorm avoided would have been even worse?

Wouldn't unisex products be more economical since one product now has twice the demographic?

[toxik]

I would not buy unisex fragrance for example, or deodorant. So yeah, twice the market and zero selling power.

[kgwgk]

Even products for menstruation are unisex now!

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/pg-nixes-venus-symbol-fro...

[WA]

Ironically, pink used to be the boys' color back a couple hundred years, because royal red = king, pink = prince, blue = princess.

The pink = girl color switched only in more recent times. It's very stupid.

[lupin_sansei]

Those colour preferences might be innate though https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12512-women-may-be-ha...

[watwut]

I don't think it proves all that much, especially considering that the study does not even mention much higher color blindness levels among males. In the most common version of color blindness, pink tend to looks like yellow piss.

Funny:

> As expected from previous work, both sexes rated blues as best. But analysis of all the colour comparisons revealed that the women had a significantly higher preference for blues with “pinkish” undertones such as lilac

But actual color split is between woman getting pinkish pink and boys getting bluish blue. It is not "women get slightly more violet shade of blue like lilac". It is "boys are blue and girls are pink" - pink being completely different color then is supposed to be female preference according to the study.

> Hurlbert speculates there may also be evolutionary arguments for both sexes’ preference for blue. “Going back to our ‘savannah’ days, we would have a natural preference for a clear blue sky, because it signalled good weather.

Lets not pretend this is science.

[WA]

How do you even design a study that removes "culturally adapted color preference" from the equation? I call BS.

[mffnbs]

I hope that the trend is indeed heading in that direction but it does take years for high fashion to permeate through society.

[jdashg]

Many of those have the same root cause: Men are not supposed to be weak, and feminine is seen as weak. To encourage men to buy something, marketing teams are trying to manly it up. If you have a product men are sheepish about, declare loudly that "It's for men!". Or in Dr Pepper's case, "It's not for women"(tm).

[hillz]

> We’ve seen the opposite phenomenon happen in every market.

Not really? If buffalo wings are like a man's name, or men's pants, the same trend would be for women to adopt those things (which we do). Similarly, if you market only towards women, it is seen as somewhat shameful for a man (and sometimes, even for a woman) to purchase that good.

[mffnbs]

Is that not the exact phenomenon I'm talking about though? The markets exist because masculinity says it's otherwise embarrassing.

The same thing doesn't always exist in reverse. It's not embarrassing for women to drink black coffee or a beer, but it defies social masculinity for a man to drink sugary coffee or a mixed drink. It's fine for women to wear jeans, flannel, basically all mens clothes but it's taboo for men to wear any feminine piece of clothing.

You can probably come up with examples that betray this as a rule, which is why I'm not claiming it is one. It's a social influence that's pervasive to the degree that masculinity kills men who don't see a doctor or men that have their masculinity questioned and they retaliate with murder.

You hardly see women committing crimes because they were perceived as masculine.

[thrower123]

> Dr Pepper marketing towards men who typically don’t drink diet soda

I'm not sure that is how I would characterize the Dr. Pepper Lil' Sweet commercials, which appear to feature an extra campy mashup of Prince and peak glam-hair metal Axl Rose.

[madcaptenor]

> Dr Pepper marketing towards men who typically don’t drink diet soda

Don't forget Coke Zero, AKA "Diet Coke for men".