Congrats to 14 year old Adora Svitak, the winner of Women’s Media Center’s Girls State of the Union Contest! 

Marketing by Masculinizing the Feminine:

The man-friendly features on this “robust power tool for ironing,” described on the Philips website as the “Anodilium soleplate man iron,” include “more power, more steam, more performance” to give you “an endless excellent gliding experience.”

lol FOREVER at ~irons for men~ especially ones that are masquerading as power tools. IT’S AN IRON! Using it will not suddenly turn you into a dreaded lady, I promise. 

Click through for more unnecessarily ”masculinized” products, including tea, cereal, candles, and paint. 

On November 25th, our amazing executive director Dana Edell was on 20/20 talking about what she called “eroticizing childhood.” We’re not totally in love with this clip (why so much blame on the parents? why no solutions other than sports? why didn’t they say Dana worked at SPARK?!) but it’s a great overview of some of the problems we’re facing and it’s definitely going to help us spread the conversation.

Watch it, read our livechat highlights, and click here for 11 things you can do to help in the battle against the sexualization of girls!

The Next Great American Consumer

Jenny Gill was in New York’s Cornell Weill hospital earlier this year for the birth of her son, Jack, when a photographer stopped by to take snapshots of the mother and newborn. The practice is common in hospitals, but what the photographer did next surprised Gill.

“In the middle of taking the pictures, she pulls out this cutely wrapped onesie and says, ‘Oh, here’s a free Disney onesie. We’ll just need your email address,’” Gill recalls. “It weirded me out. I just gave birth, please lay off with the Disney already!”

Disney is unlikely to lay off anytime soon, and neither are the countless other brands in need of dollars. They’re part of a trend—fueled in part by digital devices—toward aggressively targeting a demographic that didn’t exist, in marketers’ eyes, until recently: infants to 3 year olds. By getting their logos and iconic characters in front of babies—even those with still-blurry eyesight—they hope to establish brand-name preference before she or he has uttered a word.

I can appreciate that someone is trying to market beer to women—really, I can. But this is totally missing the mark. Instead of degendering beer marketing, this is making it so, so much worse. Pink? Light? Low carb? Sweet? In a six pack that looks like a purse? And I’m supposed to fall all over myself to drink it because I’m a woman? Get out of here with that nonsense and get me a pale ale.

visualplus:

Wonderbra magazine ad

via 10 Great Magazine Ads Don’t Just Sit There Looking Pretty

I want to be surprised by this, but…..notsomuch.