CSotD: In her image
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Anne Gibbons invites me to step onto the third rail this morning, with her weekly contribution to Six Chix.
How very kind of you. Don't mind if I do.
I am aware of, and both fascinated and puzzled by, the difference between how women and men view aesthetics.
On the surface, it's rich fodder for cartoonists: The guy whose wife is appalled that he can't figure out how to match his tie to his shirt, the woman who seeks approval for her choice of earrings from a husband who doesn't care but wanted to leave for the party 15 minutes ago.
But, if that's all you see, you're missing not simply some more interesting comic possibilities, but the crux of some serious communication breakdowns.
For example, a woman who likes to look stylish, which is perfectly reasonable, can make a choice that seems more appropriate for a date than for a day at the office, which is strong and established third-rail territory.
Whether her clothing choices brand her as frivolous or a bit of a show-off is not an issue Human Relations can or should address.
But, meanwhile, some guy approaches it from his own utilitarian fashion attitude: "If I wore a Yankees ball cap, I'd expect people to talk to me about baseball. She's dressed for a singles bar, so …"
And before you know it, everyone in the place has been ordered into a mandatory PowerPoint session on sexual harrassment in the workplace.
But that's just one little flashpoint in a much more fascinating area.
I'm convinced that the time many-though-not-all (and please read that into everything here) little girls spend playing "makeover" is key to why we can have, for instance, a sudden flood of little Emma Watsons or Taylor Swifts on our hands, while guys choose their "look" as if they were picking an avatar.
By throwing darts.
So there may be a flurry of Justin Bieber forehead combdowns among middleschool boys, but they don't get the rest of the look right and they totally miss the fact that Beiber hasn't worn his hair like that in a couple of years and is becoming a jerk anyway.
It doesn't get better as they get older.
I explored the m/f divide at length about a year and a half ago, and revealed the secret to becoming a great lover. No kidding. Check it out.
However, what Gibbons has to say about women's magazines brings up a more complicated topic: How much is inherent and how much is media-imposed?
It's obvious in some cases: Mattel's extraordinary "Math class is tough!" gaffe with talking Barbies is still being cited even as NASA has partnered with the toy company to produce "Mars Explorer Barbie," though, looking at her uniform and styling, I hope they don't forget to download that PowerPoint presentation into the computers of future missions.
But since there has been a demand for less limiting stereotypes, there have been gains in the number of women enrolled in formerly all-male courses and careers, so the overt messages we send do matter.
(I'm not going to search up figures, but I will note that I ran into a college junior recently who is off academic probation because his cute-and-funny girlfriend tutored him in advanced engineering calculus. "Having it all" works both ways and there's truth in the Seventies saying that "men of quality are not threatened by women of equality.")
The aesthetic side is more puzzling. To what extent do women's magazines thrive because their audience is concerned about aesthetics, and to what extent have they created this phenomenon?
Or, to delve into the annals of advertising, how accurate were the purveyors of Camay soap in 1930, when their ad warned that "someone's eyes are forever searching your face, comparing you with other women"?
My male instincts suggest that women should be infuriated by the entire women's magazine industry, not because it plays to aesthetics and creates insecurity, but because it does it so cynically and with such blatant dishonesty.
Example: Credits for magazine covers go beyond telling you who shot the picture, and list products they say were used by the model, because those companies advertise with them. That is, they say the model used such-and-such dime store makeup when she actually used her own professional materials or that chosen by the pro who did her face for the shoot.
And if that link doesn't lay it out plainly enough, here's an article Gloria Steinem wrote in 1990, detailing the issues Ms. Magazine faced in attempting to gain ad support.
She includes specific examples of unsuccessful attempts to get advertisers to take women seriously, but here are a couple of more overall-topic excerpts from that illuminating, infuriating piece:
Do you think, as I once did, that advertisers make decisions
based on solid research?
Well, think again.
“Broadly speaking,” says Joseph Smith of Oxtoby-Smith Inc.,
a consumer research firm, “there is no persuasive evidence that the editorial
context of an ad matters.”
Advertisers who demand such “complementary copy,” even in
the absence of respectable studies, clearly are operating under a double
standard. The same food companies place ads in People with no recipes. Cosmetic
companies support The New Yorker with no regular beauty columns. So where does
this habit of controlling the content of women’s magazines come from?
Tradition.
Ever since Ladies Magazine debuted in Boston in 1828,
editorial copy directed to women has been informed by something other than its
readers' wishes.
There were no ads then, but in an age when married women
were legal minors with no right to their own money, there was another revenue
source to be kept in mind: husbands.
“Husbands may rest assured,” wrote editor Sarah Josepha
Hale, “that nothing found in these pages shall cause her [his wife] to be less
assiduous in preparing for his reception or encourage her to ‘usurpstation’ or encroach
upon prerogatives of men.”
A little further on:
What definitively turned women’s magazines into catalogs,
however, were two events: Ellen Butterick's invention of the clothing pattern
in 1863 and the mass manufacture of patent medicines containing everything from
colored water to cocaine.
For the first time, readers could purchase what magazines
encouraged them to want. As such magazines became more profitable, they also
began to attract men as editors. (Most women magazines continued to have men as
top editors until the feminist 1970s.)
Edward Bok, who became editor of The Ladies’ Home Journal in
1889, discovered the power of advertisers when he rejected ads for patent medicines and found that other advertisers
canceled in retribution.
In the early 20th century, Good Housekeeping started its
Institute to “test and approve” products. Its Seal of Approval became the
grandfather of current “value added” programs that offer advertisers such
bonuses as product sampling and department store promotions.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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