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No Girls Allowed

polygon.com

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Re: No Girls Allowed

#161

Post by alandarev »

maxerickson wrote: post #43
junto wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a daughter about the same age so it gives me a bit of insight. She doesn't get to watch TV. Her playgroup has no major bias towards pink for girls (actually even deliberate in their avoidance of such stereotyping). My wife secretly detests pink and girly stuff and is/was a tomboy at heart. We do not discourage or encourage any particular colour or style. There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that…

If she is friends with even just one girl that likes pink, she has someone to copy from (share with, whatever). I would also guess that there are individuals that she prefers as friends in the play group (so a survey might not be very revealing).

The same logic could be applied other way around: "If one of her friends does not wear pink, she now has someone to copy from."

Not saying it is likelyhood. And I agree, that majority can influence minority, especially in youngster social circles.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#162

Post by normloman »

jheriko wrote: post #108

i am a liberal fan of freedom and equal rights - within reason. i applaud the sentiment but this is just one of many symptoms of 'women don't like taking risks and don't like stem fields' whats more i like to think that women are allowed that freedom of choice - so its a double edged sword. the side effects suck but these scenarios /come from/ freedom and equal opportunities for women. why is nobody looking at cultur…

Did you even read the article? This has nothing to do with women entering stem fields. It's about how video game marketers exclude women from their target demographic.

Poor guy can't even be sexist. Boo hoo.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#163

Post by dragonwriter »

twoodfin wrote: post #141
minikites wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that should bias her towards pink girly toys, yet she is absolutely obsessed with girly pink clothes and toys. > I honestly can't fathom it. Pink attraction seems to be built in. Like a moth to a flame. Yeah, that doesn't actually make any sense. Pink:blue::girl:boy is 100% artificial and one recent source has it the other way around: > For example, a June 1918 art…

Why ascribe this to "marketing"? If marketers could control what colors children want to wear, they'd change them every year to spur sales. Fashion isn't that predictable or controllable.

> If marketers could control what colors children want to wear, they'd change them every year to spur sales.

For children, they work more on subjects than colors right now, though for adult fashion, changes of "in" colors both annually and by season is normal, and largely driven by marketing.

> Fashion isn't that predictable or controllable.

It is controllable, but not perfectly so, and there are a lot of competing attempts to control it. There is not one hive-mind of marketing trying to drive aggregate demand, there are different marketers working for different producers trying to drive demand for their particular client's product, so, naturally, the results are chaotic and uncertain and often surprising, but they are still very much the product of deliberate marketing efforts.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#164

Post by minikites »

LaGrange wrote: post #90
minikites wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that should bias her towards pink girly toys, yet she is absolutely obsessed with girly pink clothes and toys. > I honestly can't fathom it. Pink attraction seems to be built in. Like a moth to a flame. Yeah, that doesn't actually make any sense. Pink:blue::girl:boy is 100% artificial and one recent source has it the other way around: > For example, a June 1918 art…

I usually also bring up these arguments, but there’s also one more possibility: she actually likes pink. Like, I like pink too, and pretty sure I’m not a girl. The problem isn’t that some girls pick pink, it’s that the pink is chosen for them. Even if 90% of girls preferred pink by default (which, as far as we can tell, they don’t), it would still be an issue if the 10% got it effectively forced upon them. While femi…

That's true and a good point, I'm sure lots of people just enjoy pink. As you say, in most cases it is chosen for them, but even when it's not I would make the small tweak that it's not a "fair" choice. How many boys would like pink if not for its "girly" current association? Girls might end up liking pink even if their parents dress them in white, but everything else they see might tilt their opinion towards pink more than other colors.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#165

Post by minikites »

twoodfin wrote: post #141
minikites wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that should bias her towards pink girly toys, yet she is absolutely obsessed with girly pink clothes and toys. > I honestly can't fathom it. Pink attraction seems to be built in. Like a moth to a flame. Yeah, that doesn't actually make any sense. Pink:blue::girl:boy is 100% artificial and one recent source has it the other way around: > For example, a June 1918 art…

Why ascribe this to "marketing"? If marketers could control what colors children want to wear, they'd change them every year to spur sales. Fashion isn't that predictable or controllable.

Children's clothes already have a built in treadmill to spur sales: kids change size rapidly.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#166

Post by alex_c »

spindritf wrote: post #24

Is there any non-anecdotal evidence that marketing has anywhere near the power this article ascribes to it? I hear this a lot lately. Some people believe that media have an almost magical power of shaping culture and behaviours. Beauty? Cosmo propaganda. Boys liking different toys than girls? Marketing. Yet when you dig a little deeper, studies on priming usually get wee p-values and barely significant, temporary cha…

Is there any non-anecdotal evidence that marketing has anywhere near the power this article ascribes to it?

I think you're overstating how much power the article ascribes to marketing.

The article makes two arguments:

1) Video games being mostly "male" is a feedback loop of marketing (targeting) and product design, amplified by most of the industry being male. It's not that marketing has overnight caused everyone to decide that video games are for boys: it's that video games designed for boys are marketed to boys, sell well, and lead to more games for boys being produced and marketed.

2) Video games are not as "male" as we think, but video games that do not fit the stereotypical mold - The Sims, Farmville, casual games - are dismissed as "not real video games". The reasons for this are complex and the article does not go into them (that would be an essay in itself). Marketing is certainly part of it, but far from the only factor.

You're doing a big disservice to a great article by reducing it to something it does not claim. It's a bit unfortunate that this simplification is influencing so much of the discussion here (not attacking you, it's just a property of ranked threaded discussions).

Re: No Girls Allowed

#168

Post by knowitall »

djKianoosh wrote: post #158
knowitall wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, being pretty is a good strategy for women. I feel reminded of a recent Sam Altman article where he wrote "sadly, learning Ruby on Rails in is still a viable strategy". Likewise, sadly concentrating on being pretty is a viable strategy for women. It's not that they can't do anything else, but they have this option (much more so than men).

good looking/tall men "is a viable strategy" too, right?

Not so much because it is not a very safe bet to find a wealthy woman to pay for your life just because you are tall and good looking.

Although apparently good looking men have advantages, including on average higher salary. So it doesn't hurt, but it's only a supplement.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#169

Post by mc32 »

rayiner wrote: post #118
minikites wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that should bias her towards pink girly toys, yet she is absolutely obsessed with girly pink clothes and toys. > I honestly can't fathom it. Pink attraction seems to be built in. Like a moth to a flame. Yeah, that doesn't actually make any sense. Pink:blue::girl:boy is 100% artificial and one recent source has it the other way around: > For example, a June 1918 art…

It should be noted that for centuries in the western world, boys and girls also both wore dresses.

Note that they did have gender markers. people of the time would be able to distinguish a girl's dress from a boy's dress. Kind of how you can tell a boy's pair of pants from a girl's pair of pants today.

Also, predominantly it was only the children of wealthy parents who could have 'children's' clothing. Children of the poor wore rags --anything available to them.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#170

Post by rmc »

knowitall wrote: post #128
rmc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boys will physically assault boys who like pink. It'd say that counts as "people concerned that boys don't display their liking of pink".

Hm, is that a general rule? My son is not yet in school, so I don't know what it is like these days. Also "like pink" is different from owning the occasional pink thing. I suppose a boy who would dress exclusively in pink would stand out, and maybe the bullies would try to cut him down. Still, I suspect it is not a large scale problem - obviously I don't condone the actions of such bullies, I mean there are probably…

I don't care if a boy would "stand out" by dressing all in pink. That's not a valid reason for children to beat up children. The problem is not the child who's standing out, the problem is the bully who wants to hurt another person.
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