No Girls Allowed • Hacker News Board

Re: No Girls Allowed

#221

Post by junto » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 7:14 PM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #147

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…

Would it be all bad if she didn't want a pirate ship?

Not at all. The pink doesn't bother me either. As long as she is happy that's the main thing. I just find it puzzling.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#222

Post by diydsp » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 7:50 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #28

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…

I remember all the fear mongering about violence in computer games (especially first-person shooters). Now, there is a whole generation of 20-somethings that grew up staring at the screen and shooting people and monsters, and crime rates have not gone up (in fact, they are falling IIRC). Accordingly, I don't think marketing can change our desires and behaviour. Sure, it can change what we buy through brand-perception…

Crime as a whole in the United States has gone down, yet school shootings, which First-Person Shooters emulate, have gone up since about 1993, the year Doom was released. Yes, I have a source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the...

Note that the list of the US shootings, where Doom was released, has its own page, and far outstrips the number of school shootings in the rest of the world.

You can also see a graph of this at http://i56.tinypic.com/29uo8wg.jpg

Roses are red, Violets are blue. They don't think it be like it is, But it do.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#223

Post by johngalt » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 8:27 PM UTC

These articles always walk a very fine line between opposing views. How do you simultaneously claim that pink dolls are marketed to girls and that's bad. Then also claim that there are no video games that have pink dolls, so therefore girls are excluded.

As a father, I worry that if we 'encourage' our girls too much to discard girly pink things, they might receive the message that girly things are inherently worse. It's perfectly ok to ensure your kid isn't forced into some role because of their gender, but be careful not to preclude/deride things they may genuinely desire. Don't be worried about attending a tea party with your girls. The 'message it sends' is that you care enough to play what they want.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#224

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 9:00 PM UTC

knowitall wrote: post #168

djKianoosh wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can make the taxpayers pay for your life. Being handsome is very good for a politician. Not a guarantee of success but certainly a boon.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#225

Post by jheriko » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

normloman wrote: post #162

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.

Yes, I read it in its entirety. The key point it seems to make is that men made games for men and the marketers cottoned on to the trend and ran with it - this is precisely to do with women not entering stem fields (computer games development).

Also, since we are picking faults its about /why/ they are excluded. Its pretty damned obvious how it happens...

... and yes it is a shame that I can't make a joke about women complicating things. They do, its measurable, its funny, its not sexist unless you somehow assume that men are exempt from the same criticism, which they are not.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#226

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 9:13 PM UTC

aestra wrote: post #135

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30s of research gives me this http://www.google.co.uk/patents?id=0eBEAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&dq=%2... It's a patent application from 1928 which speaks about engagement rings with a bezel for a stone. I'm going out on a limb and saying that diamonds would be one choice for the stone prior to 1928. They certainly are only one amongst many choices in the present day too. Do USA-ians only have diamond engagement rings? The cited…

Here's the deal. Yes, diamond ring existed before De Beers' ad campaign. They declined after WWI and especially during the Great Depression, and engagement rings were starting to go out of style, period. De Beers changed that. In 1939 only 10% of engagement rings had diamonds. By 1990, 80% did, in the United States. I am guessing the non-diamond ones are plain bands. When someone I knew got engaged, the first questio…

>"Here's the deal. Yes, diamond ring existed before De Beers' ad campaign" //

Indeed. I agree with almost everything you're saying, including the general sentiment.

One of your Google Books citations didn't work but the other bears this:

"Diamonds had been a popular stone for engagement rings before Ayer came on the scene, but the agency helped give new meaning to the tradition and make it more widespread." (Brides, Inc: American Weddings and the Business of Tradition, by Vicki Howard, p.50, transcribed E&OE)

Also worth noting is that:

"from the end of the Depresssion to the late 1940s, the percentage of double-ring as opposed to single-ring marriages increased from 15 percent to approximately 80 percent." (ibid, p.61)

I think that 80% matches the claim Ayers made for diamond engagement-ring popularity ('four-fifths of a carat per wedding' or somesuch turn of phrase). Of course the "double-ring" wasn't being promoted with the same massive campaign, though it certainly was being promoted by individual jewellers.

It seems hard to overplay what De Beers et al. accomplished and yet again, as in the GP post, it appears you've managed - like the part about movie stars, people already gave diamonds as symbols of love/marriage. Though in honesty I'd rather the exaggeration than the alternative of ignoring the virulent place of marketeers in Western Capitalism.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#227

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 9:23 PM UTC

tehwalrus wrote: post #76

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…

My Niece's pink obsession began as soon as she started school - I think it's a mixture of peer pressure and subtle clues (e.g. the grandparent's "aren't you pretty" comment.) It's actually amusing in her in particular - she must wear pink, and mummy must do her hair nicely, but then once that's done she's outside climbing trees and getting muddy. It seems that once she's put on the "girl uniform", she can go be herse…

>It's actually amusing in her in particular [...] //

The amusement lies, presumably, with your consideration that wearing pink and having coiffed hair are inconsistent with wanting to do outdoorsy stuff.

I have nieces too - they're being themselves when climbing trees just as much as when wearing pink tutus IMO. Perhaps they're wearing pink to fit in with their friends at school; perhaps they're climbing trees to fit in with me?

Re: No Girls Allowed

#228

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 9:32 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #105

AlexandrB wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diamonds. > Americans exchange diamond rings as part of the engagement process, because in 1938 De Beers decided that they would like us to. Prior to a stunningly successful marketing campaign 1938, Americans occasionally exchanged engagement rings, but wasn’t a pervasive occurrence. http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-b... I think it's naive to think that marketing doesn't in some way shape an…

Diamonds have a slightly more complex role than just being conjured from thin air by marketing. Premarital sex is not, popular opinion to the contrary, a new discovery. In most societies we know of, however, men prefer to marry women who have never slept with anyone else. This creates a problem. Unmarried women are reluctant to have sex for fear that it will lower their ability to find a suitable husband, and as a re…

What sounds suspicious here is that diamond rings are not particularly good as the performance bond. Sale value of the ring usually much less than the purchase price (which means the woman loses part of the value that the man is willing to commit) and this sum is much smaller than the price of rearing a child alone and even the price of the marriage prospects destroyed. Of course, the woman may refuse to accept anything but a super-expensive ring but in reality the rings that get accepted are not that expensive, compared to the value that it is purported to be the bond for. It can not really be otherwise - if it is too expensive for an average person, it can not become a tradition among these people.

So this theory, while it looks plausible, does not seem to properly explain the rings, unless I am very wrong about the prices in play - are there any data about it?

Re: No Girls Allowed

#229

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 9:37 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #154

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #59

I thought the more important point was how much these differences were in the eye of the beholder rather than actual objective facts. For example, the various farm sim, candy crush, peggle, word game, social things that many "non-gamer" women in my life seem obsessed by get quietly excluded from discussions about games and gamers because they don't fit the stereotype. Similarly, Barbie is a "doll", she lives in a "do…

Hah. My kid (3yo boy) got strange questions about going to kindergarten with a baby-doll in a pram - but that's just naturally "following male role models", doing as the father does pushing his little sister around. I mean, in an entirely sexist manner, men should be the ones primarily pushing baby carriages because, say, pushing them through snow-covered sidewalks at any reasonable distance requires physical effort…

>men should be the ones primarily pushing baby carriages because //

Use a baby-sling. They use far less resources to make, far far less. They can aid the child in learning to talk quicker (face-to-face position). They're easy to take anywhere you can walk. They pack down almost to pocket-size. [Though no-one ever held a door open for me like they do for pram/stroller users].

Both our boys imitated carrying children in slings. They also both loved playing with toy push-chairs when they were available to them but they did so in a distinctly different manner to other kids, they never bothered with having "passengers" on theirs.

Soon after birth or a caesarean a woman should be resting, not pushing a buggy around just as anyone should be resting after a massive pelvic dislocation or abdominal surgery.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#230

Post by leokun » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 10:04 PM UTC

omonra wrote: post #185

leokun wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't buy it. There's an entire branch of social science that spends a lot of time on marketing, sociology. I recommend reading up on it from an academic perspective. Marketing is very influential but it isn't mind control. I'd say it shapes expectations more than create demand for particular products. And from an anthropological perspective I'd say marketing actually reveals more about a culture than it creates.

You know, saying 'I recommend reading up on X from an academic perspective' is a fairly useless cliche. If you want to be helpful and feel that there is a specific book or study that someone should read - go ahead and mention that. Just saying 'go read a book or paper or something' adds nothing.

All I was saying is that is possible to actually have an informed opinion about this other than to rely on whatever you think you might have picked up from your own personal life experiences.