No Girls Allowed • Hacker News Board

Re: No Girls Allowed

#151

Post by dsego » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:29 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #94

As a parent of two pre-school girls, this is a concern of mine. But in some ways I think this issue is worse for boys than girls. Girls are "allowed" (but not encouraged) to shop from the boys section. My daughters have and use some boys' clothing, toys, furniture, etc. But a boy wearing pink clothes or dancing or playing with dolls is setting himself up for extended teasing.

Surely, you meant father? I think it's all in the environment. Me and my brother as kids used to play with a lot of girls. And after a while we asked our parents to buy us barbie dolls, and they did. Some of our parents' friends were a bit concerned that we were playing with girl toys, but they soon got used to it, and this was the early 90s in a more conservative country. But we also had wooden pistols and rifles and ran around the village "playing war" with other boys.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#152

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:32 PM UTC

romanovcode wrote: post #148

bryanlarsen wrote: post #94

As a parent of two pre-school girls, this is a concern of mine. But in some ways I think this issue is worse for boys than girls. Girls are "allowed" (but not encouraged) to shop from the boys section. My daughters have and use some boys' clothing, toys, furniture, etc. But a boy wearing pink clothes or dancing or playing with dolls is setting himself up for extended teasing.

>As the daughter of two pre-school girls.. Wait, what? ))

Fixed. thanks.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#153

Post by twoodfin » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:32 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #110

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…

Although its a bit off topic, the "standard american hearty breakfast" simply didn't exist more than a century ago. Highly processed breakfast cereals are also relatively recent. Corn syrup soda apparently becoming primary/sole source of hydration rather than a special treat. All humans must consume vast quantities of dairy products is fairly recent. Could just say "diet in general". How about "Natural is good for yo…

Going out to restaurants more than once a month or so wasn't a common household experience either.

Essentially all of these things are possible due to a rise in living standards and income. That money was going to go somewhere, and no matter where it went, you would inevitably be able go back and tell a just-so story about how it went one way instead of another because of marketing.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#154

Post by PeterisP » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:34 PM UTC

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 that's simply too tiring for most women, especially soon after childbirth or cesarean. (If you drive everywhere like in much of USA, then it might be different).

And the current modern society expects grown men to do so... but the same society doesn't expect little boys to play the same role. How does it make any sense?

Re: No Girls Allowed

#155

Post by normloman » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:38 PM UTC

LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #93

This is idiocy beyond comprehension. Why not to complain that there aren't as many dresses or boys in department stores. Maybe sue them to, huh?

Nobody's complaining in this article, and nobody's suing anybody. It's just an article about video game marketing. Why do you feel threatened?

Re: No Girls Allowed

#156

Post by alandarev » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:38 PM UTC

jaimebuelta wrote: post #66

galaktor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar here. I think a major contributor are other social influences other than myself and wife - most notably friends at kindergarden/school, and teachers there, too. There's much subtle influence that isn't obvious at first, at least wasn't to me. For example, notice how many people (say, neighbours or more importantly, grandparents or other relatives) will often congratulate little girls to being really pretty as…

Compliment women (not only girls) "by default" on their looks actually drives me nuts. It's used even in situations where is totally irrelevant (e.g. radio show). It is really engraved n our culture.

At the risk of downvotes, I will still speak up.

I agree with you, that visual observable complements, over sound-only channels are pointless and frustrating to hear.

But, does it hurt you, that women want to look pretty? Would you like your daughter to be indistinguishable from a boy?

I certainly would feel this world being a crappy place if women were as awful with their appearence men.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#157

Post by antimagic » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:39 PM UTC

xerophtye wrote: post #47

knowitall wrote: post #35

My first girl-friend threatened to leave me in case I bought a game boy. It's not just stereotypes from the media, it's also an experience that lots of men have made in their lives. But that doesn't mean we don't like the idea of women playing games. Quite the opposite. I still remember the first time I saw a woman wearing an Atari T-Shirt. I could hardly believe my eyes... Turns out by then Atari didn't really exist…

Yep, gamer girls = supremely attractive! I always get jealous of gamer couples i encounter on real life and online. My own gf is a hardcode mobile gamer (there hasnt been a single app game that i can beat her at. and i have been gaming all my life!) But i wish she'd try the more complex games... like FPS or top-down strategy or atleast LoL!!

Tower defence games are the gateway drug to top down strategy games. Just sayin'.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#158

Post by djKianoosh » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:40 PM UTC

knowitall wrote: post #132

jaimebuelta wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compliment women (not only girls) "by default" on their looks actually drives me nuts. It's used even in situations where is totally irrelevant (e.g. radio show). It is really engraved n our culture.

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?

Re: No Girls Allowed

#159

Post by alex_c » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:40 PM UTC

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.

Huh? They do. There are new "in" colors every year.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#160

Post by VLM » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:41 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…

1) fearmongers gotta fearmonger. There's a couple animal fables about how a scorpion has gotta be a scorpion because thats its nature etc. So if they were not fearmongering about violent video games, they would be fearmongering about internet social media, or pr0n, or immigrants, or liberals, or whatever. Their whipping boy of the day doesn't really matter. Also their market share of the overall population is extremely small.

2) Speaking of pr0n, I note the monkey see monkey do epic failure WRT violence stats, and notice that despite better pr0n availability that ever in the history of the species, monkey see monkey do birthrates are not going up.

3) However, taking into account your point and #2, people do not copy activities very well, but they do copy appearances. Mere observation tells anyone interested that "scary looking black guns" are a ridiculously popular fad right now compared to a nice hardwood finished stock. Its exactly the same firearm but just wanna be scary looking, sort of. Also it is supposedly a well known fact that womens, uh, bodily hair shaving habits WRT hair below the neck, or however you want to phrase it, have in recent decades been nearly universally oriented to match hairless pr0n images. Pr0n images have to be hairless otherwise guys are staring at a wool rug or whatever, and now women in general want to try to match that. I don't think either example has important social ramifications other than being somewhat profitable for certain mfgrs and retailers which is in direct opposition to your claim that marketing is ineffective. Go ahead, try and find me jpeg of a woolly mammoth of a woman carrying a classic traditional wooden stocked hunting shotgun to prove me wrong. Bet you can come up with 100x the number of counterexample pixs.