Colorado Women's Expo. A Celebration Of Stereotypes!

Nothing like a steaming pile of gender stereotypes to get me in a nice frothy rage, and confuse those around me. I tell you, it appears that the notion of me getting upset over perpetuated gender stereotypes raises a lot of eyebrows, and facial expressions conveying the ever popular, "What the hell is wrong with you?" look. I'm guessing the factors involved are not that easy to explain.

I was sitting at the bar on an especially slow Sunday afternoon, and began rifling through the newspaper that conveniently sat in front me. Most of it got put into the newly created "crap" pile, including the sports section and the comics. (As a quick aside, were you aware of this interesting tidbit: at one time, likely several decades ago, the comics were actually considered humorous? Almost hard to fathom isn't it? I generally read them for a quick sobering dose of how cruel and disappointing the world can be).

Towards the end of the putting-most-of-the-newspaper-in-the-crap-pile session, I quickly glanced at a flyer that sent me into a soapbox lecture and rant. The flyer in question? An ad for the Colorado Women's Expo.

And why is this worth writing about?

I would have easily just placed this mini-magazine onto the "crap" pile and thought nothing of it if it weren't for the fact that my eye glossed over the very first photo on the cover, which caused my whole body to give off the "I'm completely let down" posture with a overly loud sigh.

The very first photo, on the very cover, was of a woman applying lip liner to another woman. I closed my eyes, as my mouth tensed up. "Does no one else get this?!" I thought to myself. And by thinking to myself, I mean I said it out loud to the bartender and those around me.

A quick scan of the rest of the cover revealed that this would be a source of extreme frustration and anger for me. The bottom of the mini-mag had a few bullet points about the expo that were likely designed to catch the common woman's attention. These read: Fashion, Style, Finance, Careers, Health, Fitness, Home, Food. Another sigh. I quickly grabbed a pen off of the counter and hastily scrawled the first things I could think of onto the ad itself, both for humor and to make a point.

The new version went like this:

Makeup!
Recipes!
Shopping!
Gossip!
Babies!
Makeup!
Emotional Baggage!
Obsessing Over Unrealistic Body Images!

Things you won't see on this list: Astrophysics, Neuroscience, and Existentialism (which is why I wrote them on the ad).

I, of course, showed the new version to the bartender, who, being a female, was not sure exactly what I was trying to point out. She mentioned that she did not have a lot of female friends, and did not consider herself overly "girly", but still was not able to see the real problem I was trying to bring to light for her.

I opened the mini-magazine for the expo to see if, likely, it was riddled with more offending examples of gender pandering. Lo and behold (each of those), on the very back page, there was a list of seminars that would be going on during the event. The majority of which I began highlighting in heated frustration. These included such avant garde subjects as:

High Style, Low Prices
Nutrition: You Have To Eat To Lose Weight
Real Makeup For Real Women
Trends: What's Hot, What's Not. What's In, What's Out
The Art Of Recycling And Re-Crafting
Guilt Free Shopping From Head To Toe
Simple Design For The Home
Motivation: Discover What Motivates You
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus: Even When Dealing With Stress

And one of my own for good measure:

Desperately Covering Up Your Inner Pain And Lack Of Personality With Surface Distractions Like Clothing And Jewelry

Upon showing the bartender this new, incriminating information, she looked a bit more interested, yet still not quite sure what the goal was of pointing it all out.

I began rambling at breakneck speed as I pointed to each infuriating example of social gender identity pandering. "High style, low prices?! C'mon, not that people can't have an interest in clothes, but are we trying to say that the common woman is just a mindless corporate consumer?! And that makes her happy?!"

She contemplated that thought as I drove my speeding freight train into the next topics.

"Eat to lose weight? More obsession with body image. Like we aren't insecure enough as it is. Oh, this one pisses me off! 'Real makeup, for real women'??!!! Are you kidding me?! What a pointless and superficial topic. Does that also mean there is fake makeup for real women, or real makeup for fake women flooding the market place?!?! Why is that important?!?! It's just perpetuating the generalization!!"

"Calm down Niko. Shhhhhhhhh" She said chuckling to herself. One of my managers was now sitting next to me at the bar, seemingly enjoying the strange tirade, while still raising an eyebrow to show that he thought I was insane.

I lowered my voice a bit and continued. "Of course they would have this. 'What's hot what's not'. You know, not all women base their whole lives around stupid social trends. Some actually care about, oh, I don't know, important things. Oh look at this one. 'Guilt free shopping'. What is it with guilt free? It's on like every snack commercial geared towards women. It's almost as if the ad itself is telling the woman she should feel guilty for doing, or thinking something. What, are they all Catholic or something? If something makes you feel guilty, don't do it! Or better yet, figure out why you associate guilt with something and see if it is unfounded, thereby eliminating the pointless guilt! Bam!"

My voice had ramped up again, as it tends to do when I'm on fire about an idea. The head chef walked over, obviously overhearing some of my ranting, and purposely chimed in with, "So what is this all about now?" My manager started laughing and cautioned him not to get me started.

It is rather challenging to try and explain the little nuances of why these concepts are so bothersome to me, and why people seem to take them for granted.

What this whole thing does to me, is bring up a handful of questions which I tried to pass on to the bartender. "Are these interests naturally ingrained within the brain? Or are they a product of societal influences? And why do so many women seem to share the same predisposition towards certain interests? And why these interests over others?"

Once I began posing these type of catalyst questions dealing with the origin of the behavior or thought process, she started to (seemingly) catch on. "Interesting. I've never thought of it like that before." She then remarked that she found it fascinating that I would sit around and think of things like this, which she soon appended with the thought that it would actually be pretty annoying to be constantly overthinking things the way I (seemingly) do. Good call.

While you're standing in line at the grocery store, take a second to read over the covers of the magazines that are blatantly targeted at the "common woman". Again you see more of the same. A deluge of superficial pointlessness dealing with celebrity gossip, weight loss (try to find one without that), and beauty tips for whatever season you are in. The obsessive focus on physical beauty correlates directly to finding a mate, which in turn leads many women away from focusing on their own minds, talents, personal goals and career paths.

Let me clarify something just to make sure. I'm not saying these interests are inherently bad, or should never be thought of, it's just when these things are the main, or only pursuits that it becomes a bull's eye for intellectual criticism.

Society has a huge influence in creating our gender identity. Men are no exception, but I'll save them for another time. Children are particularly susceptible and impressionable to these types of ideas.

It's not fully intentional, but we naturally treat male and female babies differently. Identity is built up based on how others treat us in the world. We begin to make up our own conception of who we are depending on how others react to us, talk to us, interact with us. Gender, at least social gender identity can be developed in the same way.

I'm not trying to say that gender is entirely a product of environment, as gender is also physical. The most significant difference is the bodily difference, and the rest is psychological. Sure women have more estrogen, and men more testosterone, but I really believe that most of the social traits we apply to men and women are actually learned.

While I was reading this flyer, I felt like a feminist, violently defending a negative generalization that is, in my eyes, not helping or contributing to progressive social enlightenment. Women have been repressed and treated as second class citizens for a few thousand years thanks to patriarchal religions, chauvinistic social cultures, and douchebags who ride Harleys. Thankfully, we are slowly seeing the eventual equalization of the sexes, but it feels that these long lived ideas of gender roles in society and family are going to take many more generations to exspunge, due to the lasting effects of centuries of oppression.

If there is any truth to that idea, then the above advertisement really pisses me off. Here we are in the 21st century and we are still perpetuating stereotypes by ingraining women with qualities that don't support being independent, self-sufficient thinkers and doers, we are instead, and maybe not on purpose, creating more dependency, subservience, and a negative psychological self image that portrays themselves as never attractive enough, and makes physical beauty paramount in their minds.

Have I mentioned that gender stereotypes slightly bother me?


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Tags: gender stereotypes identity women men biology social psychology humor