What do women want? Forget affordable childcare and feeling safe at night. Alex Trebek and his cronies at game show Jeopardy have the answers: herbal tea, a husband who vacuums, time to exercise and do the crossword, and a good pair of Levis, apparently.
Predictably, the category didn't go down well, and soon female fingers were twitching all over Twitter. A more accurate category heading would have been: Worst Stereotypes About Women.
"For a 'smart' show, you just got seriously stupid," tweeted actress/activist Sophia Bush to her million followers. Screen shots and much hulksmashing ensued.
As Mashable pointed out, the episode did have a silver lining. The winner—a woman—took home a decent pot of $26,400, which will no doubt cover "all the Levi's, tea and Pilates classes she wants."
And pray tell, if there was a category for men (plenty of whom also wear Levis and drink tea, incidentally...), would it list drinking beer and watching hockey (which plenty of women happen to do, too)?
It's not the first time Jeopardy writers have been lambasted for their male-centric content, or at least for "questions" that overwhelmingly point to male figures, even in categories that don't or shouldn't necessary reflect an historical bias.
Of all game shows, Jeopardy purports itself to be the thinking person's trivia game, so it follows that we should take its content more seriously than, say, Family Feud or Wheel of Fortune.
Ah, good old Facebook. In the early days, wasn't it terrific fun catching up with forgotten high school chums and snooping on ex-flames? But then the amassing blindly carried on, and before you knew it your friends list grew to include seldom-seen second cousins and former colleagues from the company you worked for Once Upon a Coffee Time. And if you were like this guy Matt Kulesza, you had collected oodles of social network 'friends'—too many to ever keep track of.
Earlier this month, Kulesza started a Tumblr project called "1000+ COFFEES" in which he plans put the actual "face" back in Facebook. Or in his words, "To have a one-on-one coffee with every single one of my 1000+ Facebook 'friends' over the space of the next three years, or as long as it takes to complete."
Ambitious is as ambitious does. Instead of simply 'spring cleaning' his friends list, Kulesza is doing something much more inspired and remarkable—he's attempting to, if not rekindle, at least check in to relationships that clearly at one point warranted a friend request. He's meeting up with people IRL.
If the idea of the exercise makes you cringe or panic, then perhaps, like so many of us, you have friended recklessly in the past. It's such a beautifully simple concept, yet it also feels vaguely outlandish. Kulesza simply hooks up with a 'friend,' provides a snapshot of how the two know each other, how many mutual friends they have on FB, what they chatted about, and—the coffee lover in me is tickled by this detail—recounts what each person drank.
More and more the novelty of social media is wearing thin and people are hankering for what's probably now considered old-fashioned communication, e.g. picking up a phone to hear a human voice over texting, meeting up in person over same-time chatting.
When apps like Cuddlr come on the market, it just proves the extent of our social disconnect and people, frankly, we need each other. We need human contact no matter how fraught our lives sometimes get.
Reading this, it struck me that bar my mother and husband, there is only one other person I routinely talk to on the phone. Every couple of months a friend of mine who lives in another city will schedule a time to have an actual phone conversation.
And you know what? It's delightful and refreshing, and every time we conclude one of our marathon chats I get to wishing I could do that with other close friends. Because, no matter convenient, texting and emailing and messaging of any kind just doesn't. cut. it.
Sexism starts early, like really early. At least it does at Target, which found itself the target (sorry) for much consumer wrath for selling sexist onesies—pink ones for girls, "I Only Date Heroes" and blue for boys, "Future Man of Steel."
"It seems kind of ridiculous to talk about who an infant girl is going to date," said Aimee Morrison, an associate professor of English at the University of Waterloo.
And ridiculous that 'boy clothes' are still predominantly blue and 'girl clothes' pink, when as grownups women confidently wear blue all the time and men, increasingly, wear pink dress and golf shirts.
And while I'm at it, the whole Superman logo is a bit tired. Yes, even for sleepers worn by three-month-old babes. Does anyone out there still think sleepers with such motifs are adorable?
Christine Logel obviously doesn't. The associate social development professor at Waterloo spotted the onesies while out shopping for her kids, and was stopped in her tracks.
Together she and Morrison posted the image to Twitter, where users slammed the sleepwear and recounted other examples of questionable attire. One commenter hailing all the way from Spain recalled a piece of girl's clothing marked, "Beautiful like Mommy" and a boy's "Smart like Daddy."
So gender stereotyping in rampant in kids' clothing. Some users admitted there were "more important problems in the world." True, but if consumers fail to point out what they find unacceptable, nothing changes.
Predictably, Target welcomed the feedback from its valued customers; however, until people are willing to avoid shopping at certain stores (or at least quit buying up sexist items), stores are unlikely to take any stock whatsoever. The only way to truly reach a retailer is via their profit margins.
You tell me: are these sleepers sexist or are people overreacting?
I was left wondering why this show still exists in the year 2014.
Printer-friendly version