The Pink Gadget Hall of Shame

Well, as you've brought it up...

By: MNiM | Thu, 11/26/2009 - 09:40

It's the thing I've found most off-putting about the double X site.

And it's not just the clear marketing "just for girls!", but it's shade also suggests a cutesyness that say, royal purple would not. It's suggests not only "girls only" but also a light and fluffy image, not serious debate or real journalism.

Compare other online news organisations - salon, slate, the root (the root has a particularly strong, timeless, classic look). Double X looks gimmiky, pandering, and so blatant about it that it borders on insulting.

I've wondered about the X in the logo for a long time, too. Is it meant to homey, like someone hand drew the lines in? It's the lines that draw my attention every time. Someone obviously put them there, but they're not attractive (to me) at all. Why are they there? What are they meant to evoke? If they weren't there, I'd probably just think double X merely had a bland logo. And that's fine. But the lines actively draw my attention in a negative way.

If doubleX's branding is meant to be ironic, or something like that - the message is lost on me. I found it so off putting it was only constant exposure to interesting headlines on sites I already liked that prompted me to come here - now I check double X fairly regularly, but I still find the color scheme, and logo, aggravating.

Funny you should mention...

By: kal | Wed, 11/18/2009 - 17:28

"Funny you should mention...
By: neverputsaltiny... | Tue, 11/17/2009 - 07:51
Anybody else notice the irony that this site is pink? It's the same assumption- you have to love it, cause you're a woman."

I have this thought everytime I come to this site. The fuschia colored font is a big no-no from a usibility stanpoint - difficult to read/hard on the eyes - but it screams "GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS" so someone decided it was a must.

My eyes are sore after spending 5 minutes on double X.

Irony Incarnate

By: lawdog67 | Wed, 11/18/2009 - 10:30

"This new HP mini had a subtle style to it and was also featured in the latest Vogue."

I guess the irony of this statement isn't so obvious at first. "The latest Vogue," as in, "yet another one of those magazines that (like Double X) is ONLY FOR WOMEN."

How can you demand your own industry - separate literature, art, clothing lines, entertainment; your own set of workplace rules, your own set of fashion rules, etc., etc. - and then complain because people try to market products aimed only at you? Do you hear the hypocrisy of even raising this issue in Double X? You are essentially asking, "Why won't these marketing folks treat us more like men?"

Gee, I wonder.

Sure, some of them are pretty

By: monterey_jill | Wed, 11/18/2009 - 02:19

Sure, some of them are pretty lame and girly. But I'm a sucker for cute things. I lived in Japan for a few years, and there if something can be made cute, it is. I guess it rubbed off on me.

I actually have the Vivienne Tam edition HP Mini. I needed a netbook, and I figured I could buy a plain one or a cute one. I chose the cute one, and I get complimented on it almost everyday!

If these products are

By: RalphS | Tue, 11/17/2009 - 19:00

If these products are insulting, how about the entire fashon-industrial complex? Hundreds for a little handbag... actually, hundreds for the label on a handbag! Women are certainly not the only suckers out there, but it seems like many of the worst examples of outrageous markup and arbitrary aesthetics (or at least those noticable to me) are found in products targeted to women.

That Reminds Me

By: g.e.m. | Tue, 11/17/2009 - 18:28

This article made me think of the new HP Mini 110 by Studio Tord Boontje. I personally do not love the bejeweled and pink designed products. This new HP mini had a subtle style to it and was also featured in the latest Vogue.

The problem isn't that they do it, it's that it works

By: spackle | Tue, 11/17/2009 - 15:59

Girls buy pink stuff. There are plenty who don't, but enough *do* that it's a safe bet for marketers. Especially when discussing technology, when a large segment of women actually prides itself on techno-cluelessness and needs to be baby-stepped in.

Or look at sports jerseys. How do you sell them to girls? Make them pink. It's a huge pet peeve of mine, because wearing your team's colors isn't about whether you look good in them.

All this said - yes, companies could put some effort into their products to address real differences between the genders beyond aesthetics - but if just changing the aesthetics gets you more than halfway there at a tenth of the cost, why wouldn't you do that? The problem isn't just that companies produce this crap - it's that a big enough segment of women buys it.

Something Must Be Working

By: lawdog67 | Tue, 11/17/2009 - 15:49

Not that I disagree with the absurdity of some of these products - but let's be honest. Your readership demographic may skew somewhat away from the pink, frilly crowd, but that crowd IS out there. Part of the biggest hurdle your gender has to face is you don't often agree on how you want to be treated or portrayed.

Do you want the right to abortions or not? Do you want doors held open for you, or is that insulting? Who should pay for a meal on a date? For that matter, who should ask for and arrange the date? Should capable mothers head back to the workplace? Or if they can afford to, should they stay home and raise their kid(s)? Should mommies breast-feed or feed formula? Is Sarah Palin a moron or a role model?

The recurrent theme is that women really don't (as a group) know what they want. Or, maybe more accurately, they want everything at once, even if the things they want are contradictory. You even have a song, "Tender When I Want To Be." Just look at the movie "Legally Blonde." Nothing but pink frippery as far as the eye can see. And yet, the ditzy heroine still somehow manages to graduate from law school and win a critical court case, to much acclaim from her former detractors. All without chipping her hot-pink nail polish.

So, when your gender quits buying gussied-up (or dumbed-down) pink stuff, then you can complain about how someone's trying to push it off on you. Until then, you're just coming off as confused and indecisive... again.

Uh... smell hypocrisy?

By: samanthafent | Tue, 11/17/2009 - 15:08

I just registered to make a comment and now see that a couple of others have made the same comment: did you recognize the complete and utter hypocrisy of this post?

Your whole "women's" section is just branding with pinks, purples, and "XX"!!! Even when your articles are in the main homepage section, they have to be branded with the purple XX logo -- they can't just be interesting articles, they have to be XX articles.

I guess in fairness the section doesn't look shrunk, although I haven't actually compared the average article word-length to that of the average non-XX article.

Pink Tool Kit

By: MrJM | Tue, 11/17/2009 - 14:14

My mother has owned a pink tool kit -- pink hammer, pink screw drivers, pink pliers -- for decades because they were the only tools that my father wouldn't steal away for manly work.

-- MrJM
http://twitter.com/misterjayem