No Girls Allowed

The problem isn’t that some girls pick pink, it’s that the pink is chosen for them. Even if 90% of girls preferred pink by default (which, as far as we can tell, they don’t), it would still be an issue if the 10% got it effectively forced upon them.

While feminists often talk against false dichotomies and essentialism, the biggest point is that even if the differences were true, the amount of „exceptions” is high enough to care.

But, finally, about the „power of marketing” thing: yes, marketing is quite terrifyingly powerful, and I’ve seen enough of it effectiveness of work to think so. That’s why I find people who think that they „ignore advertising” a bit on the ridiculous side. Maybe there’s a few cases where you noticed it and managed to overcome it, but there’s just no way you’re unaffected by it.

See

Del Giudice, Marco. "The Twentieth Century Reversal of Pink-Blue Gender Coding: A Scientific Urban Legend?." Archives of sexual behavior (2012): 1-3. http://bsb-lab.org/site/wp-content/uploads/DelGiudice_2012_r...

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?

Not saying it is likelyhood. And I agree, that majority can influence minority, especially in youngster social circles.

Votes don't necessarily mean "I read this article and agree with every word in it" or even anything close to that. In fact, as ill-defined as the semantics for voting are, a vote could just as easily mean "I read this article and disagree with almost everything in it, but I think this is a topic that is worthy of discussion so I'm upvoting it", or even "The headline sounds interesting, and since 'upvote' and 'save' are the same thing on HN, I'm upvoting this so I can find it to read later".

But that's all the power in the world because it's what allows you to sell something not as good for more money instead of selling something better at razor-thin margins.

Go back to the diamonds. If the purpose you state is correct then anything of similar value could substitute instead. It could be an emerald, or a platinum bracelet, or real estate. Anything that serves as an appropriately valuable engagement present.

Moreover, diamonds have been particularly poor at serving that purpose because they don't have high value. Ever try to sell one? De Beers had a de facto diamond monopoly and artificially inflated retail prices by restricting supply and controlling resellers. But if you go try to sell a diamond as a private individual, you won't get anything like what someone would pay for it at retail, because the retail prices were set artificially high by De Beers. Compare this to e.g. precious metals where you can walk into a pawn shop and buy or sell for only a small percentage deviation from the spot price. Meanwhile you're just asking for someone other than De Beers to discover large deposits of diamonds and break the monopoly which will cause prices to crash much harder than they would for a normal commodity with the same new resource discovery, which is exactly what happened a little more than a decade ago. And this is before we even get to the whole issue with conflict diamonds.

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?

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 question an acquaintance asked was "what carat diamond is it?" it was so insulting of a question I was disgusted.

When female friends of mine get engaged, they go "let me show you the ring."

By the way I refuse to own or wear either a engagement ring or a wedding ring. (I'm a lady - fyi)

http://books.google.com/books?id=SpPUrOhQ7I4C&pg=PA327#v=one...

http://books.google.com/books?id=s1Oa5Fqy0dUC&pg=PA49#v=onep...

Here's a long article a read a long time ago...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you...

Here's the key part:

In Europe, where diamond prices had collapsed during the Depression, there seemed little possibility of restoring public confidence in diamonds. In Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain, the notion of giving a diamond ring to commemorate an engagement had never taken hold. In England and France, diamonds were still presumed to be jewels for aristocrats rather than the masses. Furthermore, Europe was on the verge of war, and there seemed little possibility of expanding diamond sales. This left the United States as the only real market for De Beers's diamonds. In fact, in 1938 some three quarters of all the cartel's diamonds were sold for engagement rings in the United States. Most of these stones, however, were smaller and of poorer quality than those bought in Europe, and had an average price of $80 apiece. Oppenheimer and the bankers believed that an advertising campaign could persuade Americans to buy more expensive diamonds.

Oppenheimer suggested to Lauck that his agency prepare a plan for creating a new image for diamonds among Americans. He assured Lauck that De Beers had not called on any other American advertising agency with this proposal, and that if the plan met with his father's approval, N. W. Ayer would be the exclusive agents for the placement of newspaper and radio advertisements in the United States. Oppenheimer agreed to underwrite the costs of the research necessary for developing the campaign. Lauck instantly accepted the offer.

In their subsequent investigation of the American diamond market, the staff of N. W. Ayer found that since the end of World War I, in 1919, the total amount of diamonds sold in America, measured in carats, had declined by 50 percent; at the same time, the quality of the diamonds, measured in dollar value, had declined by nearly 100 percent. An Ayer memo concluded that the depressed state of the market for diamonds was "the result of the economy, changes in social attitudes and the promotion of competitive luxuries."

Although it could do little about the state of the economy, N. W. Ayer suggested that through a well-orchestrated advertising and public-relations campaign it could have a significant impact on the "social attitudes of the public at large and thereby channel American spending toward larger and more expensive diamonds instead of "competitive luxuries." Specifically, the Ayer study stressed the need to strengthen the association in the public's mind of diamonds with romance. Since "young men buy over 90% of all engagement rings" it would be crucial to inculcate in them the idea that diamonds were a gift of love: the larger and finer the diamond, the greater the expression of love. Similarly, young women had to be encouraged to view diamonds as an integral part of any romantic courtship.

Since the Ayer plan to romanticize diamonds required subtly altering the public's picture of the way a man courts -- and wins -- a woman, the advertising agency strongly suggested exploiting the relatively new medium of motion pictures. Movie idols, the paragons of romance for the mass audience, would be given diamonds to use as their symbols of indestructible love. In addition, the agency suggested offering stories and society photographs to selected magazines and newspapers which would reinforce the link between diamonds and romance. Stories would stress the size of diamonds that celebrities presented to their loved ones, and photographs would conspicuously show the glittering stone on the hand of a well-known woman. Fashion designers would talk on radio programs about the "trend towards diamonds" that Ayer planned to start. The Ayer plan also envisioned using the British royal family to help foster the romantic allure of diamonds. An Ayer memo said, "Since Great Britain has such an important interest in the diamond industry, the royal couple could be of tremendous assistance to this British industry by wearing diamonds rather than other jewels." Queen Elizabeth later went on a well-publicized trip to several South African diamond mines, and she accepted a diamond from Oppenheimer.

In addition to putting these plans into action, N. W. Ayer placed a series of lush four-color advertisements in magazines that were presumed to mold elite opinion, featuring reproductions of famous paintings by such artists as Picasso, Derain, Dali, and Dufy. The advertisements were intended to convey the idea that diamonds, like paintings, were unique works of art.

By 1941, The advertising agency reported to its client that it had already achieved impressive results in its campaign. The sale of diamonds had increased by 55 percent in the United States since 1938, reversing the previous downward trend in retail sales. N. W. Ayer noted also that its campaign had required "the conception of a new form of advertising which has been widely imitated ever since. There was no direct sale to be made. There was no brand name to be impressed on the public mind. There was simply an idea -- the eternal emotional value surrounding the diamond." It further claimed that "a new type of art was devised ... and a new color, diamond blue, was created and used in these campaigns.... "

In its 1947 strategy plan, the advertising agency strongly emphasized a psychological approach. "We are dealing with a problem in mass psychology. We seek to ... strengthen the tradition of the diamond engagement ring -- to make it a psychological necessity capable of competing successfully at the retail level with utility goods and services...." It defined as its target audience "some 70 million people 15 years and over whose opinion we hope to influence in support of our objectives." N. W. Ayer outlined a subtle program that included arranging for lecturers to visit high schools across the country. "All of these lectures revolve around the diamond engagement ring, and are reaching thousands of girls in their assemblies, classes and informal meetings in our leading educational institutions," the agency explained in a memorandum to De Beers. The agency had organized, in 1946, a weekly service called "Hollywood Personalities," which provided 125 leading newspapers with descriptions of the diamonds worn by movie stars. And it continued its efforts to encourage news coverage of celebrities displaying diamond rings as symbols of romantic involvement. In 1947, the agency commissioned a series of portraits of "engaged socialites." The idea was to create prestigious "role models" for the poorer middle-class wage-earners. The advertising agency explained, in its 1948 strategy paper, "We spread the word of diamonds worn by stars of screen and stage, by wives and daughters of political leaders, by any woman who can make the grocer's wife and the mechanic's sweetheart say 'I wish I had what she has.'"

Do you have a reference for this statement?

When I was growing up the "I am Canadian"[1] rant was a super-popular thing in my school. But this is from a beer ad of all things! And yet in some way it helped shape what being Canadian meant for a significant number of people at the time. If you make the argument that your peer group influences what is normal that's still no escape from marketing as friends of mine were literally quoting this ad word-for-word.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a straight line between marketing and a specific effect. Ideas and culture don't work like that. But they do work, otherwise nothing cultural would ever change - fashion, as an industry, wouldn't exist.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMxGVfk09lU

The diamonds marketing campaign shows that marketing really can completely change cultural norms

What's interesting about this is that marketers are now stealing stories from consumers and selling them right back, either by monitoring our behavior (both on- and off-line) or direct solicitation. "Tweet your favorite Dunkin' Donuts memory with #DunkinMemories!" There are even promotions that encourage consumers to write and produce their own commercials for a product -- there was one a while back where the winning ad was shown during the Super Bowl.

No there isn't.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/16287113/

More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.”

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer’s analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

A better example: Coke vs Pepsi. Two big brands. Lots of people will claim they choose whichever they drink without advertising making their mind up for them. Yet there are plenty of other colas out there, with very similar tastes, that hardly anyone drinks. This is low technology stuff, sugar water, it's not that hard to make a cola drink taste good. The reason why people only buy the big brands? Marketing.

That is theoretically possible, but with some of the more off the wall ideas like highly processed breakfast cereals, it should be easy to run statistical correlation tests.

I do agree with your point WRT established and ingrained ideas like "someone cooks your food for you and someone puts it on a table while you relax" which is not all that weird or new of an idea, just previously too expensive.

In contrast, considering something that's a bizarre idea like packaged processed breakfast cereals, that demand simply had to be manufactured because its too weird to organically grow itself. I mean, you're going to do what to corn, and then put it in a plastic bag, then drown it in cow milk even though you're an adult human not a baby cow, then eat it? Really? That's just weird.

What children want is influenced by what their peers want, and what peer groups find desirable is influenced, among other things, by merchandising-related children's TV programming.

When I was young, there was far less difference between boys toys and girls toys than there is now.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-St... - extract from this:

'For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”'

This makes the assumption that there is indeed something innate about purchasing. Short of credible psychological research, most market research relies on past sales data, past products, as well as a survey of existing products. Marketing, then, forms a self-stabilising and self-perpetuated system that makes future decisions based on its own past decisions.

This is remarkably close to Adorno and Horkheimer's view of the cultural industry: The underlying thesis here is that the culture industry preselects cultural production. Within the constraints of that preselection, the customer is free to choose whatever he or she fancies. This in turn leads to a culture industry that can claim that every subsequent selection is indeed strictly based on past consumer behaviour. After a while, this claim can even be truthful, if this initial preselection is ignored. That is why the Dialectic of Enlightenment calls this a mass deception.

"The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." - Earnshaw's Infants' Department

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink#Gender

Perhaps the main desire being served is to be able to announce "I am a boy" or "I am a girl".

Also note that there aren't many pink first person shooters.

Second, it's ridiculous to think that "half a century of counter-culture" would do anything to impact a sociological phenomenon that has roots in human society dating back hundreds if not thousands of years. Girls are given dolls to play with because the historical role of women has been primary caregivers to children. That was true a thousand years ago, and it's less true but still very true today. In the 2000's, almost 25% of families with children under 15 had stay at home moms, and out of the families where both spouses worked, the mother was the primary caregiver in 70%+ of cases. This sociological fact is reflected in the market. Household products are still marketed to women, and unsurprisingly, so are dolls marketed to girls.

If everybody was rational, then no advertising would perform signalling function if it wouldn't serve to maximize our utility.

  Psst, you're not allowed to say that :-)

As far as spinach/chocolate analogy goes, the result they're going after is even worse - it's a spinach-flavoured chocolate, or chocolate-flavoured spinach.

Spinachocolate!

I'm speaking to my own experience here. And my experience as a woman who prefers to play games as a female character is that there are not enough games with female protagonists that are not explicitly coded as "girly pink games about girly pink things". Which are generally not the kinds of games I like to play - I like the fast action reflex loops.

That's what. There are not enough games with female protagonists. And even most of the games that offer an option downplay the female option in all the advertising, make it an extra unlockable, etc. Yes, there are exceptions. I cherish them.

I think I'm gonna go pull out Bayonetta again and sigh wistfully.

edit: Oh yeah. And again, I can't speak for all women - but there are exactly three FPS games I've played to completion. They are System Shock 2, which stars a female AI and a completely ungendered protagonist, and Portal 1/2, which star a female AI and a female protagonist. If there were more manshoots that were not about being a man wandering around shooting other men, maybe I would play more of them. Or maybe not; due to my lack of interest in their narratives, I have little to no of the basic "put cursor on target, compensating for travel time" skill at the heart of manshoots, so they're pretty frustrating for me.