Ladybirds and laptops.
Hilde is a shrewd observer of all those gender and techonology biassed occurrences we come across in our daily life. And had I not been under her subtle influence, I might not have noticed this before, but now I did (thanx Hilde for educating me :)):
I was waiting around for my number to be called to the desk at the postoffice earlier today, when I noticed this display of birthday cards. They had several vertical rows of cards under different headings - two of the headings were birthdays cards for men and woman, of course nicely situated next to each other. The top card for the men on the front displayed a drawing of a laptop (with nothing on the screen) in a soft light sitting on a table,surrounded by various gadgets. The top card for women next to it displayed a ladybird in upright position painting a new black spot on the shield of a fellow ladybird - and here there was a text on the front saying "One year more....". I wonder what the senders and receivers are supposed to read out of these cards. Giving a card with a laptop on front to a man would seem to indicate something along the lines: "I know that your favourite item in the world is a laptop and rather than having a birthday cake or celebrating with friends you would rather spend the entire day in front of your laptop, so I give you another laptop to look at too!" (honestly it is the most boring card I have seen in a long time - I like laptops but what have they got to do with "birthday aesthetics?") - whereas the ladybird card implies notions along the lines of: "Since you are a woman, I know you are sensitive about growing older and of the fact that age is visible, so you are probably not too happy about being a year older because it shows -but as a fellowwoman (ladybird) you have my sympathy!". Frankly, I wouldnt be happy receiving either of the cards, and I am annoyed with the fact that birthday card producers seem to think that we still live in a world where only men are interested in techonology and women only care about their appearance. FYI, the other "male" cards in the rack mostly contained references to the consumption of alcohol and the "female" cards more or less all contained cute, furry animals (except for the card who made a pun on boring husbands). Wonder how many years it will be before they produce "female" birthday cards for single women who actually like technological gadgets but despite of that actually have a social life too;)?
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:47