And clicking on “Women Connected” takes me to the item ” The Center for Women’s Business Research turns research into knowledge—the most up-to-date and comprehensive knowledge about one of the most dynamic and fastest growing sectors of the U.S. economy. The Center’s mission is to provide data-driven knowledge to advance the economic, social and political impact of women business owners and their enterprises worldwide. American Airlines is pleased to be a sponsor of the Center for Women’s Business Research three-year study: Accelerating the growth and success of businesses owned by women of color.”

Err… I’m confused now. What’s the problem? This is could well be tokenism, but it doesn’t seem as you describe anymore. [Reads comments] Oh, right, now you’re complaining because they pulled it. How can they win? By not having done it in the first place, right? Not good enough. You need to show a pattern of behavior before condemning them. This article doesn’t do that.

I have to say, this notion is pretty weird. The normal way to do it is to have a simple search, then an “advanced search” for people of whatever gender who like to have fine control over their search.

I suspect this was the result of a brainstorming session gone awry. It may even have been come up with by a woman. A complaint I have heard from a couple of women is that devices have been designed by men with men in mind, that they are gratuitously complicated, and I’ve been asked “why can’t they be easy to use”, etc.

I daresay a lot of men and women feel the same way (not me, I like to be able to tell machines what I want them to do in as much detail as I require). I think that’s part of the appeal to many of Apple’s devices and computers. But I think even they usually have and “Advanced” option (and I don’t mean the low-level stuff).

(Hm. There’s a more important comment I need to follow up than this one. Maybe tomorrow. I’ve made someone a promise I’ll read aloud.)

And how does this shit ever get approved?

I have to assume that a airline that large would have done research (see how they say “We’ve listened to women” on their page when introducing the new “features”) and made changes accordingly. While I’m certain that no women actually said something like, “Please, change it so it’s pink, because I’m a girl and therefore like to look at pink stuff,” I’m also sure that they must have gotten a lot of feedback regarding how “confusing” or “cluttered” the website was in the past, and compared it to, perhaps, how men maybe didn’t say those same things during whatever feedback, and assumed that if the majority of women thought it was too complicated, then it’d do them good to simplify it.

It insults me, too, just like when I read about how Best Buy was doing something similar (sorry, I don’t have a link because I found it months ago and it’s no longer online), but really, they have had to have gotten those ideas from a large number of women who requested it. We shouldn’t assume it’s just ignorant, misogynistic men who decided it was a good idea…

Charities We Support
As women, we naturally want to assist where we can

Ugh…

Side topic: My mom usually sticks to wine (on the rare occasion), but once she bought a case of Bud Light… my sisters and I teased her for years over that!

This graphic reminded me of – and fuck, I have no clue where I saw it now, probably here – the thing about marketing basically alcoholic kids’ drinks as “for the female market.” Every time something gets dumbed down, it’s “for the ladies,” who aren’t up to full adult – oops I mean manly – tastes.

There used to be a thing called 3.2 beer, or “near beer,” and back in the day (i.e., when my mother was in college during the late 50s), women could drink it (but nothing else) at bars at 18, while men had to wait until 21 for all drinks.

Of course, that didn’t stop her from getting a fake ID.

Also, a look through the archives shows me that I’ve written about crap wine marketed for women and crap radio stations marketed to women.