Monday, June 15, 2009

Hi! Can you be more condescending please?

Look, I am not one to get offended by anything. But there is one thing that sets my phasers to destroy (like the Star Trek reference?) and that is condescending talk about women only being interested in cooking/cleaning/big closets to put their shoes/clothes/purses in.

So when I saw this headline from one of my favorite sites: San Diego Comic Con: Not Really For Girls? I just had to run over and read. This isn't something io9 was saying, they were reporting on two specific things. One being a contest put on by IGN open only to males in the United States aged 18-24 to win a "journalistic assignment" in a tie-in for District 9. The irony is well...ironic (see, if you aren't aware District 9 is a movie about some aliens from outer space that land on Earth and are forced into internment camps and deals with issues of treating intelligent beings as second class citizens [in this case the irony is that this contest is open to only males and treats women, who aren't the "target" audience as second class citizens. I know it's not completely the same...but the second topic of this article deals with the second-class citizen part])

IGN claims it's not their fault (as is covered on io9) because it was a marketing event from the studio aimed at a narrow audience...apparently girls don't like alien movies. Funny...I quite like them (Just NOT Fire In the Sky and certainly not Communion) guess I'm not a woman, or over the age 18-24. They've since decided this is probably not the best image to throw out there and have created an "equal" contest for those pesky females. No one who came up with this contest thought about the fact that a lot of these men might actually enjoy being interviewed by a cute girl asking about District 9?

Now onto the other topic covering Comic Con. It's an article from the L.A. Times! Apparently women only care about Twilight and New Moon (look, I just saw the first one and while I enjoyed it, I'd hardly scream for the stage to get near those pot-head kids). They mention True Blood (which I love) and rushing to the stage to offer to (wait for it...) do Jake Gyllenhaal's laundry on his abs! Look, no offense to Jake Gyllenhaal, but I wouldn't offer to do his laundry, nor any man's laundry on anyone's abs or in their washing machines; they can do their own damn laundry, this isn't 1952!

What makes this article so annoying is that they assume women don't watch or play things targeted at men and wouldn't want to go to Comic Con just for the good ol' geekery of it, or to see people in movies or shows they like for any other reason other than "they take their shirt off".

Apparently, according to IGN and The LA Times, women should be happy to wash clothes and see shirtless men...while I don't mind washing my own clothes and seeing a nice looking shirtless man, that isn't what I am interested in seeing at Comic Con. I wonder why there isn't a Boy's Guide to Comic Con, wherein we see how many women take their tops off? Hmmm...

No comments:

Post a Comment