I have nothing really interesting to say about having attended the Reason Rally (I’m sure everything has already been said by people much better than me), but I wanted to air something that kinda bugged me on a completely different topic.
I came across the book, The IT Girl’s Guide to Becoming an Excel Diva. I sarcastically thought to myself, “I bet this has to do with buying designer shoes,” and son of a bitch, it did, according to the copy on the back.
I know this isn’t the worst thing in the world, but I found it pretty offensive that female stereotypes are perpetuated like this, especially in this day and age. The stereotype goes that women have a very finite and shallow set of interests, especially expensive ones like fashion and especially shoes. It’s something you see fairly often. You’d think it’s offensive enough not to get past the publisher.
I complained to my BFF Karl, who is a man and, while I wouldn’t really call him a feminist, is all-in-all very modern thinking when it comes to sexism. His response was that since there really are women like the book was describing, it wasn’t offensive. After all, the market is only supplying the demand.
True enough, but I still thought that perpetuation of such sexism crossed a line. Suppose that the book was selling racism, not sexism and you’ll better see my point of view. Can you imagine a book called, let’s say, “Excel for Cool Blacks”? What if its copy was about bling and rap music? See what I mean?
What do youse think?
1 users responded " Excel for Divas: oh, c’mon "
March 28 2012
Reading the description, I was puzzled. It seemed like a farce, appealing to the “girly side” of people when using Excel.
I am a man. I use Excel in my workplace all the time. Women in my workplace also use Excel all the time. And the last thing that goes through any of our minds is how “fashionable” anything is in this utilitarian software application. It’s WORK, for Chrissake!
However, when I saw the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) talent of the author, everything started to make sense. This is nothing more than a creative way to channel key demographics (via keyword searching) into a market to buy otherwise non-themed products. There might not be an “Excel for Cool Blacks,” but I’ll wager the author has staged a plethora of similar gimmicks.
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