January 21, 2021

So here's a bit of sexist marketing I just noticed. I was looking for socks on Amazon, and thought I had the search filter set to women's, but it evidently reverted to "all clothing," so that I was presented with a selection of men's socks. I reset the filter, and was struck by the difference in the mannequin's feet. For men, there is a slight angle, suggesting imminent action, like a sprinter poised to take off. For women, by contrast, the feet are set at a tip toe angle, denoting the kind of walking one is forced to do when wearing (quite high) heels: cautious and constrained. The plain contrast is men = agents, women = ornaments. It's the sort of messaging that's not really subliminal, since it's there in plain sight, but is nonetheless imbibed unconsciously for the most part, I suspect; and like so many other things, it reinforces (to the detriment of those of us who identify as female) the presumption that gender is a simple binary, and not a magically complex continuum.