Interesting. Shorts for girls are more than twice as expensive as shorts for boys:
No. It’s worse this year : girls’ shorts one pair £9-£14. Boys’ 2 pair £8-12
I guess the images explain it. Boys get to move and act like ordinary reasonable human beings while wearing shorts, but girls have to wear their hair up prettily and look down bashfully and fiddle with their earlobes seductively and point one foot inward awkwardly while wearing shorts. All those extras require extra engineering, and that doesn’t come cheap.
I’m joking but I’m also dead fucking serious, because this kind of messaging to girls makes me absolutely livid. Why are the two children posed so very differently? Why is the girl made to do some kind of Ivanka Trump performance? Why does everybody have to push girls into this stupid deforming crushing mold at every turn? Is it because putting the girl in a not-skirt caused everybody at the agency to panic so hard that they threw every “feminine” trope in the book at her? What the hell is wrong with everyone?
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17 responses to “Oh my god she is wearing a DIVIDED SKIRT”
She is also wearing shoes that are not appropriate to running and playing, while the boy is wearing sneakers.
You know, if you’re a girl and you’d rather stand like the boy instead of like the girl in these pictures, you must be transgender.
/s
On the other hand, weight over the running (right) ski, stem the left, transfer your weight, lean into the turn, chuck the books… . One Olympic womens’ downhill record comin’ up!
Then buy the boys’ shorts.
My wife buys men’s shirts all the time. She says comparable women’s shirts cost more and annoyingly are usually semi-sheer so she would have to wear a second shirt under them.
If nobody buys the girls’ shorts for a few years, they’ll cut the price or come out with unisex shorts.
I agree on the posing. The “coquettish” pose of a girl that age is offensive.
Skeletor, shirts are one thing, shorts are another. I used to think it didn’t matter, but I tried some men’s pants, because I insist on pockets, and found the fit…frustrating. I finally found a brand of women’s pants with pockets, and I buy those exclusively now. But I have to wait for sales, because, yes, they are more expensive.
Skeletor why do you say things like that? Like “Then buy the boys’ shorts”?
It’s just rude. If you don’t like the fact that I post about sexist tropes in advertising, why not just skip them, or stop reading B&W altogether, or whatever works for you? Why keep correcting me in that rude abrupt way?
I do “buy the boys’ shorts” or rather jeans, but that doesn’t remove all reasons for commenting on sexist tropes in advertising and everywhere else.
And for the record, coquettish posing for women and ordinary straightforward human posing for men is a bad thing at any age, not just for children.
Doesn’t appear that the girls’ shorts have pockets; at least they aren’t showing them off like they do for the boy.
Girls aren’t real people. They don’t have needs or personal interests or feelings. Females, even children, are only good for giving men and boys sexy-good-time-feelz.
Pants without pockets are evil, evil I say. Probably designed by men who were worried we might carry mace in those pockets.
On the rare occasions I end up in pants without pockets, I lock my keys in my office or my classroom, because I forget to grab them. If I just had pockets…I would put them in my pocket as soon as I used them, and they would always be on my person. What an innovation.
Look, I don’t want to do a Skeletor, but I’ve checked the M&S site and to be fair, there are loads of girls with their hands in their pockets, arms crossed, and whatnot. I hate that they photographed that little girl like that, and that the picture was selected to be used, and I’ve wondered for most of my life why people are shocked, shocked I tell you, that paedophilia is a thing but never notice that that prepubescent girls are constantly presented as something sexual (even if it’s not-yet-available-sexuality), but that particular photo of that particular girl – it’s the only one like it. I had a go at comparing the prices of 3 random items and found the prices were the same for the girl and boy versions, then I got bored of that. As for the shorts, the girl’s ones do have pockets (hooray!) but no belt loops. They look nicer than the boy shorts which do look cheap and basic, so I presume a little more effort has gone into making them, and that’s why they cost more? Not that that would make it right.
As for just buying the boys’ shorts: probably makes no difference before puberty but afterwards, they won’t fit. Which is sort of the reason for having separate categories in the first place.
Iknklast – you’re not allowed pockets, you’d only put things in them and ruin your silhouette with unsightly key-shaped lumps! Besides, if we had pockets in all our clothes, we wouldn’t be spending so much of our hard-earned cash on handbags, and won’t somebody think of the poor designers?
Seriously though, last year I needed a new winter coat and the only one I could find that was vaguely suitable, I wasn’t sure about the colour. The thing that convinced me to buy it? Not only did it have plenty of pockets, but it had a left-handed internal pocket! I have only seen such a thing once before. Right handed people have no idea how privileged they are.
Girls’ shorts cost more because they have to do extra work to remove the pockets.
lol
But why would you need pockets? Don’t y’all carry around those enormous Mary Poppins handbags where you carry all that mysterious ladystuff? Pockets are for manly things, like keys and knives and used kleenex.
This seems in keeping with the idea that women should (and naturally do) care more about clothes than men. If they care more, they’re willing to pay more and higher prices are often taken as a signal of higher quality. Such nonsense.
We buy one of our sons women’s shoes because they softer on wide feet.
If you want massive inequality look no further than swim wear. Fast suits for elite swimmers are wildly expensive, but girls suits are astronomical. Granted there’s a lot more surface area and they are slightly pro-rated to balance the cost between genders, but still women’s suits are always way more expensive than men’s.
And don’t get me started on what the torture devices for women cost – mandatory torture devices (some people call them “bras”, but that is too benign). Tiny amount of material – huge amount of dollars, at least if you want one with decent straps that don’t cut your shoulders in two (as those of us who have had multiple shoulder surgeries must use). Sure, you can get WalMart cheapies, but they don’t last long enough to justify the cost, and they are not comfortable (not that there is such a thing as a comfortable bra).