We’ve posted in the past about the way in which “male” is often taken to be the default or neutral category, with “female” a notable, marked, non-default one. For instance, the Body Worlds exhibit, “regular” t-shirts are men’s, Best Buy assumes customers are male, stick figures on signs are generally male, and default avatars tend to be male.
We’ve collected several more examples of the tendency to present men as the norm, while women are a marked, non-default category. For instance, Jane G. sent us this photo of t-ball sets, one for girls and the other with no sex specified:
Eric Stoller pointed out that ESPN differentiates between college basketball and “women’s” basketball:
Jessica J. noticed that Wal-Mart Target helpfully lets you know where to find both neutral, plain old deodorant and women’s deodorant:
Lindsay H. pointed out that when you go to the U.S. Post Office’s website to forward your mail, it offers you the chance to subscribe to magazines. Those aimed at women (Cosmopolitan, First for Women, etc.) are in the category “Women,” while equivalent magazines for men (Esquire, Maxim) are not in a category titled “Men” but, rather, “Lifestyle”:
And Jane V.S. noticed that REI has various types of marked, “non-standard” sleeping bags, including those for tall people and women:
NEW (May ’10)! Renée Y. sent along another example, bike helmets:
NEW (July ’10)! Jessica B. spotted this pair of sibling outfits, coming in “Awesome Girl” and “Awesome Kid”:
ALSO NEW (July. ’10)! E.W. searched Google for men’s specific road bikes and Google asked, “Don’t you mean women’s specific road bikes”? Because there are road bikes for people and road bikes for women.
NEW (Aug. ’10)! Ann C. sent a screenshot of bubblebox, a site for children’s games. Notice that along the top there are seven options. The last is “girls,” suggesting that all the rest are for boys.
