{"id":4381,"date":"2008-11-26T01:04:14","date_gmt":"2008-11-26T06:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=4381"},"modified":"2010-11-25T05:16:01","modified_gmt":"2010-11-25T10:16:01","slug":"4381","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/11\/26\/4381\/","title":{"rendered":"Selling Vitamins, Selling the Idea of \u201cOpposite Sexes\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The belief that men and women are “opposite sexes” doesn’t come out of thin air.\u00a0 It doesn’t, very often, come out of our life experience either, as most people most of us know are not living stereotypes.\u00a0 No,\u00a0in fact we are TOLD that\u00a0men and women are “opposite sexes” constantly.\u00a0 Consider this submission from Andrea G.:<\/p>\n

You can now buy One-A-Day vitamins for teens, boy<\/em> and girl<\/em> teens that is<\/a>\u00a0(and in case you can’t tell which one is which, they’re color-coded).\u00a0 According to Women’s Health News<\/a>, the vitamins “for him” have more magnesium and the vitamins “for her” have more calcium and iron.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(1) Notice the\u00a0obnoxious invisibility of dad (my emphasis):<\/p>\n

Did you know there are gender specific teen multivitamins to address the top health concerns of moms and teens<\/em>?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is annoying, of course, because it reproduces the idea that dads don’t care about or aren’t paying attention to their kids.\u00a0 But it’s also kind of ridiculous because, as long as we’re going by stereotypes, if there’s one social group less concerned with health than men, it’s teenagers.<\/p>\n

(2)\u00a0 I will leave aside whether teenaged female and male bodies are so dramatically different that they need different vitamins and minerals (I am not convinced), and instead just point out that One-A-Day has gendered what vitamins are for.\u00a0 Check out the first bullet point in the close-up (in case you can’t tell which is which, the “For Him” is in block letters with stripes across his torso and the “For Her” is in cursive with spirally curves):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So boys need vitamins for muscles and girls need vitamins for clear skin?<\/p>\n

I bet these vitamins will sell like hotcakes.<\/p>\n

Thanks Andrea!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The belief that men and women are “opposite sexes” doesn’t come out of thin air.\u00a0 It doesn’t, very often, come out of our life experience either, as most people most of us know are not living stereotypes.\u00a0 No,\u00a0in fact we are TOLD that\u00a0men and women are “opposite sexes” constantly.\u00a0 Consider this submission from Andrea G.: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,373,55,2099,2096,2091,2087,252],"class_list":["post-4381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrenyouth","tag-color","tag-gender","tag-gender-childrenyouth","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-healthmedicine","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-healthmedicine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4381"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29964,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4381\/revisions\/29964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}