sweet crystals is a rockstar
July 10, 2008
Filed under feminism, life things
Tags: brie, crappy advertising, def leppard, fruit flies, misogyny, pyromania, store fronts
your wife just called and said it's ok to let you look at things as long as you don't break them
and if you’re quiet and well-behaved, she said we could untie the leash.
karen and i were walking around downtown and saw this sign in a storefront and did the angry feminist double take.
at her suggestion i am posting about it, but i don’t even know what to say. that sign better be at least 50 years old because damn. DAMN.
i wanna go in there now, find something relatively expensive, get the deal set up, get on the phone for a minute, let my face drop and hang up and be like “actually …….. he says I can’t buy that yet and that i have to go home and have sex with him now… actually, his exact words were that i can only swipe his credit card if the other hand is pushing a stroller with his new baby son in it. can we put this on hold?”
things i like a lot: brie and toast, rock of ages by def leppard (actually all of pyromania pretty much kicks ASS), school of rock, quentin tarantino movies
things i do not like a lot: fruit flies getting smarter and faster. what the hell.
eileen says stuff 
So, here’s a question. How offended would you get if you saw a similar sign in an electronics store with “wife” instead of “husband”?
well -i- wouldn’t be that personally offended.. i might be a little indignant for your sake, and i’d also notice the assumption that women wouldn’t be interested in electronics, but again, it’s hard to be offended when the sign does *not* assume that -you- begin with the baseline of not having the permission of your spouse to spend $.
the real question is YOU: would you *not* be offended?
No, I wouldn’t be offended. It’s even kind of funny.
In this case, I feel like it’s more about either party needing permission for something big than it is about putting wimmins in their place. To exercise some stereotypes here, I think a wife would be just as indignant at the unapproved purchase of an HDTV as a husband would at an unapproved thousand-dollar trip to the shoe store.
Is needing the permission of your spouse to spend $ really all that shocking and evil?
Also, why am I a quilt?
i see what you’re saying.. though there are certainly more layers of stereotype and assumption-y stuff at play.. wouldn’t we agree that a wife controlling the finances carries different implications than a husband controlling the finances?
you’d have to think that what with the assumption that women are looking after the household, they might be controlling finances to make sure there’s enough to pay for furniture, groceries, children’s clothes, school supplies, lessons, house-cleaning supplies, appliances, etc …
versus, advertising makes it look like guys, if they are in a position to spend money, aren’t setting aside funds to make sure Jimmy Jr has enough diapers… it’s frivolous-er, funner things like flat screens and DVD players (things women also love…).
so, a husband being like “don’t spend $!” .. you gotta be like, … why does he care? versus, a wife disapproving of a Best Buy purchase, you kind of assume it’s because she’s added up how much $ it’s gonna take to feed and clothe the kids.
of course all these are stereotypes (as you pointed out). which is another thing that bothers me about the sign. it can certainly be interpreted in the gender-neutral way you just did, but all the stereotypes in play don’t naturally lead to that.
it makes it sound like women don’t have control over their own money. i mean, we’re not living in Little Women / Little House on the Prairie days when a girl had to ask her husband (the sole breadwinner) if she could buy one new dress (in those days, like, half his salary).
think about this – HDTV is a family-use item that affects the layout of the household. Shoes go on your feet. think about this too: are you going to ask your wife’s permission every time you need to change cello strings? i know how much those things cost, it’s no small amount. what if you wanted a new guitar to replace the juicy mexican strat you just got? are you going to ask permission?
i don’t know why you’re a quilt… you gotta go into your wordpress profile or something and change your icon?
forget about financial dependence and spousal approval… what about the fact that is pretty much implying that all women should be married anyway?
it’s like.. hey! if you’re a woman and you want to shop here.. you’re of course married.. because 1) don’t all women get married? aren’t they supposed to find a nice husband and have some babies? and 2) if you’re not married.. how would you afford shopping here anyway?
what about a sign that says “hey there ladies! (and cross-dressing men)! You’ve worked hard so buy yourself something nice with your own money. You deserve a treat”
Single financially independent women are the latest thing.. haven’t you heard?
and man.. what about a sign that says “Hey! Your husband called and asked if he could borrow money since you’re the successful businesswoman and you bring home the bacon”
and i know this has been addressed… but i just can’t get over it… shoes? really? The day i spend that much money on shoes is the day i lose all self-respect because i will have turned into a very frivolous human being. people are starving and i’m wearing thousand dollar shoes? No thank you. If i’m going to blow money on myself.. it’s going to be on something worthwhile… a new camera… a sweet silver trombone… an xbox
those are just my 2 cents
I was going to make the argument that you’d never find a sign with the genders flipped…until I googled it and found a 1/2 dozen examples very quickly.
All I gotta say is…the gender police suck.
And I still believe the sign is offensive.
I think I side with mysteriously quilted David. But then again, I might have an odd sense of what’s acceptable. If a fellow student or resident makes fun of me for being from Colombia (i.e. drug connections) I think it’s fun to go along with the gag. Does it imply as a doc I’ll be more likely to abuse prescription drugs, more freely give away pain meds, or generally abuse my power? Probably some. But I don’t take them that seriously.
Similarly, here I feel like its just playing on a fun stereotype. I do know women who will go out and spend hundreds of dollars on shoes when the couple’s short on money. Of course, it doesn’t actually apply to all women. But trying to make a funny sign that does is going to likely fail.
Moving on to my next point I guess, its been pointed out that this sign could easily have the genders reversed and placed in an electronic store: “Your wife called and said you’re allowed to buy that useless 200 dollar gadget you think looks cool.” I think Sweet Crystal (who is a rock star I’m told!) said that such signs were easily Googled, even.
Useless electronic gadgets and expensive shoes are pretty comparable as far as the stereotypes go. Frivolous expenses regardless of the gender role the man/ woman plays in the family. (That said, if the original sign was on display in, say, a supermarket that would be an ENTIRELY different can of beans. [insert hispanic joke about beans here].) Do all women love shoes? Of course not. Do all men love gadgets? Nope. I know some women who’d kill for a gadget and some guys who’d murder for nice shoes. But the stereotypes pretty much dictate that it’ll be funnier if we put the original sign in a shoe store, and my imaginary sign in a gadget store.
And, last point I think, if the signs exist for both genders, is that a form of gender equality? If there were some store where both signs could be placed in the window and be stereotypically applicable (a shoe/useless-gadget store if you will) would that be okay? I’d lean towards yes, myself, though opinions will certainly vary. I don’t think equality means we have to lose our sense of humor over small stereotypes. I feel like if we acknowledge some and apply them equally for some chuckles, that works.
~C
ok two things..
i’d venture to guess that a truly unsexist guy will see the sign differently than a dude with slightly more troubling tendencies. yeah, on its face, the fact that the signs exist on both sides might seem like gender equality, speaking to the concept that spouses might ball-and-chain each other out of frivolous purchases. an unsexist guy might just as easily laugh at the “guys like electronics” stereotype as at “girls like shoes” stereotype.
the sexist implication on it is that it doesn’t go the other way. is a guy who says no when his wife asks if she can buy an $80 dress going to ask her permission if he wants to buy an $80 gadget? would you believe that? versus, a wife who says no to $80 gadget.. isn’t it easier to imagine her hesitating before dropping $80 on shoes?
second, i’m alllll about laughing at stereotypes (i do remember laughing uncontrollably in the law school library after somebody threw like a half dozen asian slams at me, with the finale: “ok but don’t throw your chopsticks at me.”)
bottom line is, when joke and truth get too close to each other, a delicate balance has to be struck. whatever is thrown around as a joke needs to maintain respect. people might call you the drug lord but do you ever doubt that as we say it, we respect you as a human being? do you ever really think that anybody thinks you’ll abuse your drug power as a doc?
but what if you walked into a sporting goods store and it said “all are welcome to shop here, but hispanics must pee into a cup first.”
please tell me you’d at least balk a little bit at that. i don’t know if that’s the best example, but the blanket application of a tired stereotype that is based on little to no information (or faulty information) … makes it less funny, doesn’t it? cracking a joke at your expense without figuring out anything else about you speaks a little less to respect.
i’ll take any opportunity to laugh at myself, at women, at asians, etc- that is presented, but the jokes that strike a chord that feels bad and touches on problems that are real (that women must be unselfish and take only when allowed but men can have whatever they want) … are less funny.
sidestepping this whole debate, i have to say i’ve had a LOT of returns at the gap that went something like:
[bob] “sure, we can return that. was there anything wrong with it?”
[customer] “no, but my husband/wife got real mad at me when i got home…”
the failsafe protocol is to keep all the bags hidden under your car seats, and then sneak them into the house one by one in the middle of the night over the course of a week, then be like “oh, that? i’ve had that for years.”
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