get 'em young, raise 'em the wrong way?

[acroyear]

Mike the Mad Biologist:

A colleague looking to buy Christmas gifts went to the Discovery Channel store page and noticed that boys and girls had two different pages. It's nice to see that a company supposedly dedicated to scientific inquiry has decided that girls don't like or want science.

The examples are pretty bad; the girls section includes "the Discovery Knit Kit" and "Discovery Friendship Bracelets" while the boys section has "Discovery Whodunit? Forensics Lab".

Comments

[fiona64.livejournal.com]

The examples are pretty bad; the girls section includes "the Discovery Knit Kit" and "Discovery Friendship Bracelets" while the boys section has "Discovery Whodunit? Forensics Lab".

My dad's union used to sponsor a very nice holiday event, and all of the kids got to go up and select a Christmas gift. The year that I selected a chemistry set, a lot of my little girlfriends were amazed, because they had chosen Barbies and the like.

I suppose that chemistry set, and the corresponding microscope I requested and received, should really have been harbingers of my future studies in forensic science, LOL.

BTW, the Discovery forensics lab is pretty cool.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I picked up the story from Shakespeare's Sister, where there is a line in the comments that is so hilarious that it almost makes up for the pain of knowing that 30 years after feminism and 6 years after CSI made women forensic-geeking fun the marketers still think that all girls care about is makeup.

Almost.

[faireraven.livejournal.com]

I want all three! Well, okay, maybe just the knit and the forensics kits... I stopped making the friendship bracelets years ago...

[faireraven.livejournal.com]

Dear? I just checked the girl's side... It's also got the forensics lab. And the battling t-rex game, the remote control dragon, glow in the dark solar system model, mini-macro microscope, bug listener, metal detector, chemistry lab, telescope, chromoshift roboreptile...

It just puts some of the girly items first. But that same page with the knitting has the forensics lab as well.

[faireraven.livejournal.com]

Um... While I was all ready to get medieval on discovery's ass (not to mention they didn't hire me, but I digress), I just took a look.

The same forensics lab is on the first girl's page. There's about 8 girly items listed before the rest of the items, and the rest of them are almost hit for hit identical to the boys items. Oh, sorry, the boys items has a digital baseball clock.

They're not even making pink and blue forensics kits.

Yeah, the first 8 items are knits and nails and bracelets and pottery wheels... And the rest of the items are just like the boys, right down to the "yuck" specimen jar and the dissect a frog...

Now that I look at it? The girls section is larger than the boys section. Probably because they just added all the girly stuff to the girls section, but it's almost identical to the boys section above the extras.

Yeah, it's a little annoying to see the "spool knit jewelry" just for girls, but the fact that they also have forensics kits and dissected frogs in the girls side means they're not completely off their rockers.