So I braved a freezing cold and snowy Vancouver afternoon to do a little giftmas shopping at Chapters. I knew what I was looking for, but I browsed the gift idea tables to see if anything else would catch my eye. Do you know what I saw? The typical gift ideas for Him and Her tables, but it was what was on those tables that set my teeth on edge. On the Her table there were an assortment of cook books. On the His table a selection of sports books. Because men could never be interested in a cook book and a woman could never be interested in a book about sports. This is interesting considering my whole reason for shopping there was to get my BOYFRIEND a COOKBOOK! Funny eh?
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Giftmas Sexism.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/11049
You don't mention a guitar on the His table or a vacuum cleaner on the Hers - was the store making some kind of statement that no men ever play music and no women ever vacuum? Does nobody use toothpaste or windshield wiper fluid, if they weren't on those tables?
I think it's problematic to have 'his' and 'her' tables in the first place. If you know someone (male or female) is into sports, then one could go to the sports section of the store to get a book. The only reason I could see needing gendered tables is if someone was going into the store to buy a generic gift for some (random) male or female. But even then, if you didn't know any of their interests, you could still manage to find the respective stereotypical sections if that's what you wanted to do. Chapters is normally just organized by book type/topic the rest of the year, I think that adding this at the holidays is unnecessary.
We have some Giftmas sexism on TV here in the UK.