This Field is Required

It’s not at all original to note that gender-based product marketing is weird as hell. A friend who has a toddler recently posted a picture on social media of two packs of children’s underpants, pointing out that even for toddlers there’s a pink tax, with the girl’s parents expected to pay a substantial surcharge for a
seven-pack of day-of-the-week underpants. That goes on for years. Razors. Deodorant. Whatever.

Over-gender-determined product marketing is also really weirdly condescending to men, with hundreds of products designed to reassure Mister Man about his massculinity. It’s almost hard to parody, although Twitter usually rises to the challenge:

Women’s deodorant scents: rose, cotton, spring, meadow
Men’s: WINTER ICE, SHARKNADO, GLACIER PUNCH, ANTIFREEZE, GUN

— Sophie Gadd (@sophie_gadd) December 1, 2014

And this follows us everywhere. You get sort of blind to it, the way you
stop noticing the way something smells, until you pay attention, and
then it’s overwhelming.

I had to edit a page at work this week about about Botox For Men. It’s
exactly like regular Botox, but there’s a Sports Illustrated in the
waiting room and it says it’s For Men. Every nonsurgical cosmetic
procedures clinic in America needs a special page on its website about
Botox For Men because too many men won’t do a thing they suspect is
feminine. We’d probably all be better off if everyone quit worrying
about eye-wrinkles, but it’s revealing and kind of sad that some men are
afraid to do anything about theirs without a sign that says CAMO PRINT,
NONSURGICAL COSMETIC PROCEDURES, & TRUCK NUTS IN AISLE THREE.

We have a long way to go, brothers and sisters.

Billionaire Boys Club
Peter Thiel funds a science magazine called Inference. It includes a ton of junk science in with some decent stuff. Apparently that’s deliberate.

The Future
“Riverbed,” a short story from a new collection called A People’s Future of The United States.

What the Future of Work Means for America’s Cities.

Won’t repeat, might rhyme: a history of how the car industry invented the crime of jaywalking and stole the streets from pedestrian.

Twitter Curation
The Duck Dynasty guy is back and opposed to health care because we’ll all live forever in Jesus.