Perfect for fathers day.......

Self aware disclaimer.... what I am about to propose is something that would uphold and solidify damaging gender norms, and you know, capitalism and that. As such it should be read for entertainment purposes only.....

There are a lot of things that I would do if I didn't have a soul, one of which is advertising and marketing. I think I would be good at it; it's also probably a really fun job for those bereft of a social conscience. 

I came up with an idea the other day which I think could make me millions. Inspired by the patronising pinkification of items which though fairly neutral in and of themselves, have become more associated with men.  Girlie gardening, pink computers, pink tools - all over the place women are encouraged to buy 'boys toys' by companies making pink versions*. 

All this is obviously making someone somewhere some money. 

So what-about Macho Housework? Plenty of companies are already using this approach, like Coke Zero - which claims to be a healthier diet drink, but is largely a product intended to tap the body conscious dick market. 

So why not market traditionally 'women's work' to men by making it macho?

I have lots of ideas for products which would cover a broad range of household tasks....

* The Footie Machine - it's a green front-loading washing machine with a football for a door!

* For use in your Footie Machine... blokey detergent! It comes in a suave black box, with silver writing and geometric shapes. Comes in a variety of flavours - beer, bacon, and Lynx (possible joint product?)

* Action Hero Washing line - it's a retractable washing line with your favourite action hero on one end! Watch him zip line from one side of the garden to the other.  Available in numerous varieties including Sly Stallone, Indiana Jones and The Terminator. Comes with pegs featuring your favourite movie characters! Available in Sci Fi or Action Movie. Pegs also come free with special packs of Blokey Detergent - can you collect the whole set?

*The radio-active Mancrowave - it's a microwave with snazzy radiation warning stickers!

* Part of the same range as the Mancrowave, is the Radio-active mop. This mop has power. This is the sort of mop that Jack Baur would use to mop up nuclear waste; or as a creative implement of torture. Available in black and green with snazzy radiation warning stickers!

*What could be more manly than knives? How about knives SHAPED LIKE GUNS! Also available as swords. 

* Are you Hoovering, or are you controlling your own monster truck van, or space-ship? That's right, a hoover shaped like monster truck, van or space-ship. 

In truth my intention was to come up with stupid products, but actually some of these sound quite fun, more fun than pink garden shears anyhow.....

* or chose more expensive pink versions of products they would have bought anyway which is probably more likely the case. 

Hope not Hate

So sad news this morning about the BNP. Hearing that racist fuckwits have been elected in a place where I am from adds despair to an otherwise pleasant monday morning.  

Don't have much to say about it, just thought I would draw attention to a 'they don't represent me' petition. 

Sighs..

Teach first?

I've been thinking about applying to teach first but looking at the website for it makes me feel a little bit ill. 

All these lame ass cartoons of smiling graduates going into rough, sorry I mean 'challenging' schools, looking serious, thoughtful, ready for action, ready for their temporary teaching mission. 

Now I'm not suggesting that aren't any good intentions behind this scheme (though I am suspicious about the fact that it is business funded). The problems do seem to outweigh the positives.

Having read the FAQs on their site, I have a few of my own....

 

Like, doesn't it de-value teaching as a profession by suggesting that it is something you could do for 2 years before you get on with your real job? 

Why do you want to attract people who hadn't considered teaching? 

Aren't the best teachers the ones who think that education is the most important thing in the world, and want to do it for reasons other than a career stepping stone?

What do you mean by 'exceptional' graduates, and what experience prior to Teach First do these graduates have of 'challenging' schools?

Why are you giving the most needy schools poorly qualified teaching staff?

Why do you think these schools are challenging? 

Do you think young middle class enthusiasm is the best solution to all social ills?

Are there any ethical qualms about challenging schools (or disadvantaged youth ) being used as a leadership stepping stone by those who are (relatively) privileged?

I'm not saying no good ever comes out of this program, frankly I don't know. The premise of Teach first  seems worryingly ill conceived. 

I did Project Trust, which was sold as a year to be proud of,  and though I am proud of some things, my abiding feeling is one of massive conscience ache. When I read over these profiles of how teaching poor kids helped Henry Whatshisface-smythe come up with examples of his leadership skills to get a job at JP morgan, I can't help but feel that it's all just a bit gross. 

Snog Marry Avoid?

Snog marry avoid seems to regard itself as a major innovation in the mind numbing genre of ‘the make over show’. It offers its participants a ‘make-under’: a radical life changing opportunity for them to see themselves without make up . The show has one simple message; too much slap and you’re a slapper. The participants are largely female, though men are also occaisionally featured,  so that when anybody dares point out that the whole thing might be a little bit sexist they can reel them out and say ‘no way, look we picked on some men too’.  The participants are made to stand infront of ‘Pod’, a cheap looking computer graphic which looks like a giant mechanical talking clitoris.  

Pod tells them that they look ridiculous with a lot of make up on, and the point is duly emphasised by Vox Pops men in the street, who decide whether they would 'snog' 'marry' or 'avoid'.  In this weeks episode, a barbiefied EMO kid is told that her bright make up makes her look stupid, and men are encouraged to call another woman 'cheap'. The 'make unders' inevitably dress the women to fit a fairly bland ideal which impresses the men in the street. To add to the hypocrisy of the proceedings the presenter herself is caked in make up, it's not so much about going without make up, as wearing 'natural look' make up. Once again television mistakes sexist nonsense for emancipation. 

Probably too long and not really enough of a review for my application form, I thought I would publish this here anyway in response to some guardian tit writing a tenuous piece in praise of Snog Marry Avoid. 

Been trying to think up some kind of male version, say...

'How much of a cock is this guy?'*

It would involve men parading about, acting agressively or like sexist gits, and then women get to rate them on a 'cock-ometer'. They would also be ridiculed by a talking camera. Hell you could even have a celebrity one, with awards for Celebrity Cock of the year, finally giving Jeremy Clarkson and John McCirirck a good reason to be on TV. 

Incase you were wondering, yes, this is what you get if you type 'cockometer' into google images.

It also looks like Jeremy Clarkson has something on Top Gear called a 'cockometer', hopefully he won't get too close to it himself or it might just explode..

* Even as I type this I worry i am being too mean, proving that I have much more of a soul than anyone involved in 'snog marry avoid'

Television

Settled down to watch some random bits of nonsense on the idiot-box, and remembered how much television makes me want to rip my own eyes out. 

First I watched Marcus Brigstocke chat to a Tory MP on 'I've never seen Star Wars'. I usually like Marcus Brigstocke, he's kind of like a cuddly Louis Theroux, a poor girls Louis if you will - except of course, he's not. Like anyone in the media he is public schooled, and there was something galling about watching him all pally with David Davis, like - however left wing he might be, Marcus has more in common with David Davis than he does with me. 

Then I decided to see what else was on iplayer. I decided against 'Kirsten's topless ambition' the first few minutes of which was like watching my soul die. I am young enough to remember Kirsten as one of the presenters of my childhood, filling the space before The Simpsons with something less annoying than whatever was on CITV. I don't want to see her 'investigate' boosting her career by going topless. I don't want her to make light of sexism from her comfortable position as a middling tv person, and I don't want her to even think about getting her boobs out. 

Instead I watched snog marry avoid. I'm not sure why, maybe I hate myself today. I'm not sure how this sort of stuff gets on television. The point of it all is to make girls look less 'fake'. I know I'm pointing out the obvious here, I know all this stuff is crap but still, I mean it's there isn't it - it exists. Someone gets paid to smear this excrement into people's consciousness. Probably more than two people. 

I watched it most of the way through. It can't be bothered to rant about it because it's just too obvious why it is so bad. 

I never particularly wanted to be the sort of person that 'doesn't have TV' but you, television - you drove me to it. 

My-Bloody-sogyny (I tried for ages to think up a punny title and this is the best I could manage)

I was flicking through festival websites and I came across this advert for 'Nightmare before Xmas' , an All Tommorrow's Parties event curated by My Bloody Valentine. 

For anybody not cool enough to know what is so special about ATP, it's a festival where bands get to pick the line up and it's at Butlins. It's more indie than a comic book version of Juno printed on a T shirt. Your £300 ticket gets you chalet accommodation and the knowledge you are gonna be at the frickin coolest festival in all of coolsville. It's in the name- not only are you cool enough to go to all the parties, you go to the parties of the future. 

I've never been, I'm sure it's very good.

Anyway I thought I would put this ad up here to express my annoyance and invite comment at their use of a corpse like woman surrounded by twee indie creatures. 

A woman floating who is looking away with her legs spread apart? WTF ATP?

Twee owls do not negate the horrendous 'rape- like images as dark and edgy' bullshit that is going on here; infact to me it seems even more horrible. Yes, let's have a smiling blob playing with a rocket over a woman who looks like she has been murdered or sexually assualted (or both). Good work.

Sinister trivialisation/objectification inherent in the image aside, the ad itself could not seem any more contrived. It's as if someone swallowed a mashed up copy of Vice magazine and a box of crayons. 

'Well, let's call it nightmare before christmas - Tim Burton, he's cool and dark and all the hipsters love him, and cartoony twee things, that's very indie, got to be indie - and a woman looking as if she might have been raped, well that's really very dark and edgy. Can't have enough edge now can we. No it's not sexist, look there's a cute monster and a bird holding a wilted tulip'

Pathetic. 

Hipster, 'ironic' indie sexism - still sexism. 

http://www.atpfestival.com/Feedback.php if you want to complain. 

Leaving your house: the fatal mistake that will cost you YOUR LIFE !!

It's a good job I picked up the metro yesterday when I was on the bus, so that I could read about the conviction of the murderer and rapist who killed Moira Jones, a woman in Glasgow. 

Apparrently she had an argument with her boyfriend, and went out for the night; which turned out to be the fatal mistake which cost her her life. 

Yes this is how yesterdays Metro actually covered the story. Moira Jones made the mistake of going out after a row with her BF. How dare she? Don't women know if they go out at night they are likely to bump into rapists and murderers?

It is good of the Metro to warn us women to stay in with our menfolk. Good of them to shift at least some of the responsiblity on to this murdered woman.  After-all, if women will get in the way of violent men what are they to expect?

I hope to see this approach used more often in other fatalaties, ie - 

Boy 16, decides to cross over the street - the fatal mistake that cost him his life!

132 passengers go on holiday to greek island on a plane, the fatal mistake that cost them their lives.  Sue bloggs just needed to get away from work for a little while, little did she know this would be a fatal mistake as the plane she boarded plummetted to the ground. 

Well done the Metro for having the balls to tell it like it is.When bad things happen to people then they have to take responsibility. 

WTF?!!

A fellow feminist flagged up this advert for Wilkinson Razors.

The website it was on suggested in an aggravatingly playful tone that the racist stereotypes might 'ruffle a few feathers'. Consider this bird's feather's ruffled in a Hitchcock's The Birds, kind of way. 

Of course it's racist sexist bullshit, that much should be obvious to anyone with eyes that are connected to a brain. Apart from that, who the hell shaves their Bikini line to cheer themselves up? I mean seriously? Surely not even the world's femmiest women think, ooh I 'm bored I'll get rid of some body hair.  That will be fun, I will shave and it will be all bumpy and red, and then my bath will be full of pubes which I will have to then clean. Yes, really, great fun. 

Even if you stick with the stupid stupid garden analogy - would you rather, spend ages gardening, or sod the gardening, invite a some people over, get drunk and have a garden party.

When you are having a garden party, do the guests really care if the garden is overgrown? 

Supposing they do care, one has to ask oneself  'are these the sort of people I want to invite into my garden?'.

Do these guests ever do any gardening themselves?  If they do,  have you ever considered the fact that they might be boring wankers ?

Wouldn't it just be better if we just left our gardens with lots of grass and concentrated on having better parties? Interesting fun parties, where people can let themselves be who they want and relax, rather than feeling arkward and constricted by all the tidiness. 

On a positive note, snaps to South Park for this episode.