Yay for Snail Mail

[queerbychoice]

I have received a snail mail letter from Noog! The envelope amused me terribly, because she addressed it to "Mr. Gayle S. Madwin, Esq." She then proceeded to write a great many pages full of flattery for her Girl, so I shall now seek to earn brownie points from Noog by mentioning this fact where her Girl (or shouldn't it be Grl?) will see it.

And in the meantime, LM is supposed to have received an envelope from me. The nice lady at the post office promised me it would arrive by now.

. . .

Um, I had my television on tonight for Enterprise and there was a commercial for Jack in the Box that went something like this:

BOY: Dad, how are girls different from boys?
DAD: Uhhh . . . well, girls like to dance, and they love unicorns, whereas boys like meat and eating at Jack in the Box.

I don't think I've ever eaten at Jack in the Box even once in my life, but I must say that when they're running commercials like that, I most certainly don't intend to start. I mean, they just officially announced that over half the population is not welcome or catered to at their establishment. Who the hell came up with that brilliant marketing strategy?

Comments

[sapphiretrance.livejournal.com]

We should write them a reply stating:

¨Boys also like eating undercooked hamburgers and dying of e. coli. Indeed they do.¨

~sapphiretrance

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Sponsored by Duh Man Show. Or some other celebration of brainless sexism.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I last ate at Jack in the Box more than a decade ago, and now I'm certain I never will again. I'm impressed with the level of sexism in that ad. If anyone reading this knows who in that corporation to write and complain to post it here.

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen the ad because we don't have JitB here, but I think they were possibly being ironic. Just a thought. I think it was supposed to be funny. But god knows what goes on in the heads of advertising executives these days.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's always a slight layer of "haha, funny!" irony thrown over pretty much any scene in advertisements, because that way when people get offended and complain, the executives can protest that the ad was making fun of the offending statements. I do not in the least doubt that if I wrote in and complained about this ad, that is exactly what they would say. However, the overall effect of the ad was not critiquing those statements anywhere near adequately. That kind of thing ISN'T funny, damn it! Treating it as a vaguely amusing warm fuzzy family scene to be delighted by is not okay with me.

Re:

[donutgirl.livejournal.com]

Personally, I was more pissed off at the Wendy's ads that were playing a while back (maybe a year ago?):

a young man is a test subject in a research laboratory.
scientist: Please choose. A beautiful woman or a wendy's hamburger?
young man: (deliberates for a while): I'll take the hamburger.

Aha!, I thought. We used to treat women like pieces of meat. Now we finally understand that women are in fact inferior to pieces of meat! Even putrescent Wendy's meat!

[sapphiretrance.livejournal.com]

Huzzah Gayle!

~sapphiretrance

[grlfriday.livejournal.com]

"a great many pages full of flattery"

hmm... oh really...?

do tell.. ;)
*grin*

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

". . . and this business of not being touched by her for ten whole months - it drives me crazy, I tell you, crazy. Fortunately, she just got an international long distance calling plan, so she'll be calling me sometime this week. Yay! I <3 the sound of my Girl's voice. :) </cute>"

I'll leave it to you to extrapolate a similar tone out to the rest of the letter, since it never hurts to leave a certain air of mystery and the option of filling in your own compliments. ;)

[grlfriday.livejournal.com]

Ha! ok.. fair enough. =)

she's just oozing cuteness isn't she? ;)

[noog.livejournal.com]

Oozing cuteness, am I? Tell me more...

[grlfriday.livejournal.com]

*blush*

c'mere you... =)

[noog.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm coming. Believe me, I'm coming. ;)

[elfbabe.livejournal.com]

As a maker-of-frequent-international-calls, might I suggest something? The site (http://www.prepaidcall.com/) I buy my phone cards from has a 2.1 cents/minute rate to Japan, with a 25-cent connection fee.

[grlfriday.livejournal.com]

wow, that's cheap! thanks. =)

[noog.livejournal.com]

Gayle! Shame on you! I don't gush and tell. =P

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

No, that's what you have friends for. To give away your secrets! Have you forgotten high school gossip already?

[noog.livejournal.com]

Yay for high school social drama! Down with the sk8ters! And the preps!

[piman.livejournal.com]

How odd... I spent most of today playing DDR (which is a vague approximation of dancing) and watching "The Last Unicorn", although I seem to still be mostly male.

Then again, going to a Chinese restaurant with three female friends earlier this week, one of them overheard "Wait, the girl's a guy!" as we got up. We were almost sure that they were talking about us, because they were looking at us funny for most of the dinner (one of the girls was nibbling on another's ear). Although, we're not sure if they were referring to me, or to one of the girls.

But getting back to the point... what the hell? That has to be one of the weirdest advertisements I've heard of in a long time. I'm convinced that marketing quality has significantly decreased even in the short time I've been seriously analyzing it.

[jvb419.livejournal.com]

The ad may or not beeffective, but the people who created it are relying, I'm fairly sure, on the abundant evudence that says girls will eagerly do boy stuff (read boy books, watch boy movies and TV, play boy games) whereas boys will shun girl stuff as though it were contaminated, as indeed it is--by being girl stuff.

In caste systems mobility is only one way: down. Note the "one drop" rule for "racial" categorization in the US, or the assignment of gendered status in men's prison sexual structures. (See this brilliant article

http://www.spr.org/en/doc_01_lecture.html

for details.)