Through the miracles of facebook advertising, I saw that Zooey Deschanel has a website called "Hello Giggles." Appropriate. I checked it out - I enjoy her on The New Girl.
Needless to say, not only was I underwhelmed by what I found but I even felt a little ... offended. Their mission statement reads as follows:
hellogiggles.com is the ultimate entertainment destination for smart, independent and creative females. Everything hosted on the site will be lady-friendly, so visitors need not worry about finding the standard Boys Club content that makes many entertainment sites unappealing to so many of us.
Wait, huh? "Lady friendly," "standard boys club content," "unappealing to so many of us." What is this.
When you browse through Hello Giggles, you will find things like a live kitten and bunny cam. You'll also find DIY instructions on how to bedazzel your own tights and a plethora of (delicious) recipes. You'll find a lot of lists about the top five reason some unimportant TV show "ruined" your life and photos of painted nails.
Somehow all of that equates to being "lady friendly." As a female, the last thing I need are other females, public figures or not, telling me that bedazzling my tights and going to thrift stores will make me a better female. I don't see how this content is supposed to entertain the supposedly "smart, independent, and creative female" audience it claims to be targeting. I like to think I fall right into that group of females, but I find it incredibly frustrating that women are encouraging me to be a homemaker and watch bad TV.
I am a female in tech. I see the gender inequality. People love asking the question "why aren't there more females in tech?" Well, a lot of reasons, but sites like Zooey Deschanel (read: public figure) Hello Giggles are not helping. It's communicating that things like kittens and how Lizzie McGuire ruined your life growing up are actually important not only to other people, but to being female.
I get that there is a need for female-friendly sites that are lacking in the boobs, beer, and bros department. But I don't understand why all female sites encourage females to be uber-female and crochet. It's OK for women to want to be involved with math and science, so why aren't people like Deschanel promoting that instead of someone's nail polish of the day?
By female oriented sites like this not advocating for women to get more involved with typical "boys club" areas (math/science/tech), they are essentially saying that it's not feminine even though the site never really comes out and says that at all. Simply by saying nothing at all about it gives the impression that it's not lady like enough for their lady friendly site.
I also came across this article on Hello Giggles which really got me - The New Sexy. The premise of the article is great - it's advocating that being sexy isn't about being a hot mess anymore, it's about being smart and funny etc. That is a great message.
However, the author destroyed it fairly quickly. This is all from one paragraph under the title "SMARTS." The article is much longer than this, but it has the same tone.
Always being abreast of current events, knowledge of niche films and comics, and a quick wit, smart people are engaging on so many levels.
Okay, huh? So does that mean if I watch Run, Lola, Run! and read obscure comics, that I'll be smart? The lines following talk about how if you are smart, it'll make other people around look better by association. And something about how awesome it is to have a captive audience at a dinner party. Are these really the true benefits of being "smart"? For other people and dinner parties?
I thank technology for the proliferation of intelligence. Learning how to brew your own beer, reading the classics you skipped when you were in school, or learning the guitar on your iPad are all easy to do from a shoebox apartment.
I blame technology for making people think they are intelligent. It's so easy for people to simply parrot back one sentence of a news article and call it their "opinion" without fully understanding what they have just said. Also, brewing beer doesn't make you smart. Interesting, but not smart.
Nerd glasses and social awkwardness are hot. In fact they’re technically high-fashion
So if I buy some really thick hipster glasses, that will make me smart! Hooray!
Man, it's awesome that I have lady friendly sites telling me that being smart is as easy as watching Netflix foreign films and buying thick rimmed glasses. I'm so glad I wasted 100k+ on my college education when I could have just gone thrifting and achieved the same effect. Thanks, internet.
For now, I think I'll stick to sites like Reddit that, for the most part, lack a gender bias. Sure, I'll have to deal with more boobs and penis jokes than the readers of Hello Giggles, but I'll take my chances.