I was directed toward this article about unnecessary gendering of seemingly gender-neutral products this afternoon, which made mention of Kleenex Mansize tissues, which really, honestly do exist:

It seemed ridiculous, but really, that was the point of the article, the fact that manufacturers and marketers really do play with all kinds of gender stereotypes in order to sell products that really don’t make much sense being gendered, often to the minimization or detriment of the concept of femininity. Gender variants of certain products sort of make sense – deodorants, I guess, and (maybe) razors – my wife swears that the handles on some of the “lady” models are more convenient for shaving legs and such; but tissues? Mayhaps certain manly men won’t blow their manly snot from their manly nose into a dainty little bit of tissue paper, unless that bit of tissue paper is slightly larger than the girly equivalent, and comes in a manly box. Seems ridiculous to me, not to mention misogynistic.

I then got curious about this phenomenon, and did a little research. I was already familiar with things like “Hungry Man” TV dinners, shower loofa sponges (soft pastels for women, black and red for men), plus the inviolable law that says that girl toys must be pink, and the standard tactics of selling of beer and giant pick-up trucks using masculine imagery, and soap, wine, and little round compact cars using the feminine….

…well, except for this one:

(Though I always found this ad really funny, but not for the reasons the creators expected. This particular car’s popularity with gay men delightfully subverts the ad’s blatant homophobia; it’s the turnabout I find funny; apparently the Caliber resists the fairy’s magic because it’s already so damned fabulous?)

In any case, marketers do this all the time; and seems like it’s getting worse. Besides the tissues, they’re gender-differentiating stuff like earplugs and tape now. Then there’s Austrailian beer.

The saddest part is, advertisers do this because it works. They have seminars about this stuff. I understand that men and women are different; physically, certainly, as well as in other areas, and that nobody’s ever going to market a man-grade tampon, but do we really have to reinforce gender stereotypes to the point where boys and girls are pressured to buy school supplies from segregated bins each August?

As the father of two daughters, I’d been holding out hope that society was beyond such rigidly defined gender roles that only boys can use the big tissues. I guess I was just wasting my time.