Not often, no. Why would we? Especially once you are nearing 60 and it is assumed you have learned the game. You either know the game and have figured it out (it really isn’t hard to figure out) or you are oblivious in which case you aren’t talking about it. I did teach my youngest the game - i.e. these razors are just as good and you get 5 of them for $3. They also know how to give themselves a haircut and color their hair. There are other things that they haven’t learned, but will - like take a guy car shopping with you or find a mechanic you like that knows women have to brain cells to rub together. And today’s birth control means that you can nearly forgo the feminine products aisle.
Maybe…its a generalization of course. My husband has more shoes than I do and they are more expensive. His wardrobe costs more. He is willing to spend more on good bottles of booze. His car is WAY more expensive than mine. He is a man of expensive tastes married to a frugal woman. I do spend way more on purses and jewelry than he does 
But I’m willing to bet that this holds - there are wants that in general men spend more on (I suspect booze and cars are two of them) - but because we see those as normal luxuries - and because what men want is normalized, we don’t judge it the same way as we judge a woman who carries a $250 purse or weekly manicures.
I don’t know about the other women here but my girlfriends and I talk about smashing the patriarchy on a daily basis. When we’re finished with all our chores, of course.
Those who think this is about women being “willing” to pay more, this is like saying women are paid less because they are willing to work for less.
It’s true in the sense that you’d rather have the job than not have it. Or would rather have the product you like better than not have it. But, as has been pointed out multiple times, in many cases, there’s no reason why the product women prefer should not be the default, no extra price option.
Heh. As a matter of fact, the women I know who have young children are more irritated about the “pink tax” on what’s marketed to their daughters than on products marketed to themselves.
Sure, consumerist universe, let’s incessantly tell our little girls that girls are supposed to have the pink and girly stuff, and then jack up the price on it! Mustn’t pass up an opportunity to simultaneously indoctrinate and overcharge the female young to conform to sexist gender expectations!
“Smashing the patriarchy” is all good so long as it does not translate into “rejecting the penis.” Have your way in the job market all you like. Just don’t do that. Please. whimper
Definitely. Also, “boys” clothes tend to be more durable, so they are more likely to make usable hand-me-downs or be resalable. A lot of the “girls’” stuff is cheaply made crap. And, yes, as a parent I can and do tell my kids about marketing tricks, and I often refuse to buy the crappy expensive stuff my daughter begs for. But, here’s another way the unfairness works: there’s plenty of stuff my son has marketed to him that, when he wishes for it, I’m pretty happy to buy it for him. But my daughter has so much useless or cheaply-made crap marketed to her. So little of it is of a quality that I want to buy – it’s going to be broken or discarded long before my son’s Lego are old hat. So, my daughter gets less of the things she gets really excited about. How’s that for a “pink tax.”
You’re probably right. We don’t see nails and purses in the same vein as cars or booze. Maybe it is because guys don’t want nails or a purse but women might also want the car or the booze.
I think at some point it all changes, money changes things. Or maybe it is more individual.
I think it kinda sucks that women think (or know) that they need to take a man with them car shopping or to the mechanic.
Predatory salemen need to go!
With the advent of the internet and online shopping, at least the car sales should go much easier. (This is what I want, I saw it online for X)
And at some point, it very well may flip. We are seeing changes in the way the world used to work. When men were the center of the universe, everything came from and to them. Times have changed. Women are the just as important in today’s economy and there are a lot of changes that still need to be made to accommodate that. I brought up child custody. Marketing to men and now to women has changed a ton already but maybe sometime soon the default will be women sized cars or clothing, or razors.
I bought my last car online - my email address is my initials and I’ll use my initials in my correspondence. That has made that a bit easier (but also because my email address is my initials, and not my very female first name or some girly screen name). And my mechanic is the father of someone my youngest was friends with in elementary school and I have used for twenty years.
It isn’t because women might want the cars and booze - its because men think the nails and purses are girl things. Therefore they are frivolous. Start a booze thread in cafe society and watch the manly men talk about good whiskey. If I come in and start talking about girly drinks (known in the land of men as craft cocktails on the sweeter side), there will be derision (if I stick to talking about bourbon, then they will just be dismissive - although I have notes on over 100 different bourbons around this house somewhere, I like bourbon - Blanton’s Gold, btw - only made for export - but Bulleit has the best bang for the buck - drinkable straight with an affordable price point - I have well informed opinions on bourbon). Note, I’m not going to participate in this exercise because I’ve been there, done that. But its something to notice next time there is that sort of thread (and something that once you have noticed, to think about how systemic and pervasive the misogyny is). Men don’t care if women like men things - well, they care, but many of them care in a negative fashion - see Fake Geek Girl or the battles women have had making inroads into football journalism. They, however, actively don’t want to care about women things (this is tied not only to misogyny, but to homophobia).
Because, in general, the pink tool kits have really crappy tools - sitting somewhere between the kits of plastic tools shown as children’s toys and real tools.
I looked at a couple of these kits online 4 ounce hammers?. Who the f wants a 4 ounce hammer? And the rest of the stuff in these kits is similarly lightweight and useless. The hardware included with the kits is typically just a handful of lightweight tacks and picture hangers, the message being that these kits are good if you want to hang something weighing less than 10 ounces on the wall, if you need something more than that, call a man. These tool kits are condescending toys that men give to woman who live alone because they think every woman should have a tool kit, but they don’t think women are capable of using real tools.
There is one exception here, and it’s an exception I haven’t seen mentioned. I did see some decent pink tool kits that were sold as part of a breast cancer initiative. They appeared to be standard kits with pink stripes or sleeves added to the tools, which were then packaged in pink cases. I guess these were sort of marketed to women, or to men buying gifts for women - but that isn’t always the case with Susan G. Komen pink products.
I don’t think women are the ones buying pink fracking drill bits.
These posts make me wonder how many things exist where women’s versions exist that men could use, and are actually cheaper with the same functionality. It seems like there is probably some untapped potential for manufacturers to sell women’s versions for cheaper to expand their market, yet continue to sell the “default” or “men’s” versions for a higher price knowing that men are unlikely to shop for the women’s versions. The only thing that I can think of is certain bicycles, but usually they aren’t functionally the same so the women’s bikes may actually cost less to manufacture as well (though that might not always be the case).
For the thread in general, I think it’s pretty indisputable that a “pink tax” does exist, and while I think some things are definitely a problem (eg. being charged more for exactly the same service, or taxes on feminine hygiene products but not other essentials), I don’t know if I see differently branded/marketed products as necessarily being a problem. Otherwise, do people see a “white tax” as being a problem as well, where products marketed to white people can charge a premium? You can take some ethnic food product and put some trendy branding (generally targeting white people) on it and sell it for 3x what you’d be able to sell it in an Asian grocery store.
I did not know about these. Filing this away for those hard-to-buy-for women in my life.
Heh–fair. My wife got one of those kits from her dad, although they were light blue, not pink. I think we still have half the tools around, some 20 years later, and honestly that light hammer is pretty useful for picture-hanging. But our household’s maybe not a great example, given that we have three people who know how to bake a nearly-professional-quality cake, and zero who know how to build a deck.
I can tell you one right now. I had to go to the ladies cosmetics section just the other day to buy nail polish to make some marks on mechanical equipment I was working with. It’s cheap, dries fast, highly visible, and doesn’t easily rub off or dull.
If you are doing, say, a timing chain replacement on a car, most people will tell you to buy nail polish to make markings.
And what the hell does this little handy hint have to do with anything?
I was replying to Delayed Reflexes post where he asked if womens products exist that are cheaper and more effective than the alternative. No need to be hostile.
Modhat on:
thickpancreas, you were warned about posting in this thread. I just issued a 24 hour suspension. The time may changed to less or more.
Type 2 is unfair to some people but more efficient overall. Most women have longer hair and more complicated haircuts than men. Thus men get charged less. This is unfair to women with short hair and good for men with long hair. The alternative is to price all haircuts the same which would mean that a barbershop that caters to men would be able to charge less and put all those with unisex salons out of business. The other alternative would be to charge by the length and complexity of the cut. This would be fair to everyone but would mean that it would not be possible to know how much your haircut would cost until you arrived at the salon for an estimate .It would mean longer waits and lots of negotiations.
As long as men and women’s hair is different than there is no way to avoid haircut prices that are different.
Or, you could have different prices for different styles and cuts.
I have long hair, I get charged more than I would if I had short hair. But I probably wouldn’t be as much if I were a woman with my length of hair.
As far as pricing, well, I do dog grooming. The prices are all over the place. You could say that there is a “poodle tax”, but, if a poodle doesn’t want a fancy poodle cut, then they don’t pay a fancy poodle cut price.
There are relatively standard styles that can be estimated over the phone. The fact that it is not the same for all clients is not nearly as much of a hardship for either client or staff as you seem to claim.