Assuming this is a serious response, I’d like to hear more about this if you care to elaborate.
My wife is a girly girl and meets all the criteria on the list except the lifetime movies, the chick lit, and sometimes the fruity drinks. She is also an attorney, speaks several languages, follows current events, likes serious literature.
I don’t care for clothes shopping as a form of entertainment but is it any different that computer parts shopping, or video games?
I guess you aren’t a follower of threads on Mac products then. 
Seems the basic premise is ‘only shallow folks spend a lot of money on computers’.
I’ll advertise myself as hopelessly vain, childish, and tedious by stating that I totally thought that was going to be about Mac the makeup brand, not Mac the computer.
Ha! Me too! 
Yeah, as the starter of a bunch of guitar-geek threads, I am fully aware that guitars can be as tedious and self-indulgent from a manly standpoing as girly stuff can be portrayed as being.
So how much of the back and forth in this thread is about the actual stuff - i.e., make-up, or shoes, etc. - and how much is about how those “girly” things often get discussed? Other stuff - e.g., Mac computers, guitars - can end up being obsessed/geeked-out about in ways that can be dismissed…
Heh, I guess that’s part of the point: seeing stereotypically “girly” buying decisions getting dissed as uniquely shallow may be at least partly selection bias - other decisions more stereotypically “manly” get dissed as shallow as well, but if you don’t follow them, you won’t notice it as much.
I agree. I did actually read some of that Mac thread when it was new (I use a Mac at home but PC for work). Your point is a good one. I honestly didn’t read enough of that Mac thread to know whether the level of snark directed at Mac owners was comparable to the snark directed at purse or jewelry lovers in other threads.
It was funny to me, though, that in the context of reading this particular thread, the first thing that came to mind when seeing the word “Mac” was the cosmetics brand, not the computers.
I’ll just second everything already said by olivesmarch4th, HazelNutCoffee, Sidney Evgeni Jordan, and… let’s just say almost everyone else.
I don’t like seeing (here or anywhere else) all things girly denigrated just because they’re girly. Unfortunately, I was guilty of that myself when I was younger. As others have said, I felt a little out of place in GirlyWorld, and so I tried to convince myself it didn’t matter, because those things were silly and worthless, anyway. And as I got older, especially in college, I found it got me a lot more respect from guy friends. But as Mom would say, people who don’t respect you for being yourself aren’t your real friends, anyway.
Even now, I do find myself doing the “Yes, I love a gorgeous pair of shoes, but I’m really into zombies, too!” It may be partly about trying to maintain cred with guys, but I think it’s also the fact that I feel the need to assert that both can be true simultaneously. If I say I like shoes, people assume I also like drinking cosmos and watching Real Housewives, and that I certainly wouldn’t be caught dead playing video games or woodworking. Conversely, if I say I like zombies, people sometimes figure I’m also totally into superheroes or cars or sports or whatever, and that I’d hate knitting, dancing, or getting gussied up. The latter assumption happens less often, but it does happen. So sometimes, I feel like I need to explain that this one interest or preference of mine is not indicative of my entire personality.
DivaCups are so not girly! You have to reach up *into *your ladyparts with your bare hands, and get all bloody and gross and ewwww! Much more ladylike to use a tampon with a long, (pearly pink!) plastic applicator, so you have as little to do with “down there” as possible!
Those who doubt that girly interests are dismissed more than boy ones, what kind of responses do you most often see whenever one genders professing liking things typically associated with the opposite sex?
A woman says her interests includes Fantasy Football, WoW, and Car Talk. When she was a kid, she played with Transformer action figures. One of her favorite channels is ESPN.
A man says his interests includes fashion, SitC re-runs, and The View. When he was a kid, he collected troll dolls. One of his favorite channels is Bravo.
In my experience, the woman will be praised for being a “cool chick”. The man will have his sexual orientation thrown into question and much chuckling will ensue.
Sure, be happy to. So my girlfriend watches a lot of “girly” programming on TV. Reality shows on Bravo or TLC like “Real Housewives of [insert wealthy community]”, “Nell on Earth” (some dumb show about some woman and her PR business), “What Not to Wear”, assorted girlie films like Bridget Jones and the like and various books by Candice Bushnell and whoever writes the “Shopaholic” series.
The common thread throughout all these various media is “you are not valuable as a woman or a person unless you dress well, look pretty, and marry a rich handsome guy”. Even when the character in question is a “successful businesswoman”, the “business” is usually something either directly or tangentially related to telling people how to dress well or look pretty and they are never truly happy until they marry a rich handsome guy. And mostly whenever they have a problem, they seem like they spend all their time bickering or gossiping instead of trying to come up with actual solutions.
I get that this is escapist fantasy for women, much in the same way that Entourage is for men. But to me it sends a message that women should strive to marry a rich guy who will take care of them so they can spend most of their time shopping, dining out or trying to run untenable vanity businesses.
Yes, but that is for my extremely MANLY job in technofinanciaccounting.
She can be. Just as I’m sure she finds my playing XBox or “drinking with the boys” to be a bit childish and silly.
Anything is fine is small doses.
Sadly, my version of this is occasionally squeeing, running over to said friend, and, if male, picking up him up in a big hug and spinning him around. In most other “close friends” scenarios, they get a big hug and no spinning/picking up, and the occasional squee of excitement.
I like some girly stuff, but never totally got into the “media marketed solely to women” part. Makeup is fun, shoes are fun, but my life doesn’t revolve around my love life.
But playing the guitar is cool…
Seriously, I don’t read the threads about guitar equipment or purchasing, so I don’t know whether people make comments in those to the effect that paying for a high-end guitar, or having multiple high-quality guitars, is shallow or vain. Are those types of comments made?
If it’s possible to generalize, I would be curious about who makes those comments - guitar players, or people who don’t appreciate guitars in general? Is there any detectable male/female difference in opinion in those threads re: guitar as a hobby and spending money on guitars?
As a straight man, I appreciate girliness, to a point. The upside of all that shoe shopping and candle sniffing and whatnot is that women are clean, smell good, and generally do not remind me of men.
Considering that the average guy’s concessions to style and/or cleanliness are a breathmint, a baseball cap and half a can of Axe deodorant, there’s something to be said for this girly stuff.
Remember, soap is one of the central hallmarks of civilization. Don’t be skurred.
That’s a very different issue though - if anything, it points to women being more free (from social control) to pursue their real interests than men.
The problem here seems to be that (male) homosexuality is still a focus of much social disapproval, moreso than (female) homosexuality: so much so that a man pursuing typically women’s interests will attract “snickering”. A woman can wear a stereotypical man’s clothes without nearly as much social disapproval as a man wearing a stereotypical woman’s clothes. This doesn’t mean that stereotypical women’s clothes are considered inferior, but rather that the gender barriers for men are more stringent and less easily broken.
I missed wanted to add: Malthus and WordMan make a very good point, that there are also lots of stereotypically “guy” interests that sometimes get derided as being self-indulgent or shallow. The difference, to me, is that they’re not seen as being shallow simply *because *they’re “guy stuff”, but I find that’s often the case with “girl stuff”.
Like you with the face said, whether you’re a man or a woman, liking “guy stuff” is typically considered neutral-to-positive, while liking “girl stuff” is typically considered neutral-to-negative, at least in my experience.
I don’t want to give the impression that I am militantly against all things girly. Parading around in her Jimmy Choo shoes seems to make my girlfriend happy and I’m happy when she’s happy. But too much girly stuff is a bit overwhelming.
I think this is basically true - guys being guys is okay in small doses, as is girls being girls.
…I agree - playing guitar can be cool, if you are a decent player. So can rocking a pair of Manolo’s if you have style and a great look. 
On the SDMB, most guitar geeks simply enjoy having a place to geek - there is not much sniping. But on guitar boards, the working-stiff musicians dismiss wannabees pretty hard - i.e., a guy who got a guitar the way he might buy a Harley-Davidson; hasn’t played in years and buys a $$ guitar to be cool. There is a strong Guy Code about treating your tools like tools and if someone wants to flaunt their “furniture guitar” (i.e., the wood looks like it belongs on a fancy piece of furniture) they get nailed…
But I rarely if ever see anyone suggest that because a woman likes football or guns, she must be gay, snickering or not. We don’t see threads entitled “What kind of woman likes UFC?” and see responses like “lesbian ones”. Whereas, we have threads like Twilight that pigeonhole male fans exactly in this manner (FWIW, my very straight father said he likes Twilight…I didn’t say so in that thread, though).
My theory is that woman feel free to “stray” into male territory because male interests are considered socially acceptable, by default. But a male who strays into female territory risks being called gay, because only an effeminant freak would be inclined to go for such silly, non-manly things.
With agreement to many things said upthread, to me a defensive statement like “I love pink purses, but I love zombie movies too!” is not so much an appeal as to not be seen as vain or shallow as to caution others not to make the deadly mistake:
DON’T ASSUME.
You see me shopping for makeup and doing embroidery? Don’t assume I won’t kick your ass at trivia. You see the Cute Overload calendar on my desk? Don’t assume I don’t know who leads the league in ERA. Don’t assume my dangly sparkly earrings mean I’m not a fine hand at soldering.
But I don’t like science fiction.