Eirik Stavem – to whom it may concern…

Gerdur wrote another post in response to my previous post about magazines, stereotypes, and all that. Here’s my response:

I’m sure I could start picking on some of your claims, but all in all I think we both prove the point I was trying to make in the first place; stereotypes exist. This is why advertisements (and I count magazines in general as one huge advertisement) are targetting the known stereotypes because it increases their sales.

That said, stereotypes are and will always be stereotypes, which in one definition is “Biased generalizations about a group based on hearsay, opinions, and distorted, preconceived ideas.”. In the real world, you’ll find that people are different. I find the stereotypes that you’ve described in this post to be equally true to my “women are shopaholics” statement. It’s true that most men will walk into a store, find something they like, and buy it. The price-aspect can be defended by saying “we only buy quality stuff”, but that again would only be true in some cases. The “women are shopaholics” statement is probably more true than you want to admit, for one because “women will enjoy a nice day on the town shopping with her friends and coming home with three carefully selected t-shirts costing maybe 10-20 Euros each” – you actually enjoy shopping more than we guys do. Which is probably why we’re poorer shoppers than you are, and will most likely spend more money on what we buy because we can’t stand spending a whole day in stores looking for something to buy.

And to answer your questions, I don’t mind being stereotyped, as long as I’m given the opportunity to prove that I don’t belong in a group if I disagree with being stereotyped into that particular group.

And another thing; if you go back and read my initial post about this, you’ll find that I never stereotyped you at all, that was something you read into my words. I was (or my intention was, anyway) only trying to explain why women’s magazines are made the way they are made, which IMO is because they’re basing it on market analysis and common stereotypes. I was never trying to put you or any other women I know into this category (though I know a few that have admitted themselves to recognize themselves in this particular stereotype ).

Maybe I should start another discussion based on the stereotype that when men say something, we mean exactly what we say, while women quite often will hear something more or something different? (I want to specify that this last remark is intentionally sarcastic, but I don’t intend to be as mean as it might seem)