Stop Marketing to Me

Oh for crying out loud. Just stop it already. I’m so sick of companies trying to market to women, as if we’re some kind of seperate alien community. As if we haven’t been shopping for shit since there were places to shop. Blah blah blah the power of the female dollar, I get it. Stop it already. Just stop, please. Instead of marketing to me, how about making your shit work right, or look better, or, hey Marvel and DC, how about just writing decent stories that don’t suck? You know one of the things that makes stories not suck for women? Having well-rounded characters of both sexes. And for the love of god, if I see one more commercial where the women are talking about shoes just because women are supposed to like shoes, I think I’ll lose my freakin’ mind.

This rant brought to you, btw, by the idiots who are marketing Marvel Divas. You know, the story could be great, but I’m so turned off my the hype surrounding it, that I really can’t see myself buying the book. It’s not that I’m against Marvel trying to court the female audience, it’s just that they suck at it. I mean, come on guys, really?

Really? And I’d say the same for DC with their Gotham City Sirens schtick, but I’m sure there is no way DC believes they are marketing to women with this title, because it seems like one giant catfight, and I have yet to read Didio saying anything too stupid about how they are marketing this to those damn comic chicks. I mean, hell, the girl geeks got Spoiler back, what the hell else do they want? I hope I’m right, but I really don’t think Didio expects this to scream “this will get more female readers!”

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m mad because the Marvel Diva girls all look so porntastic. Actually, that’s not it at all. It’s not just the art, although I really wish comic artists would learn how to draw a decent pair of tits and a costume that may look like it would actually be a costume and not body art. It’s the crap logic behind this. Supposedly Marvel is trying to court a female audience, maybe even an audience new to comics. Girls who read comics already read comics. We don’t need a special pink “girl comics” line. Girls who don’t read comics, whom you would like to read comics, probably won’t be terribly impressed when they see that bit of art, whether or not it’s the actual cover to anything. That’s the art you chose to promote it, and it stinks.

Allow me to try explaining it another way. It would be as if I were the head of Oxygen, a TV channel supposedly geared more for women, and I said to the TV watching world at large “hey, I want to broaden the appeal of this channel by making it more guy friendly.” Then I turned around and started marketing “guy friendly TV” with ads like this:

and this:

Instead of this:

And this:

Yes, there are plenty of guys out there who prefer the first two images, but if we are making a broad, sweeping generalization about an entire gender the way Marvel Divas is supposed to be making a broad sweeping generalization about an entire gender, wouldn’t it make more sense to go with what the broad sweeping generalization generally tends to be? It’s like that old sitcom joke where the clueless husband buys his wife a power tool for her birthday, when it’s pretty obvious he’s buying it for himself. Then the clueless husband turns around and says “what do you mean I never give you anything? I bought you that expensive drill!” Because that’s what comic book chicks want–another power drill.

Gee, thanks, Marvel. You shouldn’t have.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Sorkin, Whedon, TV & Comics
• No No No! Don’t do it Marvel!
• On this guy…
• Now You Can Dress Like a Marvel Slut for Halloween!