Yes, Gavin, I'm going to spend 5 days in a supermarket for new year. It wasn't funny the first time
We're often told of the importance in being careful with our language. If we use too many 'feminine-coded' words and pronouns in the 'wrong way', then we are irreparably indoctrinating little girls into patriarchal oppression. We need to be careful to include women in examples of scientists and mathematicians, even in hypotheticals, so that they don't feel casually excluded from these fields.
However, nothing is done to expose and challenge the very same thing when directed at men and masculinity. We are routinely vilified in the media, as I'm sure you are well aware. Men can be portrayed inherently and irredeemably evil, but women are fundamentally good and redeemable (e.g. Maleficent). Casual violence against men is played off as a joke in cartoons for children (e.g. Bart from The Simpsons). Men and boys are frequently portrayed as bumbling idiots and unacademical compared to their female counterparts (c.f. Lisa and Bart); those that are are studious are caricatured as deservedly ostracised and abused (e.g. Martin from The Simpsons). Often this is explicit, but sometimes it is subliminal, which is something we may find instructive to study further.
For context, the UK has been experiencing a rather strange trend in advertising for a few years now, especially around Christmas. Companies will try to outcompete each other in who can be the most saccharine and emotionally exploitative, going as far as the appropriate the laudable resolve and inherent humanity of poor men despite the horrors and pain they have been subjected to as a cheap marketing gimmick (i.e. the Sainsburys advert that 're-enacted' the Christmas football game during WWI).
One of these adverts serves as a topical example of how masculinity is used to represent evil and abuse as a theme, while femininity is used to represent innocence and victimhood. The advert in question was created by Iceland (the supermarket, not the country). It is presented as a campaign against palm oil, but note how the 'victim' (the playful and childlike Orangutan) and the conscientious witness-turned-activist (a little girl) are both represented by feminine qualities (i.e. pronouns and appearances) and spoken about with a soft and playful cadence, while the 'evildoers' are referred to with masculine pronouns and represented by mindlessly destructive machines. Incidentally, it may be worth noting that the market demand for palm oil is in no small part driven by fema
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Bit of a strange question, but i heard from a friend of mine that Iceland (The British Supermarket chain) had opened a few stores in iceland, the wikipedia page for the chain would confirm this. I was wondering if Iceland stores in Iceland actually stock British products? also are the prices much higher than in the U.K (I've heard that food prices can be much higher for some products)
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