Kuwaiti Blogger on Gender Advertising

This fascinating post about ‘Gender Advertising by a Kuwaiti blogger I stumbled across today got me thinking. This was initially meant to be a comment on his blog, but I decided to place it here for two reasons; one, it’s a fascinating topic and I’d love to hear all of your thoughts on this; and two, I didn’t want to flood his blog with such a long comment.

There are a number of biological differences between males & females that influence the way we all perceive the world and thus the way we present ourselves to the world. The generalizations that you speak of here are far form inaccurate and anyone stepping out of these generalizations is most usually considered ‘strange’, by society in general and most probably even those who object to this post (though they fail to see it, because they’re stuck on a single opinionated comment or two you made).

Evidence of this natural human behavior is shown in every clothing store you enter that doesn’t carry a full line of unisex wardrobes. Have you ever seen one that does, anywhere on the planet?

Men and women advertise themselves differently because they are different. Whether or not I agree with the motivations for each as you’ve mentioned here is something else all together. I believe we separate ourselves from one another and advertise, in order to attract the opposite sex (or potential lover in the cases of those who are same-sex orientated), believing what we see in ourselves is what the potential lover desires in us. We all crave love & acceptance in one way or another and appearance does play a major part in receiving that. It may seem that we’re advertising our gender when in fact what we’re advertising is our sexuality; because the majority of any society is strait.

Many gay men pluck their eyebrows and accentuate feminine features with their learned walk, bright choice of colors, or immaculate dress sense, and some even apply makeup, while lesbians often carry themselves in a more masculine manner, tend to dress themselves down and don’t necessarily wear makeup. Yes, I am aware that this is a generalization and not all same sex orientated people fit in here, but then I’ve not even mentioned bisexual or those who are simply confused about their sexual orientation. The point; you want a man, you advertise yourself more femininely. You want a woman, you advertise a more masculine, because we’re conditioned to know that opposites attract.

Have you ever noticed that a person, who truly doesn’t love themselves, tends not to take care of their appearance, regardless of sex? If you then consider those who do and how much time and effort they put into decorating themselves for the sake of advertising in comparison, is it not logic that the general assumption is that beauty in one’s eye would be the same as beauty in another’s? I’m not saying that this is a correct assumption, but a vastly assumed one.

How disappointing and often unbelievable it is for us to learn that someone we know doesn’t appreciate the same music, same food, same television show, piece of art, or even opinion that we hold dearly to our own heart, consider beautiful, and almost perfected in every way!

‘Unbelievable’ being the key word here, because most of us believe what we want to believe, perceiving only the things we subconsciously choose to perceive, and can not conceive that others won’t agree with us. Thus the reason frustration and anger ends many debates; human’s inability to agree to disagree with one another. And even when we pretend we do, we’re all really thinking, “Something’s wrong with that guys thought-process!” or “Why can’t she see it my way no matter how hard I try to explain?”

Just as you mentioned you could go on forever in your post, I seem to have gone on forever here. It'll be interesting to see what UAE bloggers think about gender advertizing and the motivation behind it.

You all SHOULD actually read the linked post to understand where this is coming from. Trust me, it's well worth it.