To be some vast, oppressive conspiracy trying to keep women down, at this point, would mean they would offer nothing but diet soda, no matter what the consumer wanted.
That'd be silly: then what would men drink? They've got to offer products for both genders to maximise their profits; all they need to do is make it very clear which product is appropriate for which gender. You can't actually refuse to sell one gender the wrong one, because you'd get in trouble with the law, but you can certainly use subtle (and not-so-subtle) cues to build up the fact that most men don't want to be seen as girly and most women want to make themselves conventionally attractive.
--But no, I doubt they're literally colluding with the International Association of Patriarchs, with secret passwords and all. But if it was a coincidence, then you'd expect the coincidence to go the other way approximately 50% of the time, and I... I'd be pretty surprised if it went the other way even 5% of the time.
So my vote's with "vast, oppressive agreement-to-go-with-the-flow which is quite happy for women to be kept down as long as they get to keep making a profit off of it". Which is just as oppressive in effect if not intent, plus also cowardly.
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syntheid
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Date: 2010-06-12 05:59 am (UTC)That'd be silly: then what would men drink? They've got to offer products for both genders to maximise their profits; all they need to do is make it very clear which product is appropriate for which gender. You can't actually refuse to sell one gender the wrong one, because you'd get in trouble with the law, but you can certainly use subtle (and not-so-subtle) cues to build up the fact that most men don't want to be seen as girly and most women want to make themselves conventionally attractive.
--But no, I doubt they're literally colluding with the International Association of Patriarchs, with secret passwords and all. But if it was a coincidence, then you'd expect the coincidence to go the other way approximately 50% of the time, and I... I'd be pretty surprised if it went the other way even 5% of the time.
So my vote's with "vast, oppressive agreement-to-go-with-the-flow which is quite happy for women to be kept down as long as they get to keep making a profit off of it". Which is just as oppressive in effect if not intent, plus also cowardly.