Sunday, May 17, 2009

A Few Problematic Products


I am in the market for a new digital camera (not that I can afford it since soon I will be + an MA and - a job, but nonetheless, I've never had one and I've always wanted one). Anyway, I have my eye on a nice purple Nikon so when I came across this on Gizmodo, it caught my attention. Who knew that a camera (much less one whose company is headquartered in Japan) could be so "racially insensitive" or as I'd prefer to say, racist. The varied nature of eye shape seems like the kind of thing you would take into consideration when developing technology to eliminate photos of people blinking.

In other product news, I came across this new "candy bar for women." Another subtle way that women are reminded that their personal value and worth comes from how little space they take up. If the candy bar is for women and it is marketed as being low calorie then it speaks volumes about the ways in which women are taught to think about themselves and other people are taught to think about women. And that is not even to mention the 'creepy' sexual inuendo in the advertising.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The camera thing does not seem racist. If you had a random sampling of say 10,000 photos where it suspected that someone blinked, and a statistically significant portion of those were people of east Asian descent, then I could agree.

But one single photo characterized by a computer algorithm you arguable know nothing about does not a racist make.

oneyedog said...

Are people meant to be fat? If yes then I to find this advert offensive. As chocolate contains large amounts of sugar and calories, the main ingredients in causing the obesity of 66% of the American population, then I have no problem with this bar. Since women statistically consume more chocolate then men then it is an obvious choice to market this product to women. I think this is a bad example of gender hegemony as it is in fact doing more good than harm.

Kim Scarborough said...

Do you ever get tired of looking for things to be offended by? Or is it just the gift that keeps on giving?