
Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants - JoelSutherland
http://www.copyblogger.com/james-chartrand-underpants/
======
lsb
It's not just men, it's high-class men.

Lots of hackers think that good work wins, but it's good work marketed well
wins, and it turns out that people are incredibly biased towards high-class
men, and a name like "James Chartrand" is a prime example.

I challenge her to see the results when she chooses a name like "Tyrone
Jackson".

~~~
axod
Slightly related:

When I first visited the US, I was really surprised at the adverts in
newspapers for realtors (estate agents). They all had photos of the realtors
faces?! Do people choose realtors based on their photo? How would that make
any sense at all. Perhaps it's just some custom that's been passed down, but
it really freaked me out.

Could you use some other picture of a warm fuzzy respectable person and say
"Oh yeah James Hilby-Smithe is currently unavailable, I'm his associate I can
help you"? Would that be legal. I wonder if any of them do this already.

~~~
michaelkeenan
> Do people choose realtors based on their photo?

Yes, but not consciously.

> Perhaps it's just some custom that's been passed down

I'm sure they have tested ads without photos, or with photos of something
other than people, and found that photos of attractive smiling real estate
agents work best.

If it surprises you that this works, I recommend reading _Influence: The
Psychology of Persuasion_ by Robert Cialdini. He is a psychologist who has
spent years not just studying persuasion in laboratory settings, but "going
undercover", taking courses and even doing jobs in all kinds of persuasion
professions - door-to-door salespeople, fund-raisers, recruiters, advertisers,
etc. He noted hundreds of techniques that he was taught, or that he learned or
observed, and categorized them into six principles of persuasion, each forming
a chapter of the book.

The book is useful to entrepreneurs who need to market their startups, and
useful to _humans_ , who need to understand the techniques that are being used
by sales people and marketers of all kinds. I recommend it to _everyone_. (In
case you're worried, Cialdini doesn't recommend unethical techniques, though
he does describe some so that you know what to watch out for.)

~~~
teej
> I'm sure they have tested ads without photos, or with photos of something
> other than people, and found that photos of attractive smiling real estate
> agents work best.

Describing real estate agents as people who use empirical study in their
marketing efforts doesn't match with my experience. The industry is full of
"do it because that's what we always do" attitudes regarding the marketing of
homes. Zillow's research seems to back this up - agent headshot ads performed
way worse than anything else ([http://www.zillow.com/blog/the-top-and-bottom-
performing-ads...](http://www.zillow.com/blog/the-top-and-bottom-performing-
ads-on-zillow/2009/08/19/)).

~~~
DenisM
They have probably tested is _collectively_ , the poor bets going out of
business and good ones staying in.

~~~
teej
Real estate isn't quite as simple as just the listing ads. There are tons of
things a real estate agent can be good at that make their ad quality
irrelevant.

~~~
byrneseyeview
There are probably things they could do that would have a bigger effect than
the ad quality. But as long as those ads have _some_ effect, and faces improve
them, they'll keep doing it.

Doctors and lawyers often put their faces in ads, too. It looks like people
want to see the person they're buying a service from.

------
dlytle
Something about this strikes me as either shady, or engineered to make a
point. I'm probably paranoid, of course.

Looking at the about page, "Men with Pens" was founded by the article's
author. The sit is deliberately and heavily grounded in male stereotypes.
Plus, looking at the bio for one of the other authors: "Taylor Lindstrom, is a
twenty-something copywriter and journalist from Boulder, CO. She’s the team’s
rogue woman who wowed us until our desire for her talents exceeded our desire
for a good ol’ boys club."

Maybe that's just a tongue-in-cheek reference to the founder's real gender.
Perhaps the heavy masculinity of the Men With Pens site was designed to
test/prove the theory. Not enough information to make a real decision.

It just seems that there's more to this than meets the eye. I'd love to see
some statistics on the comparative success of her publishing names.

~~~
araneae
It's also amusing that the author is displaying blatant sexism towards this
woman and at the same time complaining about sexism against her.

Women can still be misogynists.

------
araneae
It's a nice story, but it's hard to extrapolate from just one anecdote.

First of all, she undoubtedly became more experienced at her job as she got
older. She does claim that she kept looking for work as both names, but we
know that there's a huge element of randomness to internet success. Often the
same exact article gets posted to reddit several times before one of them
takes off, for instance. Also,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade>

There are plenty of examples of successful female bloggers, so I'm not sure
that her personal example really means anything. This really requires
experimental data.

tl:dr The success of James could easily be attributed to an increase in
experience and completely random elements.

~~~
wglb
Well, reading the entire article, there were a/b tests there, so the
increasing experience claim doesn't explain the result.

~~~
Retric
The two names have diffrent track reccords, how much would you expect to pay
each of these people on your next project?

    
    
      A) 5$/h, 7.50$/h, 10$/h, 15$/h
      B) 10$/h, 15$/h

~~~
duncanj
If this trend continues...

------
lionhearted
Gosh, the general point was quite interesting, but I have such a hard time
reading the "Emotional Headline -> Witty hook -> Two more paragraphs ->
emotional headline -> witty hook -> two more paragraphs" style of writing.
Yeah, I know it makes people read your copy, but I like to the point writing
more than the wandering around building a narrative that sucks you in, leaving
you breathless with anticipation and excited for more of whatever they're
selling...

Sales copy just adds so much noise to the points. I get why they do it, but
it's really a fight to get through it for me even if I think there's going to
be valuable points in there.

~~~
access_denied
1\. I agree with all your points.

2nd, as someone who makes his dough with writing copy, let me tell you this:
the really good writers do use those tricks of the trade without you noticing
it. It is similiar to good typography: it doesn't get into the way.

You may want to check out the writings of Gary Halbert or John Carlton to see
it in action.

~~~
lionhearted
> You may want to check out the writings of Gary Halbert or John Carlton to
> see it in action.

Will do - cheers for the recommendation.

------
rsheridan6
This made me think of the "Libertarian Girl" hoax, in which an unsuccessful
male libertarian blogger got a lot of traffic by claiming to be a pretty girl.

I guess the people who hired the writer of the article aren't libertarians.

~~~
jrockway
This effect definitely works on IRC. Create a female-sounding Twitter account
with some pretty girl in the picture, use that nick on IRC, get instant help.
(You need to make sure the name is actually girlish sounding, of course.
Otherwise nobody will bother to check you out.)

~~~
forensic
>You need to make sure the name is actually girlish sounding, of course.

Such as:

Geekgirl89

Girlgeek5

Grrlgrrl

Emilygeek8

Sleepygrlgeek

shygrlsam

lonelygirlphil

How am I doing?

------
ankeshk
Name has always made a difference. Do you know how many Indian programmers
have American sounding pen names on freelance websites? They'll always get
more work and higher per hour rates with an American sounding name than an
Indian sounding name.

------
Goladus
I was with her until this comment:

 _And yet apparently we haven’t gotten past those 19th century stigmas._

Bad assumption. She's got an interesting story, but doesn't go anywhere
interesting and seems to just blame it all on the vague idea of antique male
chauvinism.

~~~
neilk
Are you saying it may not be sexism? What then?

~~~
run4yourlives
Bias is not necessarily an "ism".

Saying "sexism" has with it the connotation that there is a fundamental wrong
here which should be corrected for the betterment of our society. That it's a
product of backwards thinking and known prejudices.

What you are seeing here though is much more than that. We're seeing that
people conform to a pre-ordained bias. In this case, that all good writers are
upper-crust white guys with distinguished names. This is a much deeper and
subconscious display of human behaviour that all of us are bound to.

It is unlikely that all of this woman's readers feel women should be barefoot
in the kitchen.

~~~
skorgu
> _there is a fundamental wrong here which should be corrected for the
> betterment of our society_

Women not being rewarded equally for equal work _is_ a fundamental wrong which
should be corrected for the betterment of our society. It's possible I'm
misreading you but one can be sexist without being a cave, um, _person_.

~~~
Tichy
She was free to pick a male sounding name. Problem solved. Also, it is just
her story, it is not clear if she did "equal work" with her female name. She
picked the name for something she did not want to be associated with - perhaps
it simply was a different kind of writing that tends to pay better?

~~~
skorgu
Well, I'll start by saying that I'm assuming the story is accurate, there's no
point discussing it otherwise. She specifically mentions that she applied for
identical jobs as both personas.

What if she had to meet a client face-to-face? Or even by phone?

~~~
Tichy
Well I wouldn't assume the story is accurate - obviously she wants to make a
good story. So applying for "identical jobs" might have some poetic freedom in
it.

In any case, if she went to see the client face-to-face or by phone, all sorts
of other things might have happened. She might have fared better on average
than a man. There is no way to tell from her story.

It really is just a story, all sorts of other parameters could have affected
the outcome. What sort of thing is she writing? Some subjects might be more
readily associated with men, other with women.

The choice of names could have an effect in all sorts of ways, not only by
signaling a gender.

Really, there is no substance here at all, I am sorry. If people want to get
worked up about that story, it is because they want to get worked up about it,
not because there is real substance.

For a better experiment, take the one with randomized CVs with randomized
names, where black sounding names fared a lot worse than white sounding names.
That is a proper experiment, because all other things besides the names were
equal. This story here is not science. She herself is drawing a conclusion
from her experience, but her subjective explanation doesn't really explain
anything.

~~~
skorgu
She could also be a pathological liar, secretly a man pretending to be a woman
pretending to be a man or the Emir of Groovefunkistan. Once we start
discounting the facts presented as fact by a principal in the article we might
as well just switch to floral teapots in low earth orbit.

This story doesn't pretend to be science, why are we comparing it to
randomized double-blind studies?

~~~
Tichy
Why ask for science: because the story author and among others I think also
you have started drawing conclusions from it ("society is still sexist",
"women get paid less for equal work"). Where is the point in erecting this
building of accusations if the foundations aren't sound? Unless it is just
politics, which is OT on HN.

~~~
skorgu
Speaking personally I don't think either of those conclusions can be drawn
from this article, but nor do I think they're terribly controversial as broad
generalizations.

I would love to see more and better science on the topic but I think there is
still value in anecdotes and the discussions they result in.

~~~
Tichy
"nor do I think they're terribly controversial as broad generalizations."

I do think they are controversial, as the statistics are usually very shallow.
Apart from the "dumb" statistics (basically "on average, men earn more than
women"), there are also lots of papers on how certain laws that are supposed
to be helping women actually have the opposite effect, and other causes for
the difference.

The "uncontroversial" bit is exactly what is standing in the way of finding a
solution.

Anecdotes are OK, but don't generalize from them, please.

~~~
skorgu
Those are my personal views and aren't related to nor generalized from the
article.

------
scotty79
> Truth be told, if just a name and perception of gender creates such
> different levels of respect and income for a person, it says a lot more
> about the world than it does about me.

People who succeeded and think that they own it all to their skill,
persistence and diligence should read this.

Being lucky on some trivial things like name or gender may have affected your
success more than you think.

------
neilk
I wonder how Indian names are perceived in technology. There are a lot of
examples of brilliant Indian computer scientists and entrepreneurs, but I
suspect that Indian names are still viewed unfavorably in Silicon Valley.
Everyone has experience with say, math profs with indecipherable accents,
crappy Indian outsourcing firms, or the QA department that's entirely staffed
with low-skill imports.

------
rglovejoy
This is not a new phenomenon:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tiptree,_Jr>.

------
prodigal_erik
> I quickly learned not to mention I had kids. I quickly learned not to
> mention I worked from my kitchen table.

Maybe the false assumption was that she's a partnered dilettante (who might
get bored and not deliver your work) rather than a professional (who takes
your work seriously, in part because it's keeping the lights on), along with
the assumption that mothers are more obsessed with parenting.

On that note, anyone else think it was weird that she only talked about
supporting her kids, as if she herself didn't eat?

------
RK
I have a friend who works as a copywriter, and I have to say that it sounds
like a shitty job. My friend talks excitedly about the pinnacle of copywriting
being "direct mailing", which we all know as pre-email spamming. I think the
appeal is that they get royalties on a per mailing basis.

------
wglb
Along with JK Rowling, if I am not mistaken.

~~~
philwelch
J.K. Rowling, D.C. Fontana, C.L. Moore, probably many others.

------
100k
The more things change...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot>

~~~
dflock
Quite:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_authors_who_wro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_authors_who_wrote_under_male_or_gender-
neutral_pseudonyms)

Although, Anne Rice is on that list and her real name is apparently Howard
Allen O'Brien, despite actually being female:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Rice>

------
Locke1689
She's surprised that she had better success as a writer for "Men with Pens"
when she chose a male pseudonym?

~~~
Jem
No, she owns Men with Pens.

------
jff
It's possible the pen name helped on her side too--she may have started
writing more to her expectations of a male writer (different style, sentence
structure, etc), which in turn might have sold better.

------
Tichy
Scientific this is not. Even for anecdote the story seems rather weak. But I
guess he/she is very good at writing what people want to hear.

------
Ixiaus
This is off topic in my opinion.

~~~
csuper
I don't know - I think it is interesting. I would have thought that it would
be easier for a woman to be successful writing on the internet. I guess I
based that on 'sex sells'. It does seem that profiles on social sites with
photos of pretty girls get more attention...

~~~
Ixiaus
This article has nothing to do with the general content of hacker news. This
is an article about the social status of women and how they overcome it, more
political than anything else.

I would rather see articles about successful women leading innovative
companies, doing innovative research, or saying intelligent things that don't
hide behind "male" pen names.

I think intelligent female hackers actually get a lot of respect from fellow
male hackers and this would be more on-topic if it pertained to hacker
culture.

This article gives women more reason to hide behind a facade then it does to
actually _inspire_ them!

~~~
sundarurfriend
Since when is expressing genuine opinion mercilessly downvoted here?

------
Daniel_Newby
Methinks Ms. Galore doth protest too much.

------
ilamont
Writers who claim to be something they're not: It's been happening for years.
See <http://bit.ly/8cteG0>

~~~
ars
Don't use url shorteners here. You still have time to edit your post.

~~~
ilamont
The original link is:

[http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/02/books/two-artists-
neither-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/02/books/two-artists-neither-
aboriginal-nor-original-after-all.html)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
An extraordinarily good counterpoint to the case before us. I think the key
here is that a particular viewpoint from a man can be apparently more
revealing, eg "this guy is on the inside and he said ...". If the same ideas
are presented from a woman as a speculation then they are less interesting, eg
"this woman is guessing that this is what men talk about when they're with
other men ...".

A painting is not just an image (as the curator in the link above claims) but
is also an expression of the artist themselves (in most cases for non-
professionals who actually paint their own work). A painting with the foot has
a different quality to one painted by hand because one knows how the artist
struggled against a physical adversity, etc..

