
Girls' Life vs. Boys' Life? Magazine Cover Sparks Uproar - marcusgarvey
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/09/23/books-girls-life-vs-boys-life-magazine-comparison
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Spooky23
The problem is that with all of the bullshit aside, they need to sell the
magazine to some dwindling population still buying them.

The "heartwarming", positive cover is indeed heartwarming and a good message,
but is also pretty lame, and unlikely to sell magazines.

I also question whether this is typical shallow/ignorant internet outrage.
When I was a kid, Boy'a Life was a Boy Scouts magazine, and had annual themes
that appeared every year at the same time. If you looked at the May/June
cover, the annual Boy Scout Jamboree issue wouldn't be as "internet
offensive".

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home_boi
IIRC, Boy's Life magazine is run by a boy scout organization while Girl's Life
is run by a corporation chasing for the most eyeballs possible.

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CydeWeys
It's mentioned in the article. Boy's Life actually has a noble mission behind
it, whereas Girl's Life is for-profit trash (essentially). The parallelism
between the names of the two is an unfortunate coincidence. Near as I can tell
the Girl Scouts don't have a magazine, but if they did, it would be a better
comparison against Boy's Life. Maybe they should publish one?

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UnoriginalGuy
As an aside, The Girl Scouts is a really fantastic organisation. In particular
compared to The Boy Scouts in the US (which is much more religiously
affiliated and discriminates against gay people; The Girl Scouts by contrast
are trans-inclusive).

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adamrezich
I was never in the Scouts myself, but surely one archaic, discriminatory
policy doesn't negate all of the good the organization does, right?

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relics443
Maybe it's just my lack of need for external influence, but why is this a big
deal? I think women can and should be whatever they want to be. A trashy
magazine shouldn't change that.

Should A Girl's Life change the tone of their stories? That's up to the
market. As long as their demographic enjoys what they print (which translates
to $$$), they'll continue to run it. Should people be outraged by it? If they
choose to be, yes. But at the end of the day a consumer is a consumer, and if
they want trash they'll get it.

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krastanov
I can not provide links right now, but reading up on "stereotype threat" will
probably explain why this still matters.

I a few words: the same person performing the same task will perform lower if
they are aware of a stereotype that says that their group performs worse at
the given task. It is reproduced for white and black, male and female, etc.

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commentzorro
But why would that mean anything to the publisher? They want to sell the
magazine and if soul crushing mind rotting stereotypes sell copies at the
checkout line then why would the publisher want to be the moral agents of
change?

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krastanov
Fair point. My personal answer, that I do not try to push on others, is that
we all should try to be agents of change. To be fair to the publisher they
made it clear that they have quality content next to the cheap content.

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hammock
There are plenty of men's magazines that will offer you a "denim checklist."

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trav4225
This is indeed a humorous juxtaposition, but they wouldn't make crap like that
if our society didn't gobble it up.

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marcusgarvey
Why was this flagged?

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krastanov
Some of the flagged comment in the discussion were very sexist. The rest of
the flagged comments were people a bit aggressively calling them out. I guess
all the up and down voting triggered a flame war detector.

Which is really sad, I really hoped we can all agree that your sex does not
determine whether you are a good engineer.

