Happy Valentine’s Day, gynocrats!.
Over on A Voice for Male Students, the always-reasonable and never-hysterical Jonathan Taylor celebrates this day of candies and flowers and irritating Kay Jewelry commercials with a lovely little piece entitled “The gynocentrism of Valentine’s Day, and the spoiled princess mentality.”
In it, he takes aim at a holiday he sees as rewarding the sort of woman who behaves like a “privileged princess who didn’t get her pony when she was five.”
His proof of this “gynocentrism?” The custom graphics on Google’s home page today, which I have screencapped and pasted in above.
At first glance, this all seems very innocent. We all remember these adorably crappy candies with the little messages on them. But Taylor is able to discern its insidious deeper meaning in their words:
The inclusion of the “Mr. Right” heart may seem like a small thing, but it is also rather telling, especially coming from the #1 website in the world. Women have expectations and standards. Where are men’s expectations and standards?
We aren’t told about them. Unlike “Mr. Right,” the phrase “Ms. Right” isn’t used in common parlance. The very incidence of men having standards for women is often regarded as sexist, even if they are entirely reasonable – such as not being so fat that you are diabetic by the time you are 35 and bedridden by the time you are 55.
In the age of Feminism, the only people women “answer to” are themselves.
Now that I’ve taken a closer look at Google’s message, I think that Mr. Taylor is if anything understating its creepy gynocentric intent. Take a look again at the first two candies.
CRUSH MR. RIGHT
Clearly this is an invitation to murder. Nay, to MAN GENOCIDE.
FIRST KISS 4EVER YOURS
… because if he is dead, your first kiss will make him — or at least his corpse — forever yours.
PUPPY LOVE
Of course if he is dead, he will not be able to fulfill his normal sexual functions. So Google seems to be recommending bestiality.
BLIND DATE
And then, to cover up your crimes, it suggests that you blind all of your future dates so they can’t see the corpse you’ve got stashed in the spare bedroom. (You may also need to do something about their sense of smell.)
Has the true ugliness of this gynocentric holiday ever been more nakedly displayed?
—
Just in case anyone missed it, this post is almost entirely made up of
… except for the bit about Kay Jewelry ads, which really are irritating.
Bow before the power of the ninja kitties!
@Cassandrakitty,
Ooo, ooo, yeah, loved those.
Also:
Fried eggs, rice paper, Hubba bubba, flying saucers, cola bottles, milk bottles, black jacks, fruit salad, jelly snakes, Dip Dab, Sherbet fountain, and the oh so eighties, sweetie cigarette.
I also remember when Snaps were 5p, Star burst were Opal Fruits and Snickers were Marathon. 🙂 (oh, and fruit Polos.)
Cola bottles! I’ve never outgrown my love of jelly candies.
Also those weird spongy pink things that I think were supposed to be seashells? And the banana version too.
I only remember as far back when Twix was Raider… but heh, yeah, I do remember the choco cigarettes. Yeah, they kind of went the way of the Dodo during the 90s, didn’t they?
Sweetie cigarette? Is that the same as the chocolate cigarettes? I remember those from the 70s. Also bananas, which tasted very odd. Freckles and Freddo Frogs were my favourite lollies.
The pink ones were prawns weren’t they?
Also finger o’ fudge, and Curly Wurlys (still awesome).
Did anyone else think Finger o’ fudge was full of peppery goodness? I didn’t eat one till I was 16 because I misheard the jingle.
http://youtu.be/nC9BBLSZZdQ
Great selling point Cadburys! ‘It’s very small and neat’. Wow, we Brits are crap at advertising.
I may be biased as a Scot, but Irn Bru had the best ads.
No country that came up with the Cravendale ads is a complete loss at advertising.
http://youtu.be/h6CcxJQq1x8
Irn Bru, made from girders in Scotland. Used to love that stuff, wonder if they still sell it?
Mr Monarch’s dad was from Greenock, he left at 16 to join the RAF, at 60 most people in Shropshire still couldn’t understand him. I thought he’d find Rab C Nesbitt offensive but he loved it.
Mr M’s mum was from a mining village in South Wales, the family get togethers were brilliant. Only person there with an English accent was me. Mr M is more English sounding now, but he used to have the strangest Scottish/Welsh mash up.
Mr M’s grandad used to love getting sympathy by telling everyone how he worked down the mines. Turns out it was for one day, then he moved to Shropshire and worked in a grocers. Old fraud had me going for weeks.
See, this is why I found the Shakesville “Brave is racist against Scottish people” thing so ridiculous. The minute I read it I knew the person complaining wouldn’t actually be a Scot, we love taking the piss out of ourselves.
Irn Bru is still going strong, though it’s hard to get here. Went to school with one of the family, I think she can be trusted to keep it going for a good long while.
Pardon, but “fried eggs” and “rice paper” – are those candies? The rest in that list are candies….
Random, but I was following links from the Irn Bru ad and found this food blog in which an unsuspecting American encounters flying saucers for the first time (starts at about 7:15).
So gonna get some Irn Bru when I go to town today.
Rab C Nesbitt was brilliant, dad-in-laws accent used to get thicker whenever he’d been watching it.
@Sparky
Candy? Candy? I think you’ll find the correct term is ‘Sweet’, I dunno… :p.
Fried eggs:
http://www.bestbritishsweets.co.uk/pick-n-mix-sweets/swizzels-fun-gums-fried-eggs-sweets.html
Rice paper used to come in sheets about 10cm x 5cm, 1pence a sheet.
It was pastel coloured paper that you could eat, it melted in your mouth. As a kid this was quite fascinating (although I might have been a child who was easily pleased).
Ha, ha, flying saucer sour face, not for the unsuspecting.
Incidentally, @Sparky, flying saucers are made of thick rice paper and filled with really sour sherbet. You just scoff the whole thing.
@Cassandrasays, you must miss home goodies. If you’d like a care package you’d be very welcome. Used to have a couple of friends who wanted variants of the following:
Kit Kats, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, Marmite (unless your one of those weirdos who hates it), Cadbury’s Cream Eggs, PG Tips (unless you’re a Tetley’s girl), Walkers crisps,Thornton’s anything, Penguins, Aeros, Hob Nobs, Jaffa cakes, McVities chocolate digestives, Ambrosia Custard, Mr Kipling’s Cherry Bakewells and Branston pickle was one a friend used to say they missed. Oh, and Daddies sauce.
Anyway, just give us a shout with requests, or just ignore this if you already have a supplier of UK junk food.
You know what I miss most? Wine gums. Which is annoying, since they’re heavy and therefore expensive to ship. I can usually get most chocolate here since there’s a cool little British sweet shop in downtown San Francisco, but both wine gums and Easter eggs can be a bit of a challenge. One year most of their Easter eggs arrived broken, the owner was so upset.
We used to take British sweets with us wherever we lived when I was a kid, and both parents had their own things that nobody else was allowed to touch – walnut whips for mum, fry’s chocolate creams for dad.
Oops, sorry, Cassandrakitty, iPad keeps replacing it with your old name.
Also here’s a funny age thing – can you remember when Hob Nobs were only available without chocolate? I can. Can’t remember how old I was when the chocolate ones appeared, mid teens maybe.
Just got back from visiting mum and sis. We’re on the other side of the hills south of Adelaide, so we (this time) got about half the rainfall in the city and nearer suburbs. My sister on the other hand was perfectly OK at her place, but a couple of streets over there are now houses where there used to be a footie oval.
She has clear memories of her then 8 years old son paddling around there 30+ years ago in his blow up dinghy when it had just been wet weather for a while – didn’t even need a couple of inches in a day like it was this time. Went a bit out of her way to see how things were getting on after she’d had to drive carefully through deepish water to get home. She said she felt awfully sorry for one family, they had their carpets and underlay draped over the fence to dry … alongside the For Sale sign.
Yeah, I do, so nice. I was always a sucker for Jaffa cakes myself, although, of course, not a real biscuit. 🙂 Also, I remember when they put chocolate on Rich tea biscuits and it definitely did not work.
Wine gums are Mr M’s favourite and I love fry’s mint creams. If you’d like us to post you some along with anything else, drop us a line, I’m sure David wouldn’t mind passing on my email.
Gonna have to try and get a couple of hours sleep, Man Boobz is so distracting. Nighty, night.
So hungry now…
Sleep well!
Sorry, making no sense, I remember them without chocolate, but liked them a lot more with.
Never talked about food so much in my life, once I’ve had a nap I’m gonna go buy me some junk food.
Really gonna sleep now, take care.
opheliamonarch: Oh, those fried eggs look so cute! I wish they delivered to the US. And good night!
And we had flying saucers, at least when I was a kid, though the kind we had were filled with a sour powder, kind of like pixie sticks.
Not carrot cake like. At all. Yes, cakes and muffins made with grated zucchini are beautifully moist.
Once summer is half over, the intertubes hum with eleventy gazillion recipes for chocolate zucchini cake (nearly all the same) and zucchini muffins (hundreds of different versions) zinging backwards and forwards while people frantically nag their neighbours to take ‘just one more’ or stare with despairing eyes at the last 2 cubic inches of space left in the big freezer in the garage.
The muffins were gratefully received and I have some leftovers (yum morning tea tomorrow).
Adding to the lollies:
Milk bottles: http://www.cadbury.co.nz/products/lollies/cadbury-milk-bottles.aspx?p=3606
Milk shakes: http://www.cadbury.co.nz/products/lollies/cadbury-milk-shakes.aspx?p=3619
False teeth: http://lollyshop.co.nz/product_info.php?cPath=60&products_id=1184&osCsid=dd9ok87ikecdc6pie22f8i58g6
Pineapple lumps, which I am always required to cart overseas for ex-pats: http://www.thewarehouse.co.nz/red/catalog/product/Pascalls-Pineapple-Lumps-Family-Pack-140g?SKU=365806
They don’t market these as spaceman cigarettes anymore, and it’s actually now quite hard to find them with the pink (“lit”) tip, also requested to bring these overseas for ex-pats: http://www.shopenzed.com/candy-stick-cigarettes-2-packs-xidp113159.html