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Women's Websites Insult My Intelligence

By Angela Genusa

May 01, 2001 — CIO — If anyone is a superpatron of that giant library called the Internet, it’s me. What heaven! A global library that never closes!

Last year, I logged more than 1,000 leisure hours online. That works out to about three hours a day visiting sites to read, bank, buy, track, map and research--and that’s not counting the hours online I put in at work. I didn’t, however, spend two seconds at any of the large commercial sites aimed at women, such as iVillage, WomenCentral, Oxygen.com or Women.com.

Why should I? What do these sites have to offer me? Fashion tips? No thanks. I have a teenage daughter. Parenting advice? I turn to coworkers who’ve been there, done that. Dating dilemmas? I phone a girlfriend.

Millions of women visit these sites. I don’t know any of them.

Although they promised us a revolution, these sites are a devolution, hosting content that harks back to the worst June Cleaver-ish prefeminist tripe.

The question that drives me nuts is why. Why in 2001, after decades of feminism, countless books, articles, lawsuits and marches, are people--many of them women--pouring millions into building sites that insult my gender’s intelligence and portray us all as dimwits? At a time when women compose 50.4 percent of the online population and make the majority of all household purchasing decisions, can’t these people think of anything better to offer women? Better than all the old-fashioned junk that used to go into the "women’s pages" in your daily newspaper: horoscopes, fashion tips, recipes and advice to the lovelorn.

One of the reasons these sites are such wastelands of retro fluff is they want to be women’s sites without being labeled feminist, says Henry Jenkins, the director of comparative media studies at MIT and teacher of a course on gender, sexuality and pop culture. "There’s the notion that if you take a more progressive stance about femininity, you’re going to alienate the most conservative segment of the marketplace," he says. "When they put themselves in that ideological trap, they end up going back to prefeminism and suddenly we’re in Betty Crocker-land."

Is it really that bad? Is it really Betty Crocker-land? Perhaps I’m overstating the case. Perhaps these sites aren’t as backward as I think they are. Maybe I should take another look.

Dumb And Dumber

It’s 9 p.m. when I arrive at Women.com ("Where women are going"), and the lead is "Get Fiscally Fit." Even genderless topics like finances are translated for women who, it is assumed, will be able to understand the rocket science of balancing a checkbook only if it’s presented in the language of body image. "Do you need to put your debt on a diet? Shape up your investments? Check out these tips from our financial expert, Cash Flo."

 

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