This year's depressing Super Bowl commercials

Tiffany & Co. features same-sex couple in engagement ad

Tiffany & Co.

Tiffany & Co. has made history with its new engagement campaign.

Along with a slew of professional models, the jewelry giant's campaign also features a same-sex, real-life couple. This campaign marks the first time Tiffany & Co. has featured a same-sex couple in an advertising campaign.

While the names of the two men featured in the campaign imagery have not been released, Fashionista confirmed that the New Yorkers are dating in real life, which makes the campaign picture even more adorable.

Professional models Andreea Diaconu, Joséphine Le Tutour, Luca Gadjus and Cora Emmanuel also appear in the campaign.

In January 2014, Barneys New York made headlines after featuring 17 transgender men and women in its spring 2014 ad campaign. Additionally, the retailer enlisted the help of Vanity Fair's Patricia Bosworth to interview each model who appeared in the Bruce Weber-shot campaign.

"Our goal was to convey the strength, beauty and courage of these extraordinary individuals through the iconic photographs and films of Bruce Weber, as well as the insightful writing of Patricia Bosworth," Barneys creative director Dennis Freedman said in a statement.

"Great progress has been made in regards to the lesbian, gay and bisexual community. Unfortunately, the struggle for transgender equality continues. In the end, it is our hope that that we can make a difference through this campaign."

Other brands and retailers, such as Gap, Banana Republic and J. Crew, have also featured same-sex couples in ad campaigns and other promotional materials.

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Why the pinkification of toys hurts women

For every mother whose daughter goes through the princess phase spurred on by movies and toys, I wish to apologize for the entertainment industry. We are changing. We must. Gender is over-designed into toys, games and play experiences—and it hurts us.

In fact, the prevalence of indicators a toy is for a boy or for a girl is shocking, as a walk through a toy store or the recent Toy Fair 2014 shows. We know the practice of gendering toys creates and maintains stereotypes. Rigid gender lines correlate to lack of female participation in STEM professions, such as computer science, the entry point for game design. And these lines set up lifelong, false notions of what opportunities are available to females in general.

In 1981, a LEGO ad famously showed a young girl, Rachel Giordano and her LEGO construction, which implied playful creating is a beautiful thing—for all. The contemporary version of this ad features an older girl, and her creation differs significantly. It suggests creative work happens in different colors and “she” is one of a kind. This girl speaks to girls because it is marketing a girls’ product. No longer can a mere girl playing speak to any potential players, male or female.

Parents may argue that girls like being addressed as a particular demographic, and social pressures force them to buy “girlie” toys. I’ve heard many swear girls are born from the womb wanting princess dresses. Yet we know this is not entirely true if we look at the history of advertising toys and see how play is represented. What may seem quite “natural” is wrapped in images on television, in games, and in ads.

Ultimately, the “pinkification” of toys is problematic. Girls’ LEGOs are pink and purple, and positioned as being about making cakes. Children learn early on through play objects there are striking differences in goals, opportunities and creative outlets between the sexes. The toy industry has done girls no favors for limiting what can be dreamed. It is no wonder the percentage of women entering highly technical fields such as computer science peaked in the 1980s and has declined ever since: Fewer than 12% of computer science graduates were women in 2011, according to The Computing Research Association. The drop in women in computer science corresponds to the change in the marketing of some important creative and constructive toys.

I often wonder if I am a game designer because I was allowed to think about play without the constraints of over-branding and over-marketing of toys by gender. Unlike kids today, I wasn't constantly reminded I was a girl when I was daydreaming or playing. Sure, I took Barbie to the proverbial beach, but I also needed a dump truck to move sand and construct the resort. Psychological research shows again and again that people from a group suffering from a stereotype will perform poorly if reminded of their disadvantaged status. So, the pervasive cultural stereotype that girls are bad at math will be activated unconsciously if gender is brought up at all. That's right: Just mentioning gender or race will critically affect performance on a test. This works both ways: Studies looking at white men playing basketball reveal white men performed less well with a black coach because they, too, are subconsciously reminded white men are stereotyped as being poor ballers.

Ultimately, stereotypes hold everyone back.

Board games, such as Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit, never seemed to be marked for anyone in particular, but an ever-increasing number of toys and computer games do get marked along gender lines. This translates into jobs and career options: In 2008, the International Digital Games Research found only 11% of digital game industry jobs were held by women.

Today, Giordano from the LEGO ad is a health practitioner in Seattle. Did LEGOs encourage her to pursue science? Research has shown a number of factors that open up science, technology, engineering and math careers for women. One is how these fields are represented; the lone scientist in real life works on a research team discovering new knowledge.

We have a long way to go to unpack the hypergendering of toys and games. With the rise of casual games and the popularity of Angry Birds and Candy Crush Saga, perhaps different groups will become interested in game and toy design as a profession. Perhaps newcomers will create less stereotypical works and even use toys and games as platforms for prosocial learning.

Changing underlying “shorthands” that overly categorize kids is another piece; we must bring back girls and boys as equal in play. Otherwise, stereotypes fostered in playthings create limitations that hurt our kids, limit their dreams and affect our national future.

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Why tech companies are doing everything they can to make you cry

Here’s a concise summary of the newest Apple ad: A family weeps at Christmas. And here’s a concise summary of the latest Google ad, for a budget tablet: A young man’s dog is dying while he’s away at college.

   

As companies that make products, Apple and Google are now competing in virtually every way. They’re both trying to sell phones, tablets, TV products, laptops, software ecosystems. They will almost inevitably compete in whatever device or software category comes next. In the process of competing with each other, they’ve both broadened their offerings to a redefining point: They consider themselves as much lifestyle companies as tech companies. Their advertising seems to reflect this.

As lifestyle companies, however, they’ve decided to skip right past aspirational ads, and jubilant ads, straight to tears. Viewing Google’s most recent ads all at once is like running some kind of poignancy gauntlet. Here’s one about a woman Gchatting with her father after her mother dies. Here’s one about a baby growing up and almost succumbing to fever, but not (thank god and thank Google). Apple’s have been less morbid but are still openly manipulative and sentimental.

This type of advertising is neither new nor unique to tech, but it’s a choice worth thinking about: What does it mean that Google and Apple are no longer advertising as cool, or as innovative, and that they’re hardly advertising their products at all? Andwhy are they so intent on making us cry? These ads work well if you think about Apple as the company that makes your phone, which you like. They work less well if you think about Apple as one of the largest corporations, if not the largest corporation, on Earth.

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Goldie Blox commercial

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