I’m gonna start this off with the question all my friends texted me last week: Have you watched the Pynk video yet? If you haven’t, the quick word is ‘vagina,’ which I expect is good for a click– but if you want to make me work for it, here we go: Pynk is Janelle Monáe’s new single, lyrically full of vag innuendos and visually saturated with playful bush, extremely vaginal pants, and girl-on-girl love that’s somehow arty enough for the narrative to be about woman power before lesbianism (though I think it is, in classic Janelle Monáe style, about both). Pynk is, obviously, perfectly timed within the scope of #metoo etc., which feels less like a grab for relevancy than like the world catching up with Janelle. Watch as many times as you need to to internalize the lyrics, and don’t blame yourself if you fall down a Janelle Monáe video rabbit hole; she’s like that.
Also having a great time right now is Emily Chang, author of Brotopia, the book that catalogues how Silicon Valley became so broey. “Instant Bestseller” shouldn’t be a surprising title, given the confluence of topic and moment, and to her credit she started writing it before we had hashtagged names for harassment. But still.. the opening line (well, almost all of it) of Jessica Bennet’s review goes like this: “the review I want to write for Emily Chang’s new book… is more like a tweet: “Yeah, we know. Silicon Valley is sexist. Now what?”” And, agreed: shocking stories and statistics are great for riling people up, but what about the follow-through? Chang does bring up a couple of interesting points in interviews about the book: First, Silicon Valley is all about solving problems. It’s also all about using data to drive that problem-solving. The data tells us that the gender gap is 5x the national average in Silicon Valley. So why don’t people, uh, use some data to solve the problem?
(Also of use: equal pay policies, gender quotas, hiring women partners, board members, and VCs. Just a few ‘thought starters,’ as they say.)
As an alternate way around the problem, the more idealistic among us are experimenting with genderless childrearing. The idea, immediately robbed of some authority by the word theyby (stands in for ‘baby’), is to raise your kid without any notions of how they ought to dress or self-present, or what they ought to play with as corresponds to their sex organs. Some go the avoidance route with full-beige, and others turn maximalist with barbies *and* trucks; all struggle to educate family, childcare providers, and the general public. It should come as no surprise that the schools that are willing to accommodate a non-binary scenario (and its accompanying grammar) are the most expensive, leaving this particular kind of childrearing as a rich-people’s option. But there you go: uphill battle.
And here’s where we end on a conflicted note: Commodity, a gender-neutral perfume (sorry, *lifestyle*) brand started by two British dudes (one of whom previously founded Haute Look), appears to be having a moment. With designy vials of scents like ‘Book’ and ‘Whiskey,’ they’re selling big time at Sephora (I thought we said gender-neutral?) and doing a solid business on their direct-to-consumer site as well. While I guess men making gender-neutral products is better than men dictating lady products, it’s still a bummer there are no women on the founding team at Commodity, but will give them the point for not prescribing who it’s for. Take a look at their pretty branding here, and consider taking a sniff next time you pass a Sephora. Gents in particular.
