'Home empowerment'

The CA has a story today about BeJane.com, a site for women wanting to delve into the world of do-it-yourself home improvement. Those ladies up there in the stiletto workboots are the founders of the site.

It's sad, really, that the concept behind a pretty useful website has to be marred by the heavily gendered and feminized marketing gimmicks on display here.

Of course, there is the argument that having a site for women DIYers makes no sense. Home improvement seems to be an inherently ungendered activity if you, as I do, subscribe to the notion that we are all born rubes with no concept of L brackets or mastik or how to use them. So why the need for a site geared toward women? What is it that makes this site for women, exactly?

Stiletto workboots and pink suede toolbelts? Choosing a project based on the mood you want to evoke (because women are moody, har har)?

Seriously?

God, this shit gets so tiring.

I could write about how these sorts of gimmicky displays of femininity — while posing as cheeky and fun! — are, collectively, a winning strategy to keep women at a disadvantage, to remind them at all times of their to-be-looked-at-ness, their otherness, and their status as submissives who couldn't fucking run from a train if it was headed right for them, but I think it will suffice to say that, while these women seem to be offering up a useful product (I think the mood-based projects are interesting, but I fail to see how that has anything to do with being female), their approach is profoundly stupid. And impractical.

And it has nothing to do with women.