I'm a slayer, ask me how.

I know this topic is discussed and beaten to death all the time but I found it amusing that today in my blog feeds I had a female author lamenting the "girly" book covers forced upon her work and a male gamer lamenting a publisher pushing a gender-neutral game as "for girls".

Marketing is a scary thing. I am happy that, as a librarian, I tend to try to market everything to everyone. This is probably because my goal is not to make money but to educate patrons in the joys of reading, researching etc..

I feel bad for guys because it seems their entire existence hinges upon them showing that they are "tough" and "manly" at all times. It feels like they eventually can move beyond that,eventually but only if they are really lucky. Some learn to balance it all, to realize that their manliness is not threatened by reading a book with a "girly" cover. These things don't bother girls, but I guess it's because if we only read things that were "girly" then our options would be woefully limited.

I guess the moral here is think for yourselves. Train your children to think for themselves. To evaluate. Remember that a book cover/game box/movie poster is most likely not chosen by the author of the piece but created by a marketer, scientifically crafted to appeal to a demographic chosen at random, not always demographic the author was trying to write for.