Yahoo's Shine for Women is Dull
Our neighbors in Sunnyvale, Yahoo!, launched a new site for women on Monday called Shine. Whenever something is made over "for women" it usually means "we’ve dumbed this down for you, and made it pink." Hence, we have tiny pink hammers, video games about shopping, and cars with more cup holders and less mileage. Shine, meet status quo. A quick trip to the site confirms my worst fears. The homepage is a delightful shade of ovary pink.(click 'more'.)
The lead story is about Madonna, and it’s cribbed from fashion magazine Elle. Of the ten main categories for perusal listed at the top of the page, Fashion and Beauty is first and hard news doesn’t even make the cut. News stories are relegated to something called Cheat Sheet (because sometimes us girls cheat, and glance away from the Style section of the Sunday Times) where the top headline is ‘Chelsea Clinton asked about Monica. Again!’. The cotton candy quality of the site wouldn’t be so irritating if it didn’t justify its existence thusly:"When we started talking about creating a new website for women, we wanted to avoid all of the common categories that advertisers or marketers tend to put us in." Just because you've cleverly disguised the dieting category by calling it 'Healthy Living' doesn't mean you've defied sterotypes.-Andy Wright
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