Tag Archives: Christmas
On the 12 sexist (and not-so-sexist) Christmas gift lists
Humbugs abound as I do my annual Christmas shop. Not because I don’t revel in the idea of finding exciting and unique gifts to shower upon my loved ones, but because everywhere I turn I’m confronted with ridiculous lists of ‘gift ideas for him’ or, indeed, ‘her.’ In honour of this horror, here are my 12 sexist (and not so sexist) Christmas gift lists.
On the first day of Christmas my true love/friend/mum/colleague who drew my name in the office secret Santa gave to me…
1. A Ryan Gosling tea-towel
That’s right, number one on the Prezzybox list of ‘stocking fillers for women‘ is a Ryan Gosling tea towel. Because if there’s one thing women love more than spending quality time in the kitchen, it’s drying pots and pans with a celebrity’s face. Bonus points for trying to persuade us to spend almost an entire tenner on a ‘stocking filler’.
Note that those who might not have been tempted by the Ryan Gosling tea towel might instead like chocolate pills. So what’s the equivalent for men?
2. Tabasco-flavoured chocolate
Luckily the man in your life can have chocolate in his stocking too, but none of this ‘chocolate pills’ nonsense. This sweet treat for your man is Tabasco-flavoured. According to prezzybox, to women chocolate is some sort of emergency medication, but to men it is a delivery mechanism for SPICY HEAT.
3. A gendered gift experience
For those with more money to spend, why not treat your loved one to a special day? They can go paintballing, if they are blue, or for afternoon tea, if they are pink. Boots actually gets bonus points in the ‘trying not to be too sexist’ stakes, because when you click on either of these panels they take you to the same page. If they get rid of the pink ‘for her’ and blue ‘for him’ landing pages next year, Father Christmas might take them off his ‘naughty’ list.
4. A mug that kills women who touch it
There’s nothing more traditional than a mug with a crap slogan, and iwoot (the website formerly known as I Want One Of Those Dot Com) has come through with a few. Their gifts for him offers the ‘man mug‘. It comes complete with spirit level, to check how horizontal your masculinity is. It also has a sign on the bottom which makes it absolutely clear the mug is Not For Girl -, I can only assume that if a lady drinks from it, she is instantly poisoned:
Still, ladies mustn’t worry, because if they’re lucky then they’ll get a mug in their stocking too. For women iwoot suggests this ‘Little Miss Giggles’ mug (spirit level definitely not included):
5. Virgin experiences
If you’re after a special day out, Virgin’s one-upped Boots and does indeed have special, separate pages for women and men. Phew. No more wading through spa days when you want to buy a dude a day out: it’s cars and paintball almost all the way. I say ‘almost’ because… what’s this?
That’s right – a special afternoon tea. Not one of those boring ladies’ ones with sandwiches, no. This one has been (as the copy explains) ‘designed to satisfy a man’s taste and appetite’. Which it turns out means switching sandwiches for mini toad-in-the-hole. Oh, and illustrating the ‘tea’ with a picture that contains ‘beer’. Although, according to the copy, there will only be a choice of tea or coffee, there is beer in the picture because that is what men like. See below.
7. Beer, glorious beer
How much do men like beer? A lot, according to totallyfunky.co.uk.
Of course these beer-related items only appear first because the list is alphabetical, and if you scroll down further you’ll see that men also like Darth Vader and eating out of dog bowls.
So that’s Christmas sorted for your dad/brother/husband etc. But what should you get your daughter? Totallyfunky suggests bath products, gloves, and a shoe that you put a spoon in. Or you could go for…
7. Anything to do with One Direction
If the lady you’re buying for is a bit too young for the Ryan Gosling tea towel, The Works has you covered. With One Direction. EVERYWHERE.
Of course, boys don’t like One Direction, so instead they get dinosaurs and helicopters.
8. Not-so-sexy underwear
One of my personal bugbears is that when it comes to Christmas underwear, straight guys are encouraged to buy something sexy, slinky, and sensuous for their partners, whereas straight women are offered a selection of comedy Christmas socks or hilarious cock-cosies with which to wow him. This red-hot image brought to you by TopMan…
9. A world I don’t want to live in
Onwards, now, to presentfinder, where boyfriends are ‘difficult’ and girlfriends are ‘gorgeous’. It’s tricky to compare these gifts because they’re all so twee and quirky, but essentially we’re being asked to believe in a world where men like booze, money and edible tits which come in a tiny metal box:
While girls like pink VW camper vans, and being given plasters for Christmas.
Is there a better way to write Christmas gift lists?
If we say to shops “hey, this Christmas gift list is a bit sexist, isn’t it?” their response will most likely be “but it has to be – this is the stuff you’re searching for, and the stuff you end up eventually buying. If we were to stop being twats about it we’d never sell anything.” Which is partly true. We do search for ‘Christmas gifts for her’ and ‘Christmas gifts for him’ (although it looks like we’re doing it less each year).
But that’s not to say they can’t grab our attention in other ways. It’s more than possible to market effectively without descending into lazy stereotypes. Even at Christmas.
To round off the twelve, here are a few examples of shops that, I think, are doing it better.
Not-so-sexist Christmas gift lists
10. Lovehoney’s underwear hot-off
As mentioned above, I dread the ‘Christmas underwear’ thing. Mainly because it seems the idea is for a woman to receive something sexy and lacy and beautiful, and a man to get a comedy santa-hat for his bellend.
So credit, then, to Lovehoney. As a sex toy retailer, it’d be pretty hard for them to not split their toys by sex, given that so many of them depend on the sex organs that you have. So their ‘gifts for her‘ and ‘gifts for him‘ pages make sense. But on top of that, they also have the same feel: these gifts are genuine gifts for people. It’s not split by comedy vs sex: there are genuinely sexy pants for the guys, and toys that individuals will actually play with (rather than giggle at) on both sides of the sex divide.
UPDATE September 2017: Well this is very embarrassing. It’s actually not necessary to split sex toys by gender – it’s far more helpful to split by category in this instance too. Not only because there’s no need to list out e.g. ‘butt plugs for men’ (spoiler: butt plugs can be used by anyone who has a butt) but it also excludes trans and non-binary people.
11. Argos
To show it’s possible to sell children’s toys without painting half your website pink and shouting “YOU WANT TO BE A PRINCESS, DON’T YOU, PRINCESS?!” here’s a picture of the Argos ‘toys’ menu:
Do you see? Toys divided by category, brand, age and popularity. If you can find any hint of gender segregation there I’ll give you a mince pie.
12. Marks and Spencer
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve had a peruse of the M&S ‘Christmas’ page, and I can’t find anything that is unnecessarily gendered.
It appears that the nation’s favourite place to buy socks and knickers has resisted compiling lists of ‘gifts for him’ and ‘gifts for her’. They stick to ‘men’ and ‘women’ for clothes, which is understandable given that’s how they split it in the shops, but there don’t seem to be any lists of gifts ‘for him’ or ‘for her’. The only page I can find where they categorise gifts is by personality. “Gifts for foodies”, “Gifts for gardeners” and suchlike.
For that they get a gold star to stick on top of their Christmas tree.
The examples above are, of course, the product of my own frequently-flawed opinions and half-arsed research via Google. But I’d welcome any more examples (especially ones of shops who do it well) in the comments or via Twitter. Please tag them with #RyanGoslingTeaTowel, because Christmas should be FUN.
How to not be sexist at Christmas
Every good Christmas story has a moral, and this one’s no different. Just as it’s possible to sell toys without labeling them ‘for boys’ and ‘for girls’, it’s more than possible to flog your Christmas deals without assuming that men want beer and women want bubble bath. Not only will you get my admiration if you split your Christmas deals by personality, you’re also (prepare for a shock) making it genuinely easier for me to find the perfect present. After all, we’re not painfully simple creatures: we usually know more about the person we’re buying for than simply what gender they identify as.
I know that Sarah likes cooking, Bob likes cosy sleepwear, and yes, Ashley is a big fan of both Ryan Gosling and drying dishes. It’s a damn sight easier to find these presents if you narrow it down by something useful.
Merry frigging Christmas: wanking at Christmas time
It’s the night before Christmas, and creatures are definitely stirring. There’s a curious rustling of bedsheets and the occasional muffled grunt. Not just in my house, but in homes up and down the country. Because there’s nothing more festive than a surreptitious wank.
Think of the children: not the young ones, obviously, but the grown-up children. Unmarried sons and daughters like me in their mid-twenties (OK, late twenties, fuck you) for whom Christmas marks a return to the family home.
The old traditions, like hanging stockings by the fire and leaving a mince pie out for Father Christmas, have been replaced by new ones such as getting tanked with the siblings on Christmas Eve then falling through the front door at one in the morning slurring ‘ho ho ho’ at the rest of the family.
We’re home for the holidays, and we’re sleeping on futons, sofas, floors or single beds that remind us of our young adulthood, when wanking wasn’t just a casual hobby but a heartfelt vocation.
Location, location, location
That’s how it is for me. Because of my parents’ selfish insistence on having lives that don’t revolve around me, my bedroom’s no longer my bedroom – there are no longer posters or books or piles of tatty clothes decorating the carpet. It’s now a tidy office, with my old single bed squashed awkwardly in the corner. But sweet baby Jesus it’s sexy – it’s sexy because it reminds me of being a teenager, with all the angst and guilt and fetid, desperate masturbation that went along with it.
I can’t lie in that bed without being reminded of the number of times I buried my face in the pillow and silently, subtly, frigged myself to an awkward and potentially embarrassing climax.
Not lonely, but alone
I guard my family Christmas quite jealously. No matter how in love I’ve been, or how hot for a particular boy, none of them has ever been invited home for Christmas. Not because I’m worried about tension or embarrassment, but because they might do something unconscionable, like suggest we open Christmas presents before lunch. My family traditions are important: without them I wouldn’t be festive enough to jingle a single bell, let alone deck the fucking halls. From the annual Christmas Eve piss-up to putting sprouts in people’s stockings to recreate the Bottom Christmas Special, my traditions are far too sacred to cast aside. And one of the greatest traditions of all is the week-long wankathon.
Teenage kicks
As I lie in my old single bed, fingers slickly rubbing my clit, the old images come back too. Here I think less about gang-bangs and spanking and more about formative experiences with the boys of my youth. I think about that time when a boy touched my tit in an alley, then proudly showed me how his erection pushed at the fabric of his jeans. I think about the first blow-job I gave, knees red raw from kneeling on the ground in the woods and arousal so deep it was soaking through my knickers. I remember the guys who touched me, the guys I touched, and the ones whose laps I’d sit on. As I edge closer to a shuddering orgasm I think of how they’d wrap trembling arms around me, letting me rub right up against their twitching erections.
I can remember these things anywhere, of course, but nowhere are they more vivid than in the bed I’m sitting on now. If I wanted, I could go back to the woods, walk down through the alley, and see the same things I saw then through fresh eyes. I could probably even knock on some doors and say hi to the 28-year-old versions of those teenagers. It wouldn’t be the same, of course. They all have jobs and lives and mortgages. Some of them even have families. I’m sure most of them have richer and filthier fantasies than having a horny, excitable me grind incompetently on their prick. I doubt all of them remember the times when they made me shiver by touching my nipples or the times they asked me, in croaky half-whispers to ‘just touch it. Please.’
But maybe some of them do. Perhaps somewhere fairly close by, in a street very like this one, one of the boys I knew back then is doing the same thing I am. He’s lying in the single bed he slept in at age eighteen, idly rubbing his now-grown-up cock and remembering how it felt when I touched it through his trousers.
So, don’t feel alone this Christmas, even if you’re single, or temporarily parted from your lovers. As you stare at the ceiling in a home that’s no longer yours, rekindle your affection for youthful masturbation and treat yourself to a lovely festive wank. Just try not to rustle the duvet.