Shambles & Rambles

In a nutshell, it’s much more efficient to sell things to people if you can divide them up into tightly defined subcategories that have no interests in common; that way, you never risk accidentally competing with yourself.

This is why children’s toys (and toy sales channels) are actually much more strongly gendered these days than they were forty, thirty, even twenty years ago: one of the basic market segregation splits they’ve decided to use is “boys versus girls”.

Ever wonder why you see Avengers t-shirts that leave Black Widow out of the group shot, or Guardians of the Galaxy action figure lines with no Gamora? That’s market segregation in action.

The upshot is that shows with crossover appeal can actually be cancelled for being too popular with girls; they’re viewed as “stealing” the female market from the specifically girl-targeted media that rightfully “owns” it.

This is the sort of thing folks are talking about when they say gender roles are socially constructed, by the way. The gender split in media merchandising? It’s not just artificial, it’s deliberately imposed as a top-down marketing strategy. When folks try to justify it by saying “this is the ways it’s always been” or “this is just what the market wants”, they’re lying through their teeth - this is, in fact, the merchandisers dictating to the market what it wants in order to sell stuff more efficiently.

until it wasn’t

the first time I fell in love was fifth grade I hated my self that year that year I was so alone but, when she looked at me, with her piercing blue eyes, with her sailors voice hidden under now shaped lips, with her tall, skinny body with her hair—her stick straight hair I felt like maybe she understood when she sat so close to me I could feel her breath, when she laughed so hard it cleared my head, when she swore under her breath in that subtly bad ass way I felt deserving deserving of what? not deserving of her, but maybe deserving of love

I sat in the basement with my other friends someone asked who I liked her perfect face flashed in front of me I said nothing I listened to the others, listened as they listed the names of boys they wanted to kiss her lips were the only thing in my head I was happy to admire her from a far it was enough just to see her smile until it wasn’t anymore

two years passed I doodled the names of boys in my notebooks, because it was the thing to do I didn’t doodle her name I didn’t think of her soft brown eyes, or of her short, huggable body I gave her piggy back rides I assured her I would date her you know, if I were a guy we laid next to each other on the bed, she turned towards me, and her eyes fluttered shut this time she was the broken one I knew she felt unlovable her heart was broken and I shattered my heart into pieces, trying to find a way to fix hers I stayed up with her when she cried about boys I told her she was beautiful she told me she was in love with some guy who didn’t love her

I was the one who told him I was the one that set them up and, it made her happy and for a while that was enough she was in love, it didn’t matter to me that I wasn’t the one kissing her or that she only ever wanted to see him her happiness was enough until it wasn’t anymore

the next time I fell in love, I knew something felt real I’ve always felt like I had to pretend no one could see all of the sides of me and then she met me, and I understood who I was and 25 hundred miles seemed like nothing because I loved her, and she loved me and I never kissed her, never held her hand, I couldn’t hold her as she cried but we were in love, and that was enough, until it wasn’t anymore