In my prior unnecessarily gendered product posts, I’ve focused on products targeted to men. This time around, I want to focus on a product marketed to women: a lace safety vest.
Many jobs require workers to wear a reflective vest for safety. People may also own them to make themselves visible to traffic. I know I have one for when I’m walking our dogs in the dark or shoveling snow at night.
If you wear one for general visibility while walking or riding a bike, the vest doesn’t need to meet particular safety standards, but if you wear it for work, it needs to comply with particular safety standards. Unfortunately, as stated on the website for “The Original Lace Safety Vest“, while the reflective strips meet safety standards, the vest itself doesn’t as the lace doesn’t meet the fabric standards of being uniform and continuous.
If a reflective vest being utilitarian keeps someone from wearing it, then maybe this is the product for them. After all, some people may want to “be unforgettable” rather than (just) visible as their advertising copy states (although they actually cross out “be visible”). As for me, I’ll stick to more traditional safety vests for my nighttime strolls as I’m much more concerned with being visible than unforgettable.
Have you tried having your students find unnecessarily gendered products? Give it a try – show and tell doesn’t have to end in elementary school.