Strong Enough For A Gender-Queer, But Made For A Cisgender Female

The hilariously surnamed Alanna Vagianos, who was possibly born with a vag, is the Women's Editor at The Huffington Post. If you carefully scrutinize this photograph from a recent editor's meeting, you may notice that possessing a vag seems to be a minimum requirement for HuffPo's editorial board.

Ms. Vagianos published an article today about an advertisement for Secret antiperspirant, Women Prep For Workplace Sexism In Spot-On Deodorant Ad. The ad depicts two females rehearsing their product pitch in an elevator. They seem to work on the web presence side of a non-tech firm, based on their rapid-fire role play.

"Web visits?"   "One point two million."

"Who coded this?"   "We did."

The tagline at the end, "Ash and Emma's pitch adds two more girls to the boys' club." A woman's voice-over at the end says "Secret: stress tested for women." I didn't really see evidence of "workplace sexism' in the spot. Perhaps Vagianos longs for the dark days of 1971 when women like Mary Tyler Moore were seen as shattering cultural norms.

If anything, the workplace sexism apparent at HuffPo's editorial board is increasingly the norm. Feminist writers think that men should be jumping at the chance to work in female dominated fields like nurse practitioner, even though they pay a lot less.

I wonder if feminists will ever realize the reason those jobs pay a lot less is because women can do them. Probably not, because the urge to be self-congratulatory over her transgressiveness is a feminist imperative. Maybe that explains why so many men and boys just want to quit being male, and join the girl's club.

Vagianos links to other Secret ad videos, and points out that they center "around themes of women’s empowerment." One of them, ("possibly our favorite"), features "a young trans woman finding the courage to leave a bathroom stall."

The opening images portray two young women entering a restroom and walking up to the mirror. Notice the stall doors behind them? They are designed like plantation shutters that aren't super private. What woman wants to take a dump in a bathroom stall where anyone can walk in and look at her? But wait. It gets better (worse).

There is a transsexual male lurking in the bathroom stall. He's being quiet as a mouse as he peeks at the women. Oh, wait, xe is just anxious? That's understandable, because when xe emerges from the stall, those women are going to scream.

The tagline at the end is priceless. "Dana finds the courage to show that there's no wrong way to be a woman."

And this is the "favorite" at Huffington Post? What if you replaced the two adult women in the restroom with two seven-year old girls? What then?