Moderator: Team Captains
They don't exactly say it was written by the women in their marketing team and that avoids fingerpointing blame.Hambone wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 1:59 pmSeemed that way to me but reading some comments over of RF the whole topic of "girl math" has been trending with memes etc on Tik Tok for some time now. Some of the posters said their wives, daughters, girlfriends etc have been using the term and having fun with it long before the ad. Not sure if it's true or not but somebody indicated it was a couple ladies in their marketing department who came up with the idea for the ad. Maybe one of those things that was taken as all in good fun by women in their late teens to early 40s and went over like a lead balloon for those older than that.
...Yesterday, we sent an email to you that missed the mark. Our playful attempt at ‘girl math’, a lighthearted TikTok trend created by women where humour is used to explain purchases, ended up not feeling lighthearted at all to our fans.
The Roughriders staff is made up of 50 percent women, and we know that our fanbase is also made up of intelligent and creative women too. We value the contributions of women in football, in sport and in our community and that’s why we feel it’s important to apologize for this mistake.
A related analogy I heard years ago was that a women will spend $1 on a $2 item she doesn't need and a man will spend $2 on a $1 item he does need.Toppy Vann wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 10:19 am
Looking at the graphic from the funny lens knowing the origins of "girl math" from a young woman - it's funny. Since then when I thought I'd buy something expensive my mind on touched on why not use "girl math" to explain to my wife why I blew a few thousand dollars on a questionable purchase. I didn't use the calculation but if I were talking out loud to a friend about buying something neither of us really didn't need , I might have tried to be funny and use "girl math."
The criticism is it's contribution to stereotypes that are unhelpful and hurtful to many as this article shows when it comes to "boy math" examples which are not "lighthearted."t’s supposed to be a joke, and like all jokes, it’s not for everyone. You either understand the concept of girl math or you don’t, and it’s not worth getting too upset about if you’re in the latter camp. You don’t necessarily need to know its heritage; that it comes during the 2023 Barbie-tinted Season of Girlhood, or on the heels of the “girl dinner” trend, or that it echoes a 2021 social media motto that posits, simply, “The girls that get it, get it.”
...The deeper meanings of boy and girl math
Once a trend is mutilated and reanimated into discourse, it’s time to bring in an expert. Mary Louise Adams, a sociology expert and associate professor of kinesiology and health studies at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, gamely offered her take on what “girl math” and “boy math” may mean — if we want it to mean anything.
“What I read through this trend is that people still do feel like they live in a profoundly gendered world,” she told CNN via email. “They assume, and their experience confirms for them, that women and men approach the world from quite different positions.”
Some of the discomfort around the whole “girl math” joke has stemmed from the use of the term “girl,” which some people find belittling when used to describe grown women, and its apparent riff on the false stereotype that women are less mathematically capable than men.
