The problem is that with all of the bullshit aside, they need to sell the magazine to some dwindling population still buying them.
The "heartwarming", positive cover is indeed heartwarming and a good message, but is also pretty lame, and unlikely to sell magazines.
I also question whether this is typical shallow/ignorant internet outrage. When I was a kid, Boy'a Life was a Boy Scouts magazine, and had annual themes that appeared every year at the same time. If you looked at the May/June cover, the annual Boy Scout Jamboree issue wouldn't be as "internet offensive".
It's mentioned in the article. Boy's Life actually has a noble mission behind it, whereas Girl's Life is for-profit trash (essentially). The parallelism between the names of the two is an unfortunate coincidence. Near as I can tell the Girl Scouts don't have a magazine, but if they did, it would be a better comparison against Boy's Life. Maybe they should publish one?
As an aside, The Girl Scouts is a really fantastic organisation. In particular compared to The Boy Scouts in the US (which is much more religiously affiliated and discriminates against gay people; The Girl Scouts by contrast are trans-inclusive).
Maybe it's just my lack of need for external influence, but why is this a big deal? I think women can and should be whatever they want to be. A trashy magazine shouldn't change that.
Should A Girl's Life change the tone of their stories? That's up to the market. As long as their demographic enjoys what they print (which translates to $$$), they'll continue to run it. Should people be outraged by it? If they choose to be, yes. But at the end of the day a consumer is a consumer, and if they want trash they'll get it.
I can not provide links right now, but reading up on "stereotype threat" will probably explain why this still matters.
I a few words: the same person performing the same task will perform lower if they are aware of a stereotype that says that their group performs worse at the given task. It is reproduced for white and black, male and female, etc.
But why would that mean anything to the publisher? They want to sell the magazine and if soul crushing mind rotting stereotypes sell copies at the checkout line then why would the publisher want to be the moral agents of change?
Fair point. My personal answer, that I do not try to push on others, is that we all should try to be agents of change. To be fair to the publisher they made it clear that they have quality content next to the cheap content.
Some of the flagged comment in the discussion were very sexist. The rest of the flagged comments were people a bit aggressively calling them out. I guess all the up and down voting triggered a flame war detector.
Which is really sad, I really hoped we can all agree that your sex does not determine whether you are a good engineer.
When huge groups organize to force gender norms to be crystallized into society, it prevents the evolution of that society to respond successfully to dangers and problems that face it.
A great example of 15 million or so people adopting this was the Mormon Proclamation on the Family [0], which set a mission statement for their religion that continues to result in political problems and furor.[1] [2]
These groups organizing to fight against existence of their taboo are a great issue, one that will often organize to prevent testing the unknown. I don't know if it's my relative youth and inexperience, but it seems to be getting worse than it was in times past, when entire cultures migrated or philosophically shifted (e.g. Polynesian settlement, the Enlightenment, etc.).
Actually, I sincerely thought that the original comment was trying to make a progressive point veiled in so much sarcasm as to make it difficult to understand. I guess I was too naive... And they were simply making a disturbingly sexist comment...
That's also not making sense to me. Women clearly are capable of being scientists, so what's wrong with criticizing magazines that only talk about beauty tips? And why would that necessarily lead to "failing in your own life"? It obviously doesn't. Look at, e.g., Sheryl Sandberg.
That's not the ratio of men to women in the tech industry, and said ratio is not caused by competency discrepancies. It's actually partially caused by exactly this kind of sexist drivel that you're spouting; who would want to enter an industry that is so unwelcoming?
Why is there so much sexist trash in the HN comments today?
Theirs is not just an opinion when you have a few decades of sociological research to back it up. If you want to see research supporting the claim that you are wrong a good starting point would be Project Implicit's webpage.
Indeed, the person that responded to you could have been less inflammatory, but it is pretty hard to keep it cool when you are surrounded by people that dismiss an entire group of people based on gender, sexual orientation or skin color.
FYI, the definition of sexism I'm using is the dictionary one, not "things I disagree with". I called your opinion sexist because it is sexist. Here's the definition:
1. prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially discrimination against women.
2. behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex.
If you want to argue, instead of going all ad hominem and somehow trying to make it be about my supported ignorance or inability to handle disagreement, let's actually stick to the issues.
The "heartwarming", positive cover is indeed heartwarming and a good message, but is also pretty lame, and unlikely to sell magazines.
I also question whether this is typical shallow/ignorant internet outrage. When I was a kid, Boy'a Life was a Boy Scouts magazine, and had annual themes that appeared every year at the same time. If you looked at the May/June cover, the annual Boy Scout Jamboree issue wouldn't be as "internet offensive".