Electronics retailer Maplin is starting early with its sexist Christmas advertising - I spotted this window display in one of its stores in the City yesterday.

It’s a bit blurry, unfortunately, but those are video games, toy cars, strobe lights and other supposed ‘boy’s toys’ in the display. Of course, we see this sort of advertising from stores every Christmas, with insulting and gender-stereotyped suggestions for the women and men in our lives (annoying not just because it assumes that only men like gadgets and only women like… err… soap, but because it assumes that you can select a present for an individual based solely on their gender. Aunty Sharon is a woman, so she will like perfume! No further consideration of her personality or tastes necessary. How reductive).

However, Maplin doesn’t even provide an equivalent display of presents “for her”. I can only assume the shop doesn’t think it has any female customers - or those ones that venture into its male-only-zone must be buying something for a man.

Posted by Jess McCabe on 14 November 2007, at 5:12 PM