Over here, this is nothing that gives us the creeps like taking one non-gendered thing and turning it into something sex-specific: Pens for girls, ovens for guys, things for people with things...
The next in something-that-everyone-can-use-converted-into-a-single-sex-enterprise is Manteresting, a website that aims to be Pinterest just for boys. Granted, the current iteration of Pinterest is chocked full of fluffy kitties, weddings, and baby booties, but no one is discouraging guys from signing up and getting their Pin on (in fact, plenty do). Manteresting offers a very similar interface, except you "bump" what you like and you "nail" (or, weirdly "re-nail") your posts. Giving specific Internet communities space to express themselves is great — but Manteresting just feels like a FHM exploded all over the screen, leaving photos of guns, girls in bras, and bacon in its wake.
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Granted, this is only on the "hot" page: There are other topics to explore, like art (which is mostly movie/comic-book posters, but hey, we love those things, too), the inventive DIY section, and Science & Nature — all three were actually pretty fun to explore. But then there was the "Manly Things" area for, you know, cars and bourbon, and the "People" section, which consists of a fair amount of pictures of Kate Beckinsale naked.
It's not the existence of the website, per se, that is so bothersome — it is the fact that website's like these rarely try to push their boundaries. Perhaps the same can be said for Pinterest, but from our perspective, the layout of Pinterest isn't so unwelcoming to guys, whereas Manteresting is explicitly for him only. But the idea of a strict dichotomy between man things and women things is really troubling. We have a bajillion lady friends who would love to see a DIY on how to create a captain bed, and plenty of guy pals who are interested in the design communities that run rampant on Pinterest. It's stuff like this that reinforces the notion that guys like breasts and girls like babies, and that's the best (and only) way to appeal to either gender. (Buzzfeed)
Photo: Via Manteresting.
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