Three Hot Tips For Designing Cars!

My appologies for doing two straight articles on cars, but while researching yesterday's article, I came across news that Cosmopolitan has designed a car for women. And I can't let something like that go by without comment.

Not surprisingly, it's a big pile of stereotypes, emphasizing the car as a place for "gossip sessions" and noting that the headlights are "eyeliner shape." But this is a surprise for some, as Cosmo is currently trying to revitalize its image, becoming more than just the supplier of an apparently endless list of sex tips. I had no idea; I'd lost track of the cultural positioning of that magazine when my grocery store introduced self-checkouts. But whatever they're trying to do as a magazine, their car is just a pretty ordinary subcompact.  It comes in a bold shade of purple, which is unusual in our monochromatic auto market. The interior is pleasant, but hardly the height of style or practicality. It's not too different from a Fiat 500.

This is the hardly the first time anyone has tried making a car for women.  Automotive historians will remember the Dodge La Femme, a 1950's attempt to crack the female car market. Of course it was a monstrosity of male preconceptions, with flowery seats and a palette of colours directly from a tampon ad. So that was kind of a non-starter.  Since then, car companies have slowly realized they need female customers, but they've mostly responded through marketing, rather than making cars specifically for women.  Yes, seriously, for the last thirty years, car ads have been made by people who know they're supposed to be marketing to women.

In the early 2000's, Volvo took a stab at a woman's car, though only as a concept car. Being in a more enlightened time and a more enlightened country, they actually assembled a team of female engineers to design it. The YCC (Your Concept Car) was a modern-looking, seemingly pretty nice car. A lot of interesting ideas went into it, though I'm not convinced it's the perfect women's car. Their central thesis was that women demand more out of their cars than men, so the YCC was loaded with lots of features your average car doesn't have, from run-flat tires to a dirt-resistant body.

And that's why the project stuck in my mind: I had to ask whether that thesis is correct.  I don't really think it is.  I mean, I'm sure that women would appreciate a car with all those features, but then so would I.  The question is, would women be any more willing to pay for them.

As a thought experiment, there used to be a person in my apartment building who drove a BMW SUV.  Of course, that's a very nice, expensive car, but I was still surprised to see it in my parking garage.  Sure, I'd love to be able to afford such a vehicle, but if I could afford it, I'd move someplace nicer.  Apparently, this person had different spending priorities to me, since they bought a nice car rather than find nicer lodgings as I would have. So I'd invite you to think of the men and women you know, and think about the cars they drive and the places they live. This is totally unscientific, but in general, the women I know have more basic transportation and nice houses, while the men I know are more likely to have nicer cars, even if they have to stretch their finances. So I'm skeptical that women would want an expensive but feature-laden car.

We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off

It was a news story that caught just about everyone’s eye: Playboy is going to stop publishing nudity. So…

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, # 27

Playboy will voluntarily stop printing nude pictures of women. They’ll do this to try to increase circulation. Specifically, they’ll be hoping to get more younger readers.

Of course, the explanation for this new strategy was fairly obvious: porn is just too easy to get in this age of the Internet. I mean really, you’re on the Internet, why are you reading this now? You could be looking at porn. In that light, I really appreciate your readership.  Anyway, this is just another example of a new medium forcing old media to reassess what they do best. So non-nude Playboy is just like abstract art, when you think about it.

And it just might work. Playboy without nudity is essentially Maxim, which I see has about ten-times the circulation. They could position themselves as the more urbane version of the bro magazines. Strangely, Playboy would seem like the sophisticated version, and we could one day see someone reading a copy of Maxim, inside a copy of Playboy.

The lack of nudity would allow it to be sold in more places, so that would open up new markets. But perhaps more importantly, a lot of people will probably feel more comfortable buying it. That is, after all, the oddity of men’s magazines: Playboy has given up selling nude pictures of women - since you can get them for free on the Internet - yet Maxim has made a mint selling sexy but not nude pictures of women, which you can also get for free on the Internet. Essentially they are selling permission. It’s socially acceptable to look at a magazine from the local store, in a way that surfing for porn on the Internet is not. So Playboy is just looking for a little more acceptability.

While You Wait

I made a discovery in a Doctor's waiting room today:

Yes, that grey seal on the right shows that it's an official "Waiting Room Copy." No, I don't know what that means. I didn't go through it too carefully, but there didn't seem to be anything special about it.  But they've obviously put some effort into it - just look at the generic person in the logo reading the magazine, legs crossed impatiently.

Why would they need special waiting room editions of magazines?  The cost of publishing is so high, it must be expensive to have a run of special editions.  Maybe it's made of extra-strong paper, so it will survive its decades-long stay on the waiting room table.  Or they could be trying to cut down on theft of magazines from waiting rooms: this is the equivalent of the ink-filled tag on clothing.  No one would be caught in public reading a magazine with this logo telling everyone that it was stolen.

I guess I can understand their wanting to keep their magazines in the office.  I just wish they'd work harder on keeping the germs from leaving the office.