I forgot to cover this after seeing its commercial, but luckily reader Saira reminded me today. One A Day vitamins are marketing their new product, Teen Advantage for Him and Her, and it ain't pretty.
It's not even the gendering of vitamins in general or even the pink and blue bottles they come in that really get me, but their contention of what's important for teen boys' and girls' growth:
Complete Multivitamins for Teen Boys & Girls to Support:** Healthy muscle function with Magnesium (for Him)
* Healthy skin with Vitamins A and C, Copper, and Iron (for Her)
That's right ladies. Who needs muscle function when you have the clear skin to attract strong boys to pick stuff up for you?
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Thank you for covering this! My jaw almost hit the floor the first time I saw this commercial.
Agreed. I'll admit that the bodies of the sexes are different and need different levels of vitamins if someone provides me proof for that (I just have yet to look into it), but the muscle for boys/skin for girls thing? Total BS.
If anything, girls need more muscle vitamins and boys need more skin vitamins, simply because they are trained in so many other areas to lack these things.
And the gendering of the boxes does get to me... gendering of anything like this gets to me, be it soap, shampoo, deodorants or toothbrushes (thankfully both sexes are cleared for using the same toothpaste.)
I visited the site, looked at the men's health formula, and found this:
"Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed non-skin cancer in men."
Non-skin? Meaning.. men can have unhealthy skin? And it's a problem concerning cancer? Hmmmm...
Au contraire.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3265/3223381496_9bafa55f47.jpg
Let's face it, everything is gender marketed. It will always be so, whether it matters to anything other than the mind of the consumer or not.
D : Well that ruins my day.
I saw this commercial yesterday and thought the same thing.
There is actual science behind gendering vitamins, although it's certainly not a necessity. Women do need more iron, calcium, and folate. Men need more of different stuff I've never looked up because I'm a girl and I don't care what's in my husbands pills, although I know they can be harmed by getting too much iron. It's no different than the vitamin needs being different for people of different ages.
That said, the difference in need isn't that huge, and taking a general purpose vitamin isn't going to deprive your sons and daughters of anything they desperately need. We should be getting all those nutrients from food anyway.
The gendering of the boxes, on the other hand, is ridiculous. And I'm curious about how different the vitamins really are.
So, a few months ago I saw this commercial and got really pissed about it. Before writing an indignant e-mail to Bayer (the company responsible for the vitamins), I went to the website and compared the ingredients in each supplement--and they were identical, except for the dyes used to color them. Yeah. Here's the e-mail I wrote then:
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Why do you market a vitamin that supports muscle strength to young men and a vitamin that supports healthy skin to teen women? Is it necessary that you prop up the "men from mars/women from venus" paradigm in a product that is so arbitrarily gender specific? I could possibly understand invoking "sex difference" in a product that promotes menstrual health or hormonal issues, but not in a vitamin that is virtually identical except for your company's preconceived, sexist notions that boys care about muscles and girls care about having pretty skin. Further, your idea that only "moms" care about their teens' health contributes to the cultural expectation that only women are responsible for the care of their children. I think this entire enterprise is misguided, and I certainly won't be supporting your company in the future.
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They responded with something ridiculous, claiming that the commercial performed well in sample screenings and whatnot. Idiots.
A very good letter.
They may have changed since then? I just went to the website to look, and just glancing over quickly I noticed that the "girl" vitamin has twice as much iron. (They both have the same amount of Vitamin A, though.)
You may be right. I just copy/pasted the ingredients lists into a word document and compared the two--some amounts could be different.
My understanding is that menstruating women commonly have iron deficiencies.
Haha, this is ridiculous. And I have to say that I just LOVE the sarcasm that goes into these posts :)
This whole division of the sexes in healthcare and hygeine really isn't necessary, and annoys me on a level similar to that of nails on a blackboard, and touch-tone call directories. Yes, men and women have different concentrated needs, such as iron, and folic acid, etc. But to say that a girl should be more concerned with her complexion than building muscle (especially in an age where many teens are inactive) is not only ridiculous, but harmful as well. This just angers me on so many levels.
I was shopping for bar soap the other day, and came across Lever 2000, which I generally like, and saw that there were new choices to choose from. One was some flowery scent (I honestly can't remember, all I know is that I didn't care for it much), and a bar made specifically for men, which came in a midnight blue box. It was made for "a man's skin, and his needs" I wonder how much different a male's skin is compared to a female's. I grabbed the men's soap, because I really liked the fresh clean scent.
Gad. Shades of the old Secret deodorant commercials, in which the product was "strong enough for a man" -- but you could tell it was "made for a woman" because it SMELLED PRETTY.
Twisty covered this a couple of months ago. Ludicrous nonsense, in my not so humble opinion.
Strangely, I'm thankful that men's vitamins exist, because I can't take women's vitamins (too much iron, and I'm a carrier for hemochromatosis).
So far I haven't dropped dead or turned into a man from taking them. (They're basically the same things anyway.)
Don't they make vitamins geared at women past menopause, that don't have iron? Although I don't know what the other differences would be.
This commercial has been bugging me ever since it showed up on my TV. Thanks for talking about it.
It actually concerns me about the labeling - more vitamin A and iron for women? Those are two vitamins/minerals I look for a multivitamin to NOT have. There are so many clinical studies out there that say too much vitamin A or iron is toxic, and that both items should be gotten from food almost exclusively because they are not healthy to take as a supplement and can cause problems down the line.
As a vegetarian its important for me to get iron. I don't know about vitamin A though.
The ingredients list gelatin and some fish oil thing, so they're not completely vegetarian, but I guess it depends on how strict you are.
I've had such bad luck finding vitamins with iron because I can never swallow the pills and the liquid stuff makes me gag. I guess there's always the Flinstones Candy Vitamins. :P
I'd prefer if the vitamins could be completely vegetarian, but to be honest I'm not going to be quite THAT strict about it. I haven't had a single bite of meat (including fish or poultry) for at least 10 years, and I avoid stuff made out of leather (although if its a gift I won't necessarily refuse to use it), but if I can't taste that there's fish in the pills and it really is good for me, and there doesn't seem to be an equivalent non-fish alternative, well...
hi, i just wanted to mention flaxseed oil which is omega-3 but not from fish :)
I just checked and my current bottle says "suitible for vegans" so maybe it does have flaxseed instead of fish oil.
I've been a vegetarian for 16 years. A cup of beans a day can give you all the iron you need. You don't need it from a supplement.
No one needs vitamin a supplements either. Eat a carrot!
Yeah, there's no way I'm eating a cup of beans a day.
That's true. If you don't eat well, you will need supplements. But don't blame vegetarianism.
Hmm. Well, first of all, I wasn't "blaming" anything. But the fact is that I don't eat meat, which is a significant source of iron. That makes it much less likely that my regular diet will include enough iron. I don't have a problem with this at all, and I'm not sure why you do. I doubt every vegetarian you know eats a cup of beans every day.
Too much of almost any vitamin can be toxic (not just iron or Vitamin A), which is why you only take one a day.
And from what I've read, women need more iron than men, which can be attributed to monthly periods (maybe they should put THIS on the packaging, heh).
The last few times I've had blood work done, my iron has been low (but probably because I'm vegetarian).
Too much of almost any vitamin can be toxic (not just iron or Vitamin A), which is why you only take one a day.
And from what I've read, women need more iron than men, which can be attributed to monthly periods (maybe they should put THIS on the packaging, heh).
The last few times I've had blood work done, my iron has been low (but probably because I'm vegetarian).
That's not strictly true. Water soluble vitamins just get urinated out of the body, so toxicity doesn't form. Minerals and fat-soluble vitamins cause toxicity when taken in supplement form.
There are numerous studies that say that even low supplements of vitamin a and iron are incredible toxic, because we take the amount in vitamins and then get even more in food. Women do need more iron, but they should be eating iron-rich foods, not getting it in a multivitamin.
It may be true that its healthier to make sure your diet includes all the right amount of vitamins and minerals from food rather than from a supplement. But I have no intention of eating most of those foods, so I'm glad they're making multivitamins.
Iron and stuff can indeed be toxic if you have too much, but many women don't get nearly enough vitamin in their diets to make up for the amount lost when having their period. That's why women's vitamins almost always include more iron, (and why they make special after-menopause ones that don't include iron). Personally I've been low on iron a lot due to being vegetarian, and yes I know you can get iron from places like beans, but I don't LIKE beans. I'd much rather take a pill each day.
A funny thing is my vitamin bottle actually says to take THREE of them a day. I only take one a day, so I figure I'm ok on toxicity issues.
Well, if renal failure and toxicity are less important to you than eating some veggies (as a vegetarian!), there's really no argument, because you're not going to care about what would make you truly healthy.
Also, you do not lose vitamins through your period. Women actually bleed so little that it does not make a truly significant difference in iron, and it's not like we are losing other nutrients. You probably need more iron than someone like me because of insufficient diet rather than being a woman.
Women do, in fact, lose iron through their periods. I did not say anything about them losing other vitamins. Many doctors do recommend iron supplements for teenage girls and women who have low iron. Could they eat differently? Sure, but maybe they have other reasons not to want to. Its healthier to get iron from a supplement than not to get it at all, trust me.
Its not like we're talking about whether its healthy to get all your meals from McDonalds. Whether vitamin pills are good for you is a controversial topic and depends greatly on an individual's body, health, diet, lifestyle, etc. Its very likely that what works for you won't be the same thing as what works for someone else. It just seems odd to go around putting so much effort into telling people not to take vitamin pills when you don't know anything about their other circumstances. This is a case of something that first of all, only affects the person doing it (unlike, say, smoking) and second of all, is not necessarily unhealthy at all for any particular person.
I guess my point is if you don't want to take vitamins that's fine but you seem awfully pushy about other people not taking them either.
I'm not pushy about not taking supplements at all, and at no point in this thread am I extrapolating my experience onto other people. My first post was about vitamin a and iron, which are very toxic for people taking them, the side effects being established in a variety of peer reviewed nutritional work. Short story - it's better to not take these supplements unless a doctor recommends them after a blood test. So, of course, I am appalled that these supplements are being pushed on young women when they are not healthy.
In fact, I do take supplements - B12 and D for example, under the advice of a doctor, and have no problems with other people doing the same with vitamins which do not have proof in literature that they are toxic.
The "cup of beans" suggestion that you seemed so focused on was one suggestion of many for vegetarians needing iron. You can find great ideas for increasing iron on the Internet with or without beans. Frankly, as a vegetarian for so long, I have made sure that I eat a well-balanced diet and have even come to like foods I originally avoided like the plague. It surprises me that anyone would restrict their diets and not eat foods that could help them.
I am very passionate about nutrition and also do try to inform people that taking a multi with A and iron is not the best idea, because I think advertising oftentimes serves to mislead people about their health.
...I sent this to feministing and it was posted several months ago.
Am I the only one who finds it strange NO skin care products are marketed to teenage boys when they get on average WORSE acne than girls? Loads of teenage boys I know have really oily skin. There's a huge market out there,: the gender binery is stopping you making money big heartless coperations!
that's not necessarily true. Oxy and Clearasil come in packages that resemble Axe packaging that are black and metallic...so they are pretty clearly "masculine" looking in that stereotypical way.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute.
The supplements have the same ingredients? Really? Can you link a source? I'm not being skeptical or sarcastic. If this is true, then not only are they being sexist, but they're engaging in false advertising.
No its not false advertising. They aren't lying: the same vitamin complex will help with BOTH muscles & skin. In fact Excedrin does this big time. They have 3 separate "products": Excedrin (regular), Excedrin for Migraines, and Excedrin for Body Ache. All 3 are exactly the same formula. Excedrin just feels that differentiated packaging helps them broaden their market & expand usage of the product.
Perfectly legal. Perfectly honest.
Why can't the boys' vitamins help with their skin? When I head down to my old high school (my dad is a principal there) the boys have much worse acne than the girls.
Does seem kind of odd that they wouldn't market healthy skin to both sexes. But let's not get so indignant here. It's marketing, it's a con, they want you to buy something you don't need. They use any tool at their disposal to do it.
What really bugs me is when I see that in every commercial the black guy is the smart, cool, smooth one. Can't black people be the dumb guy, or the guy who listens to uncool music?
....I wonder what would happen if I took both. Strong muscles AND healthy skin? Just what I was looking for!
Wouldn't they sell more if they just combined them?
Oh, ugh! I saw that commercial and was immediately turned off. I knew someone else at feministing was going to hate it as much as I did.
I really hated how when the two teenagers held up the signs that said "teen" or something, the girl's was this flowery cutesy font and the guy's was this chunky block lettering.What really bugs me is that the only difference between the two is the girl's one has FD&C Red #40 Lake, and the boy's one has FD&C Blue #1 Lake, and FD&C Blue #2 Lake, which I presume are dyes. So there's virtually no difference between them except the amounts of ingredients in them, yet the company feels the need to market it like they're completely different and reinforce these stupid gender stereotypes that teen girls have to be girly and weak with perfect skin and teen guys have to be a muscle man.
(The ingredients are here: http://www.oneaday.com/teen_advantage.html )
I also noticed that the boys' vitamins are endorsed by Major League Baseball. Who endorses the girls' vitamins? Pageant queens for clear skin?
On the Teen Advantage front page, the picture of the four teens is really bothersome: the blond, white guy is enlarged front and center while the blond, white girls' head is shown behind him, her body hidden by his (muscle-y) arm. The two mostly white but vaguely minority-looking kids are pictured behind the white pair. In both pairs the guy is posed so that he appears larger than the girl, but the blond, white kid is clearly the focal point of the picture. The majority of both girls' bodies are covered by the blond kids' torso; it appears as if he has one head on each shoulder. And, the darker-complexioned guy is partially covered up by the blue information tag.
There is clearly something else subliminal going on with this.
If they want to market the vitamins separately, why don't they just have a "for teens" marketing strategy?
Ugh... I've seen this commercial and it drives me crazy. I'm not a teenager anymore but I'd like some healthy muscles *and* nice skin.
I normally take children's vitamins since I'm not big on swallowing pills. (I assume it's better than nothing.) It's getting harder and harder to find them without artificial sweeteners though.
I don't think the problem is in the actual vitamin - men and women of ALL ages have different needs.
The problem is in the marketing.
Seriously? This is an issue? I mean how many feminists walk around worried that they don't have enough muscles? How many women, or for that matter even feminists, would rush out to buy a product that promised to give you bigger muscles? This argument trivializes feminism.
This is nothing other than basic Marketing 101. Adverstise so your customers hear you.
While you have a point as far as targeting the majority of consumers is concerned, this does not trivialize feminism. It is a part of a much larger issue. It perpetuates the notion that women should be more concerned with their appearence than their health. And look at teenage girls today, they ARE putting their health at risk, just to look good. For a marketing company to perpetuate and profit from this, is terrible. As powerful as the media and market is, they should be more responsible with how they showcase their products.
I saw this commercial the other day and I stopped listening after I heard them refer to teenage boys and girls being so different they're practically from different planets (or something like that). I completely zoned out after that so I didn't even get to see the rest of the stuff mentioned here. I don't think it's wrong to acknowledge that male and female bodies at times require different nutrients, etc. However, the marketing is just horrendous.
~Lilith of the ESC
I just checked and my current bottle says "suitible for vegans" so maybe it does have flaxseed instead of fish oil.
Edward_wunderkind:
Ack, my apologies! I just realized Ann covered, thanks for pointing out. We'll leave it up since some folks seem to have missed hers anyway...
I saw this commercial a while ago and was wondering when Feministing was going to get to it. The whole thing made me sick.Why do they have to gender them? I think that boys want nice skin and teeth as much as girls want strong muscles, and vice-versa. These things don't need to be gendered, yet companies insist on doing this. It is very sad.