The Myth of the ‘Pink Tax’
5th January 2016
During the height of holiday shopping season, a consumer report stoked ample ill-will toward American manufacturers after purporting to show that women’s products are priced higher for completely arbitrary reasons. This so-called “pink tax,” said the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA), affects almost every product marketed at American females, “from cradle to cane.”
‘Women and minorities hardest hit’ is one of the Timeless Tropes of the Narrative. Whenever a government agency starts beating one of these Crustian drums, you know that it will soon be followed by a demand for more government regulatory power over the lives of ordinary Americans — for their own good, of course.
Of course, individual consumers do have control over which products they buy, though. And while the pink razors with the butterflies on the packaging my be marketed toward women, no one’s forcing us to buy those over basic blue Bics. If the products in this study really were identical save for some totally non-desired factors, it seems likely that women, or at least a larger proportion of women, would simply choose the products marketed toward men.
Since they don’t, one can jump to one of two conclusions: either women are so brainwashed by marketing that they choose products against their own best interests because of it, or women find some discernible appeal in the women’s products—be that different ingredients, cosmetic factors, or whatever else—that make them worth paying more for. I’m going to go with the explanation that grants women a little intelligence and agency.
Of course, vast parts of the Narrative is based on the assumption that those who listen to advertising are just Mind-Numbed Robots who march out and do as the ads say, with no free will to resist — an outgrowth of the Crustian dogma that We Are Smart But They Are Dumb, ‘they’ being whoever doesn’t march to the Crustian tune.