“Tell me what is in your handbag and I will tell you who you are”, could be the new adage to define women through their attachment to their accessories. Nintendo saw it first, saw it right (?) when deciding to address its messaging to women through their handbags. From metallic rose to cobalt, their handbags line speaks to women in the name of video games!
In promotion you will find the latest fashionable gadget “Nintendo DS” (a portable double screen video game console). To the image of the Blackberry or the iPhone, its design was strategically thought to target, by dressing up according to the desideratas, the diktat of fashion, attempting to appeal to the stereotypical frivolous side of women!
Playing on this stereotype, let’s not forget women already carry in their over-burdoned handbags:
• a lipstick (to revive their face)
• a day line cream (to moisture their precious skin against the damaging actions of external factors, bla, bla, bla…)
• a phone to be connected to their royal subjects
• a comb (to reflect their impeccability)
• a power bar (to fight against hunger and fat surplus)
• Lactobacillus Acidophilus and Bifidus (to be “aware” and healthy)
… why in the hell would they need to add more physical and mental weight to their daily hardship?
The press pressure is unbearable enough! It’s a daily struggle to fight the dictatorship of magazines that celebrate women by dictating the flavor of their individuality, for the sake of what? Being hip?
So to get us hooked, Nintendo launched its campaign by offering women in its “Bags to Riches” manipulative formula to establish a relationship, to try freely a Nintendo DS for a month from the online handbags rental store.
If the idea may increase the rate of the secretions of the masculine gender salivary glands, I emit certain reservations about its impact on women’s excitement stimuli. But who am I to give such statement, will you say? And, you would be right! To my surprise, at the opening day Bags to Riches site registered 37,000 hits.
Given that only 10% of the gaming population are women, why this attempt to connect women to video games? Given that most of women reject the oversexualization of the characters, the violence, why to prevail a niche where women’s emotional attachments are non-existent? Should Nintendo have picked another product but video games maybe women would have identified themselves!
As for me, my handbag is a physical continuity of myself but definitely not me!