GooseZen

Ok, so here's a weird scenario that I'm surprised worked out, and I'm wondering if you could shed some light on it.

Both my wife and my brother ended up getting me the same Blu-ray for Xmas. My wife said she'd return mine and get me something else. What she ended up doing was looking up the returns address, stuck the blu-ray in an envelope, and shipped it back. The next day she said she did that, and I ask how she printed the return slip (we don't have a printer at home, usually I print the 1 page per year we need printed at work). Then a bunch of "oh shit" ensued because she didn't include anything. She literally wrote Amazon's address on an envelope, threw in a blu-ray with no paperwork, and sent it off. She doesn't even remember putting a proper return address on it.

This time I walk her through the returns process on the website, hoping we get this in before Amazon gets the envelope. Surprisingly enough, a couple weeks later, we see the credit from Amazon on our credit card, so clearly it got returned successfully.

So, seriously, how in the hell did you guys succeed at this? You get a blu-ray in the mail with no paperwork or return address, and manage to figure out we actually returned something and give us our money back? Explain this wizardry!

I'm more impressed that you guys would go to that much trouble. I just figured you had a bin you'd throw stuff missing paperwork in that would be freebies for staff. Thanks for your diligence!

As a woman in the field(s) you're in, I think you might have some insight into this. Ever since I became the parent of a daughter two years ago, I've started to see gender-based marketing through new eyes. The real kicker was on a trip to Toys R Us, where a giant shelf of Lego was clearly divided down the middle, with pink on the left and the strong yellow and blue boxes on the right. The pink (girls) was all fairies and elves and "friends" with relatively uninspired dreck for setpieces. It all looked pretty, but was all non-functional or non-aspirational. The other side (boys) was filled with firefighters, police, scientists, astronauts, construction, and other fun role models for kids to live up to. The message was clear: girls stay home and look pretty, boys go be productive members of society. As someone who's always lamented how sausage-ridden my field (software production) is, and how much progress has been made in my time to promote women entering STEM fields, to see this marketed to children in this manner just felt like it was undoing any of that progress.

So, what things can a parent do to help fight this kind of pervasive marketing? I never had a sister growing up, so I know literally nothing about how girls develop or get treated as they grow up. In the end, I still want my daughter to feel like the kind of girl she wants to be, but when "girly" things marketed towards her gender are such vapid crap, how can I still allow her to feel like a girl and promote her to grow up to be whatever she wants to be?