Lands’ End Reminds Females They Are Supposed To Be Bad At Math

If you’re a school-age female who is breezing through your math lessons, the folks at the Lands’ End catalog would like to remind you that your lack of a Y chromosome apparently means you should be struggling to keep up in the class.

One of the writers at BlogHer.com noticed that the latest literature from Lands’ End features a pair of headlines that help to reinforce this notion that females are just not very good at things involving numbers.

“Light as a feather, tough as long division,” reads the header on a spread featuring backpacks and other school-related carriers targeted to females. A second spread of backpacks aimed at young women features the headline, “tougher than homework.”

That last one reminds us that “Too Pretty to Do Homework” shirt JCPenney was selling last year.

For the sake of fairness, the BlogHer post looks at the pages for items aimed at young men and found the headlines, “super light, superhero tough,” and “he can drag it all the way to school.”

We’ve reached out to the Lands’ End team for a comment and will update if we hear back.

In the meantime, as the only male on the Consumerist team, I’m going to do my daily routine of working out some geometry proofs while explaining the quadratic formula… again.

As Tough As Long Division? Is Lands’ End the New Mattel? [BlogHer.com]

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