Listen up ladies: Your feminine ride has arrived! Honda introduces the Honda Fit “She’s” — a pinkalicious car made specifically for women.
Clad in a bubble-gum-colored exterior, the “She’s” boasts pink interior stitching and matching chrome dashboard covers. Designers had the descriptor “Adult cute” in mind and have fittingly changed the apostrophe in “She’s” to a heart.
At $17,500, the 4-door sedan has a plethora of female-friendly features such as a youth-preserving windshield that blocks up to 99% of UV rays.
Phew, I am so glad that every time I drive to the grocery store to get the ingredients I need to make dinner I can remain confident that my cute car is not only flashing my femininity, but also preventing me from developing wrinkles!
Wait — that’s not all! The “Plasmacluster” air conditioning system pumps specially-treated air into the car, infused with ions that “improve the quality of skin”.
Not feeling warm and fuzzy about pink? No problem! The car also comes in brown and white. Not because Honda believes these are additional lady-loving colors, but because they are most likely to match a gal’s eye shadow (true story: A Honda exec most certainly told the Yomuri Shinbun newspaper that verbatim).
A few months ago Bic introduced their femified pens. Now a car? What will they think of next!? Thank you, Honda, for aiming to meet my unique female needs while on the road. Let’s hope the steering wheel can accommodate my petite phalanges, the same way the Bic for Her has.
One tiny caveat I forgot to mention: it’s currently only being sold in Japan. Vacay anyone?
Apparently this is what women want. I’m going to out on a limb here and say that most of us didn’t know we were sporting Honda “He’s” before this femme fatale of a roadster was revealed to us.
I think my lengthy sarcasm on the subject above illustrates how incredulous I am that such a car is being marketed and sold to women boasting the aforementioned benefits. I cringe at products that play off of tired gender stereotypes and narrow definitions of femininity.
It insults me that a company puts out products such as these, that are wrapped up in assumptions of womankind as a whole — that we are all dainty dames with a penchant for anything pretty and pink and that maintaining the fountain of youth on our face trumps safety in a vehicle.
Let me be clear that I’m not snarking on pink as a preference, or even as a mark of femininity. It just gets me when there is a limited notion of what it means to be a woman, in all its supersized stereotypical glory that is posited as being true for all women and reducing us to a group to be marketed to with a small, identical set of preferences.
Femininity is not as simple as anti-aging air and appealing to women isn’t as predictable as positioning salmon-colored stitching as a selling point. Female tastes and preferences are highly varied and beautifully nuanced.
We need more products and services that blow the barriers off of gender stereotypes, allow us a full range of expression, and celebrate females by honoring the fact that we don’t all fit into a cozy caricature.
Heather spends her days working in the corporate business world, and can be found sharing her own experience, insights, and pop culture commentary at www.msmettle.com.
the girly car has a special UV-blocking windshield?! wow, i had no idea that wanting to avoid skin cancer and eliminate glare while i’m driving was such a sign of my dainty femininity! i’m sure this isn’t a regular feature on their other cars, though. after all, why would a man need a UV-blocking windshield? they can block UV rays with testosterone alone.
??? I don’t understand this website….The car is catered to girls who are interested in, well, the features of that car! While you may not like pink, or UV-blocking windshields, or any of the other features you feel were placed there just for women, there are some girls (like me), who see it for what it is: a simple marketing ploy not intended to make any particular statements about women, or femininity. And, I think the car is cute.
The bottom line is that if a pink car, a “controversial” advertisement, or pretty much any “detrimental” thing presented on this website affect you as a female, and allow it to somehow lower your self-esteem or image, then you’ve got a serious fundamental problem anyway.
The media is not responsible for your self-esteem: you are.