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[periluna]

Last month while searching Amazon.com for a birthday gift for my dad I noticed that in addition to stereotypical male gifts like tool sets, bbq accessories, and sports paraphernalia, Amazon suggested a gift basket of dark chocolate for that special man in my life. A few other searches online turned up similar results- baskets and boxes packed with

Comments

Sweet chocolate Jesus

[horatiocain]

Holy shit, that's crazy. I love this post! Well done managing to find time to do the research in between satisfying all those frivolous feminine urges. Seriously, thanks for writing this, it's really interesting.

[anonymous]

It's interesting that dark chocolate is being marketed towards men, as it has stronger "emotional effects" than milk chocolate. Maybe men have a secret emotional weakness that the world of marketing is trying to tap into...

-M

Insightful post but...

[anonymous]

Have you seen what happens when you bust out one of the shmancy fancy chocolate bars at Literacy Source? It's pretty much on par with the cat moshing youtube video. (If you haven't seen it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_LQSoMakoIU) Seriously, the other day a staffer which will remain nameless just casually took my bar from my hand and held it. I asked her if she wanted some and then handed it around the room but for a moment, she was a complete choco-zombie. Are women like this because we're told by companies we should be or naturally are? There's likely something to that. Scott's mom couldn't eat chocolate for 17 years due to the side effects; she put it all on the line a couple years ago to savor a chocolate cookie and now she brings chocolate fountains to family events. --Tasha

Re:

[periluna]

I definitely have witnessed some extreme chocolate frenzies at Literacy Source- these fit really well into my theory. I think that women and men share an equal love of chocolate (of course every individual varies, but I'm referring to the comparison of women as a group to men as a group), but while women feel comfortable displaying and indulging this love, men feel compelled to keep it hidden. When chocolate is busted out at Literacy Source most women do not hesitate to make their desires known, but on the (admittedly rare) occurrences when there are men in the room, they generally don't leap into the fray. My guess is that secretly the men want to partake but due to cultural constraints (the result of advertising, pseudo science reports, etc.), men feel it's best just to roll their eyes at all the silly women and stop at a 7-11 for a snickers on the way home.