In Which I am Upset by Machines for Ladies

This makes me sad.  It makes me really sad, not just because of the condescending attitude toward women, but because having decorated computers as a purchasing option is actually something I really really want, but I don't want to pay the price of bowing to sexism for it.

I am all for having the option of decorating computers.  In fact, as long as I could get the hardware I wanted I would be willing to pay a small extra fee to get the machine of my choice covered in rhinestones.  I don't know why we don't have personalization options for the chassis as it is, frankly.   Computers are a ubiquitous feature of life, we should be able to make them fabulous, and Turing bless people who have been doing things like this to their desktop machines for years. This does not mean that personalization options should be marketed as an option to women who, it is implied by complete lack of specification thereof, don't care about the technical aspects of their computers.  What's wrong with a marketing strategy along the lines of "a computer that's fast and fabulous?  Combine sequins with new quad core technology at that actually has good battery life despite being a quad core, with such and such ram, and an SSD..."?  A lot of computer scientists really like shiny things, as a (male, for the record) friend of mine put it, "we're like magpies that way."  If marketing sequins in a technical way just seems impossible because sexism,  and holy lady Lovelace, the womenfolk couldn't possibly care about what kind of processor they have, one could get a lot of mileage out of special science fiction-y designs and product-placing them in our favorite geeky shows like Dr. Who, Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog, etc.  What's the advantage of a capitalist society in which advertisers can and do make up needs and traditions (see engagement rings and Santa Claus for notable revenue-producing examples) if I can't get products decorated in silly ways to appeal to my demographic?  Oh, wait, I am a geeky woman with an advanced degree in computer science, according to advertisers, such a demographic doesn't exist, because being a woman puts me into a special category of consumers which is just like a regular category except can't figure out technical things and has longer nails.

This unfortunately, seems to be a growing trend in marketing electronics to women, make it inferior, but pink, and market it to women who are clearly too stupid to have any idea of what makes a good technical product.   As Jezebel points out in writing up Fujitsu's press release, there is almost no time taken to explain the technical features of the this lady computer, but plenty given to describing its appearance.  The only halfway technical features given are lengthy explanations of the bloatware, which is 1) NOT a good thing, and 2) marketed on the assumption that women are vapid and also too dumb to install their own applications if they want scrapbooking and horoscope programs.

I have spent too much of my life getting an education in computer science and trying to inspire other women (and also myself, it gets upsetting and depressing at times) to brave the too often unwelcoming-for-women culture that is computer science and related fields and get geeky and change the world to have to put up with this kind of sexist tripe from manufacturers and advertisers.  Computers are general purpose machines that should exist to perform tasks to make our lives a little easier, not to reinforce rigid and damaging gender roles.