Between pregnancy preparation, pregnancy and breastfeeding, I have been taking a pre-natal vitamin for, like, almost two years now. My husband takes a multi-vitamin, too. One thing that's always bugged me about the particular brand recommended to me by a doctor is this:
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I’m totally with you on this one Sabine – what is up with the pink-ness? And size issues too. Seriously. They are vitamins. You don’t even see what they look like until you open the bottle anyway!
I recently went shopping for vitamins and threw up my hands in annoyance at the demographicness of the options. There was not one adult vitamin that didn’t specify gender. Not one. Grr!
Really?! No adult vitamins that didn’t specify gender?! I’m totally floored. Of course women and men have different health concerns, yadda, yadda, yadda, but come on! That seems like a lot of marketing bullshit.
Yep, no non-gender specific ones. I was soooo miffed. I was like, dude, I don’t need folic acid – really, I don’t! And I didn’t want to buy the ‘man’ one just in case it had more of something I shouldn’t have.
All of this because I went to a different drug store then normal. Craziness!
Well, for the prenatal ones there may be a good answer as to why they are smaller – studies have shown that smaller vitamins cause less morning sickness. Here is a link to an overview of one such study: http://www.motherisk.org/prof/updatesDetail.jsp?content_id=848
I worked in a pharmacy when I was in high school and I remember dusting the shelves and coming across laxatives (in pink box, with smiling golden-haired woman breezing across the front) that were “for women”. I thought about that for a second and asked the pharmacist why women needed their own laxatives. She just shook her head, rolled her eyes and said, “they’re exactly the same.”
Ever since then I have been like a hawk seeking out irrelevant “for women” products.
I also don’t get the whole shoe size thing. Aren’t feet just feet? My feet don’t have ovaries on them.
Erika, that’s a good point. I started taking iron pills at the beginning of my pregnancy and ditched that quickly in favour of just eating a lot more spinach ’cause the iron pills were grrross. But still, why the pink? WHY THE PINK?
Which leads me to you, Danette, and your awesome laxative-in-the-pink-box memory. I’d love to get the 411 from pharmacists on the whole gendered marketing of various products. I’ve used men’s deodorant for many years because a) you get more b) for a cheaper price and c) it doesn’t smell like a florist’s shop collided with a candy factory.
Oh I’m with you on the men’s deodorant – I just think they smell nicer.
I think it all depends on the product – vitamins will be different for men and women because we require different nutrients. They have also come out with vitamins for different age groups for the same reason. Why the pink? that is problematic because they are saying that women will just take anything if it’s pink. I have a ‘woman’ vitamin and it’s green.
I never thought to try men’s deodorant! I use the unscented ones because I hate being able to smell my deodorant. Have you seen the new deodorant with sparkles in it?
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