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Gender roles and identities with Apple Watch
- Thread starter brinary001
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Okay, if that's your view of it, help me understand what it is about the design of the modern buckle that makes it appear feminine? I'm genuinely interested to understand this. What are aspects of the design that make it so?
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Thanks for introducing me to a new acronym or new lingo: "FWIW means For What It's Worth".
Well it was you who was commenting modern buckle is feminine, so if that's your view, what exactly about the styling makes it look feminine to you? I'm trying to understand this purely from a design perspective, what makes design appear feminine or masculine.
If you are suggesting however I do a search on random comments and discussions about it being feminine, then there is a strong suggestion the modern buckle isn't feminine and isn't actually gender specific, but instead commenters are projecting a bias towards it being feminine based on nothing more than another person's view or a faulty social construct about an inanimate object.
It's just a watch.
The emotional connection that some users develop with their Apple products is a unique phenomenon.
The emotional connection that some users develop with their Apple products is a unique phenomenon.
No, most people can clearly see how the Modern Buckle is a feminine design (and hence why you hardly see any men rocking it). Sure, we get a few members questioning that, but that's usually because they're not that well versed in design. Understand design and you'll understand.
Adding "most people can clearly see" doesn't make it a valid argument. I understand design very well. I also understand psychology and marketing. Do you understand design, if so, please explain what characteristics in the modern buckle make it "feminine".
I doubt you understand design very well if you don't know that big buckles on watches have always been considered feminine. Do a search and you'll see that plenty of MR members agree that the Modern Buckle is geared towards women. Hence why you hardly see any men with the Modern Buckle, including right here on MR.
"big buckles on watches have always been considered feminine"-- Really this is a design principle? This sounds more like design dogma and a limited way of looking at the world.
That photo has been posted several times already. Yes, that looks feminine to me and many other members (just imagine how much larger it'd be if the Modern Buckle were available in 42mm; Apple has it only in 38mm for a reason). I guess you can't be helped if you fail to see that.
I'd say watch sizes are gender agnostic. I was set on getting the 38 mm but it looked comically small on my wrist so I got the 42 mm. You just have to go with what is most comfortable for you.
As for bands, I think band types are more gender specific than colors: the Modern Buckle is more feminine to me than, say, the Link Bracelet—the elegance of the shape and curves of the Modern Buckle are representative of the feminine form (also recall being available only in 38 mm, which seems more likely women would buy than the 42 mm).
Colors can be—and are—categorized by gender, but that's a rather rigid worldview. Either you can style certain colors or you can't. I think we've all seen men style pink shirts with taste. But with my body type, skin tone, etc., I couldn't style a pink Sport Band. Actually, after trying on nearly all the Sport Band collection, I look good only with Midnight Blue, sadly.
With that said, I remember seeing a young man, around 18, sporting the Midnight Blue Modern Buckle. I didn't think he looked too ridiculous because he styled himself in a more feminine way, I suppose. Skinny frame, white shirt, tight salmon jeans, earrings, scarf. My girlfriend disagreed of course and thought, besides his getup, the charateristics of the Modern Buckle doesn't really complement the male form—any male form. She said considering how big the buckle is and how small and tight the straps are, "It's like seeing a man wearing panties." I had to agree with her after that observation.
You still haven't explained what makes a simple strap and a simple buckle feminine. When you can list all the characteristics that are "feminine" in the design then you might have an argument. Until then you are simply projecting your own biases onto a simple watch.
I already explained it. Big buckles on watches have always been considered feminine. The soft curves of the buckle is also on the feminine side (much like what you see on purses and women belts). If Apple wanted to make it gender neutral, they would've made the buckle smaller and squared off the design a bit, then it'd be available in both 38mm and 42mm like all the other gender neutral straps.
So you changed your opinion of what is feminine and what is masculine based on social reinforcement communicated by your gf. There is nothing inherently feminine about the modern buckle. People project their own biases onto the design. It doesn't even follow feminine form. Just like colors, the style is a rigid world view.
We always get a few members who say that, but most people can clearly see how the Modern Buckle is on the feminine side and hence why you hardly see any men rocking it.
"Big buckles ... always been considered feminine" and "soft curves"-- these are just previous experiences and old biases being reinforced today. iPhone 3g/3gs, curves in three dimensions, iPhone 6/6s has soft curves and a big surface area-- male or female? Who knows?? Apple's mistake not making it in the 42mm, they've potentially lost sales. There is no such thing as feminine design. It's marketing and personal biases. If Apple started marketing the modern buckle featuring men wearing it, a shift would occur. Some people won't follow their own tastes until their told or shown it's okay to do so. At the end of the day, it's just a strap and a metal casing. The potential customer projects everything else on to it and gives it life and meaning based on their own views of the world.
I think your politics are clouding your ability to view our species in a unbiased way. In our human history, the earliest artworks were very crude models of the human form: male and female. Despite their primitive modeling, it's clear to differentiate between these models as female and male.
As Homo sapien, we evolved out of Africa. And generally speaking, men evolved to find the female form attractive and vice versa. That means over thousands of years of natural selection, we evolved to understand the very subtle differences in the male and female form. (If a baby's face looked like a Picasso painting, then we would have evolved to find that form attractive.) These are subtle cues. Cues that are unconsciously baked in our brains (hip-waste ratio, symmetry), so we don't go around actively aware of these cues. Evolution has done the job for us.
It's igornant to deny there are subtle female and male charateristics. Should we be educated and socialized out of this? That's a different topic entirely.
The Modern Buckle is not availble in 42 mm. That's a tell. The shape and curvature of the buckle and its size relationship to the straps are decidedly feminine. I think that's a reasonable assesstment. Doesn't mean men are precluded from donning it. Nor by doing so invalidates them as men in any sense. By all means, whatever makes someone happy. I'm a social Libertarian. But I'm not going to let my social politics pollute my understanding of human history.
Good point-- we have evolved. Thats about it. My point isn't a political statement and my comments are not polluted by social politics. There are no subtle female and male characteristics in the Apple Watch with modern buckle. I'm not being ignorant. We are talking about a piece of metal and a strap.
Isn't the leather loop only available for 42mm :/ ?
And as egalitarian as Apple seems, I think even Ive and his design teams would disagree with that. Yes, it is a piece of metal and a leather strap. But a piece of metal and a leather strap with a unique composition. I would think the designers in charge shaped these two materials with great specificity. There's hardly anything abitrary about Apple's designs or their motivations. The Classic Buckle is also a piece of metal and a leather strap. But with an intentionally different design (which I would say is entirely gender neutral).
It's no different than what Disney does with their cartoons. In cartoons, the good guys have big eyes, smaller noses, greater symmetry, and softer features, whereas the villains typically have narrow eyes, taller, angular features. These conventions are found in anime and manga too.
It's just obtuse to think artists and designers aren't aware of masculine and feminine cues. They exist. They're patterns. And men and women both have unique patterns. In a deep way that spans our entire history. Art in general is mimesis and Apple has done a great job with the Modern Buckle in representing feminine cues in a very simple and subtextual human level rather than in a cheap and superficial way.
I'm not saying artists and designers aren't sensitive to masculine and feminine cues, but a lot of what you mention here are stereotypes speculating of what is masculine and feminine and trying to apply it onto objects that have no gender. It doesn't translate. Disney is full of stereotypes including gender stereotypes that don't follow reality. Same goes for manga. The four images of the sports band and the modern buckle band I posted above could be worn by men or women. It's as simple as that.
Unfortunately, you are once again letting your social poilitics drive your argument. My example with Disney had nothing to do with gender. My argument was limited to the moral affinity of cartoon characters through physical traits. Good guys have certain characteristics, such as size and shape of eyes, that convey innocence and honesty, whereas villains are immediately indentifiable as dishonest and creepy. Those animators are drawing, in part, from a well of human subtext. Just as most fashion items are drawn mostly from masculine and feminine subtext. Mimesis.
Objects indeed have no gender. But I do think one of the purposes of objects that are meant to be worn, such as watches, is to complement the form (and personality) of whomever is wearing said object. Other smartwatches have failed, I think, in being complementary to the female form in their shape and size and color palette. (They're barely fashionable on any human being.) I think an object like the Modern Buckle was intentionally sculpted using specific geometry and color palette to be worn primarily, but not exclusively, by women. In my eyes, I see a subtle, yet distinctly feminine quality. It's an elegant execution.
Indeed, the images of the bands you posted could be worn by men and women. You're arguing with yourself here. As stated, I am a social Libertarian. If a man wants to wear the Modern Buckle, I'm not going to judge the ethics of that, but I just don't think, with its inherent feminine quality, that it would accentuate the male form all that well.
Just because you say it's "social politics" doesn't mean my comments are just that. "Good guys have certain characteristics, such as size and shape of eyes", "villains typically have narrow eyes, taller, angular features" -- these are just stereotypes. Do they extend into the real world? Should I be suspicious and think of people in the real world as villains who were born with "narrow eyes, taller, angular features"?
Part of Apple's success with the Watch has 50% to do with the Apple brand, the other 50% is clean simple design devoid of the nastiness of other smart watches on the scene, it has nothing to do with catering for certain genders. The modern buckle comes in a whole range of colors. Women wear all kinds of watches, ones with square latches, ones with circular latches, so do men. It's my view that there is no femininity or masculinity in the modern buckle watch, it's only what you are projecting onto it.
Nice chatting in this protracted back and forth convo, but my watch says it's time for me to go now!
So mired are you in your political ideology that you can't follow my exact arguments or even manufacture a coherent one of your own without being disingenuous. If you want a better understanding of our species and the subconscious, you'd do well to start by reading Pinker's The Blank Slate.
I put forward zero political ideology here. Maybe you haven't followed the conversation closely as I thought. Read Pinker should I? A book criticised for a lack of scientific rigour, one that selectively chooses evidence, a book of strawman arguments? Good one.