Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Black vs White IPhone

   Oh, the cell phone upgrade....the time for new technology and feeling like you're on the cutting edge of the newest gadget (the feeling lasts for all of five minutes- for a breakdown of this cycle see The Oatmeal).
    To better streamline things and because Mac has all of the good apps, I thought I'd go with an I Phone. The only choice was  camera with or without Siri ( that one also has a better camera) and color. I've never really had a choice about phone color before and I was leaning towards white because a black phone with a white cord is not aesthetically pleasing to the eye (for shame on Apple in not fixing this design flaw!) However......
   The guys selling me the phone said "You'll want a white one, all girls get the white one."
    Reeeeeeeallllly???? I do not like people telling me what I can and can't do, so naturally, out of spite, I went with the black one. I told them of my white cord/ black phone conundrum and the fact that a black phone won't show dirt as much.
    Feeling happy with my decision I went on my way. I also thought how small minded to assume that girls would want a white phone. For what reason? Then I began to notice it....Every girl I saw with an I Phone or I Pad...all white.......
   Any guy I saw...black..."tactical black" as one told me.
   Now since when did white become such a girly color? Is Apple trying to play Golf's card of a black and red motif on their cars to tie into James Bond's Walther PPK gun? (This is very much true- the Golf GTI and the Tizio lamp played upon the PPK's black and red (the safety) color scheme). In "The Language of Things" author Deyan Sudjic suggests that the reasoning behind this marketing scheme is to lend an air of suppressed violence to the object and that it, "suggests that you can do important things with it".
  I know, all that from just one phone purchase and people wonder why I don't watch Mad Men. So fellow readers, black or white? And why?

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