Barnes and Noble – Men’s Interests vs. Women’s Interests ??

Sure God created man before woman but then again, you always make a rough draft before creating the final masterpiece.

Okay, okay .. normally I don’t care for these stupid men/women type of jokes but in this case, it kind of fits this blog.  I guess I’m kind of lying when I say I don’t like them.  Not all of them are true but they can still be funny.  If it weren’t for Barnes & Noble and their categorization of magazines, I wouldn’t post that.  

I like my Color Nook.  Many RVers have traded in the hard copy books for the eBooks through eReaders offered by Kindle, Nook, Sony and the list goes on.  Like I said I like the Nook.  It's not just an eReader but I can also check emails, search the web, watch movies, play games, mess with the apps and even view stored pictures.

Not every eReader is able to download magazines and newspapers like the Nook.  That is one thing I really like.  I can download magazines.  I can either download one particular issue or even order a subscription on my favorite ones and they will be delivered to me without much effort.  That I like. 

Magazines have short articles and stories and are usually about something folks are interested in.  That’s just what I was going to do the other day – check for magazines.  The availability of different magazines just continues to grow as more and more of them also are available via the eBook format. The Nook is not proprietary.  It can read many different formats.

My Nook was charged, connected to our aircard Wi-Fi and I was ready to search for what might be an interesting topic. Even with an aircard these books and magazines are fast and quick downloads. The magazines are grouped into subject matter such as Entertainment, Health, Current Events, Food, Sports and so on.  Then close to the bottom of this list of topics you slide down to Women’s Interest and Men’s Interest. I found this “interesting” the way Barnes and Noble had grouped their idea of Women’s and Men’s interest into groups of magazines.  They definitely had a man doing the job.  That was obvious.

The majority of magazines for women were about food or being in the kitchen and staying in shape.  A couple even would help you look good naked.  Now that’s just what we women want to do!!  Oh, there was a magazine or two on taking care of the house and taking care of the kids.  The oddball one was TV Guide.  There were no real interest magazines other than one for scrapbooking and who really does that anymore in this digital world?

These were definitely in the Women’s Interest category.  I bet you could tell that.

Next, I checked out what had been categorized as Men’s Interests.    What a difference!!  Sure they had the normal muscle man magazines but definitely not as many.  Runner magazines were given to men’s interests.  Heck, I know more women runners than men.  Some of the magazines you might expect such as Hot Rod, Field & Stream, and Handguns but what about the magazines for IPads, finance, photography, computers and travel?  Why are those considered “men’s interests”?    Of course, TV guide was also listed under this category.

These were definitely in the Men’s Interest category. I bet you could tell that too.




Now why are the following magazines of interest to men and not women?  Many women I know have IPads, are into photography, love wildlife including birds and are travel maniacs.

At the time I searched there were a total of 76 magazines listed for women and 165 for men.  Take a guess who gets the two magazines below?

I’m sure you figured that one out.  According to Barnes and Noble it’s not the women-folks who are interested in them.  Like I said it certainly appears that top subjects for women are pretty much limited to cooking, eating, dieting and taking care of the house.  Well, that’s in addition to watching TV.  On the other hand, men are interested in just about everything else??  Is that really the case?  I don’t think so.  Someplace along the line I think B&N has lost their marbles?  Oh … but isn’t marbles a boy’s game?

‘Tis life on the road.