Typography and the Binary Gender

             I came across an article the other day, that was discussing a book written by type designer Marie Boulanger, called XX, XY: Sex, Letters and Stereotypes. It gives a brief overview of what’s in the book and some of Boulanger’s thought processes behind writing it. Here is a link so you can check it out for yourself: Marie Boulanger explores how typography perpetuates gender stereotypes.

              I was absolutely going to get this book, but it’s apparently only in French at the moment. I can’t read French. Despite this, I wanted to talk about the book, and some of the ideas that are in it.

              Essentially, it comes down to this: typefaces have been gendered (whether intentionally or unintentionally) and over time we’ve come to associate strong, bold typefaces with masculinity, and decorative, script typefaces with femininity. These are used, very often through marketing, to re-enforce stereotypes and the gender binary. Marie Boulanger says "Through association, letters become signs which are instantly perceived as male or female. This takes the focus out of the formal qualities of typefaces…When used like this, type is a very powerful tool and I want to show that it's up to us to know and do better."

              With type being as important as it is to design, it’s honestly disheartening to realize how deeply those associations are engrained in us. I could probably look at a handful of typefaces and assign a gender to them in half a second because I know what the expectation is. I’m familiar with the stereotypes and the gender binary because I’ve been fighting it all my life. I think about gender 28 times a day. Type is just shapes. Shape isn’t gender.

              How many times have you walked down the aisle of literally any store and the packaging design is split into two very clear and yet completely arbitrary categories. Take deodorant as an example. The shelves are lined with plastic tubes that more or less hold the exact same ingredients as the next one. One of them is black with a red cover, and the bold, all caps label says I JUST FINISHED KILLING A WOLF WITH MY BARE HANDS. Next to it is a white tube with a pink cover, littered in flowers, and the flowing cursive script reads I pranced through a meadow to get to a clothesline where the laundry is drying.

              Ok, clearly that is an exaggeration of actual deodorant package designs, but the way design is used to perpetuate those ideas is not. Marie Boulanger is right. Type is powerful and we can do better. We can do better for ourselves, for men, for women, for the trans kid forced to buy period products in a pink flowered box, and for those of us who maybe don’t want to prance through a meadow but would like to pet a wolf and still have laundry that needs to get done.

              There should always be some measure of thought that goes into choosing a typeface. Maybe there should be even more. If a demographic you’re designing for is mostly men or women, give a second thought to your type choices and maybe the choices of your entire design. Does it reflect your assumptions of an entire gender? Is there room for nuance? The people who think about gender 28 times a day will thank you.

 

“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.” J. R. R. Tolkien