My post for today there was on Sylvan. I've decided to share it here as well
Sylvan is a chain of private education facilities to teach your kids math and English, if they are lagging behind in real school.
Nothing wrong with that - more power to them.
But their latest commercial is soooo offensive. Some teacher is giving a lesson, when this smug teenage boy stands up and starts talking about how good Sylvan is. Okay fine - does it matter if the spokesperson is a boy or a girl? (Well, considering that girls always do well in math until they reach teenage years and then plummet precipitously, and that there is therefore this myth that girls are no good at math, perhaps a girl spokesperson would have been better in order to recruit girls to the programs.)
But what I found really offensive is that the boy is standing between two teenage girls, and these girls are looking at him - not appreciative at what he's saying regarding math, but just looking at him with moon-calf eyes as if they're in love with him. So is that the subliminal message being sent to girls? "Join Sylvan and there will be boys there that you can get for boyfriend, because having a boyfriend is soooo much more important than being able to do math!""
Very sad.
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