To demonstrate what I mean, let’s play a little game…

Can you spot the truth?

In the following set of statements, can which one(s) are true?

1. Girls can’t play football.
2. Girls can’t play in the National Football League (NFL).
3. Girls don’t play football.
4. Girls shouldn’t play football.

Which one is the truth? If you guessed #2, you’re wrong.  There is currently no written rule stating that women cannot play in the NFL. Therefore, #2 is simply a belief that women can’t play in the NFL.

In fact, all four of these statements are simply beliefs.  There’s not a shred of truth to them. The same applies to both the NBA (basketball) and NHL (hockey). No female has yet played in those leagues but that doesn’t mean that someday, somewhere a female will step onto the field and play the game with the guys. (And before you argue about why women should or shouldn’t play alongside the men, check out this thread for an enlightening discussion on the subject.)

My point is this… take a long, hard look at what you think is a “fact”.  Research it and ask questions.  Look for solid evidence before you make a statement that women “can’t” do something. Make sure that your thoughts reflect the truth and not a belief that lacks a solid foundation.

You can apply this to absolutely anything. And when you start making the distinction between a belief and a statement of truth, the world will look completely different to you – in a very exciting way.

Just because women aren’t currently doing something, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Now take a look at what’s holding you back from reaching your dream. Is it the truth or simply a belief?

What qualifies me to grab a scapel and dismember these filthy tricksters? I’m a web designer. That’s my “day” job outside of building the Girls Can’t WHAT? site. I know code. I know design. And I know the web and how it works. I’m also a skeptic – especially when something sounds too good to be true. I know how these sites are built and I think web surfers everywhere should know how to be aware of a scam on the Internet. So here we go…

A prime example of a scam

A couple weeks ago, a link to the following web page was posted on my Girls Can’t WHAT? fan page. I won’t link directly to the page (I don’t want to give it any attention from Google since it’s clearly a scam) so I’ll post a screenshot.  You can click on it to see the full web page.  Go ahead and zoom in to look it over before we tear it to pieces.

Looks kind of legit, right?  Nice news logo, clean design, mentions Google headquarters with a photo. Not too bad. Except for the fact that the headline sounds too good to be true, the rest of the page is pretty ordinary.

So here’s the first test…

Real photos that are actually fake

Pick any photo on the page and copy or drag it to your desktop for a moment. Now head over to TinEye.com. TinEye is a reverse image lookup service. Upload the image you just copied to see where else that photo shows up on the Internet. If it’s a scam site, chances are that image has been used multiple times.

For our example, I grabbed the image of the nice looking family in the sidebar and ran a search. Sure enough, it has been used 63 times on quite a few sites (and by the time this post is published, this page will be #64). Some sites were good and some were bad. So it’s probably safe to say this is a stock image – meaning an image that anyone can purchase and use for advertising or in other media.

Here are the TinEye results for that photo (click it to see full screen):

Next up…

The relative date trick

As a code geek, I’m aware of a lot of ways to manipulate the date function. One such way is to make a static web page always look like it’s fresh and the content is recent. The first time I visited the site, the comment section looked like this:

And here’s what it looked like today (May 19th) when I returned:

See the difference?  The only thing that changed was the date.  This is because the code is picking up the today’s date from server and then subtracting 2 days from it to make the page look new. This not something you can catch just by visiting once, but if all of the dates are the showing same day you might want to think twice or use one of these other scam spotting techniques in this article to determine if the site is the real deal.

While this is a cool snippet of code, it’s a also a sign of a lazy marketer. If you know how to do that, why not make the dates different instead of the same all over the page.  Fail.

Next ploy…

Someone “local” appears on the page

With the dawn of Facebook, it’s really easy to connect a few dots and make an advertisement more personal.  This is a pretty simple web trick. Essentially the web page determines your location through your IP address and the code on the page returns that location as text on the page.

So if you live in Sunnyvale and you visit a site that uses this code, you may be greeted with a headline that reads “Busy mom in Sunnyvale makes millions while she sleeps”. Send the link to that site to a friend in another state and ask them to tell you what the headline says for them. Bet they get something completely different. It’s a trick to get you to think someone in your area is making millions so you can, too. This particular example site did not use that technique.  It lists Sun Valley, Idaho both times and I’m in Illinois. Must be amateur web developers.  ;)

Links all lead to the same place

I’m a peeper, she’s a peeper, wouldn’t you like to be a peeper, too? (if you know the Dr. Pepper jingle, I probably just put that tune into your head.)

I like to peep at web site code…like an artist who studies the work of other artists. You can find a great deal of information about the site as well as the developers behind its creation. Using our example from above, I noticed one big red flag right up front.  Take a look at this top navigation bar:

Looks like a normal menu bar, right? Well it is, but there’s just one thing that isn’t right about it.  Let’s take a look under the hood and see what’s going on. To do this, right click anywhere on the web page and click “view source” from your menu options. A new browser window will pop up with all of the html code used by your browser to render the web page. It should look something like this (click to zoom in):

The part after the href= is the link. Notice it’s the same link for every single topic in the menu. If you scan the rest of the code, you’ll see that almost all of the links lead to the same place.  Yup, definite scammer here.

Or you can just do it the easy way and…

Go to a scam sniffing site like Reviewandjudge.org and enter the url to get a quick analysis. It’s pretty close and offers a few other places to check in case the results are sketchy. The quick and dirty rule is always…

“If it’s too good to be true, it probably is!”

Bonus – really lame photoshopping

I’ve posted this one before, but take a close look at this ad that popped up in my RSS reader…

What are the odds that “just a few weeks later” she looks absolutely amazing AND her hair just happens to fall in the exact same place as before.  This, my friends, is a very crappy photoshop job.

And by the way, I’ve never had a web client ask me to build a site using any of these techniques.  If I did, I would decline the job and send them a link to this page.

I hope this leaves you feeling like a wiser and more empowered Internet user. Your challenge? Pass this along to others so they can be informed web surfers as well.

J. Crew put out an ad depicting a mom spending some quality time with her son and in one of the ads she is painting his toenails pink. This has apparently caused an outrage by people who claim boys should not be wearing nail polish, especially if it’s pink.

I don’t get it.

I know lots of little boys who have had their nails painted by their moms or their sisters because they wanted to have them painted.  I’ve even seen them sporting hot pink colors. Who cares?

If the boys want to wear pink nail polish, let them. Don’t we have better things to be concerned about in life?

Of all the ways they could have designed this… why did they feel the need to put the words “how do you get your bounce?” across a woman’s chest?

C’mon Bounce – we expect better.

By the way, there’s a whole rage against this series of commercials over at Bitch Magazine if you’re interested. Not only are the words in a rather conspicuous locale, but the commercials do nothing more than flaunt stereotypes and imply that only women know how to do laundry.

Pastor Kathy Escobar was recently asked to lead a high school baccalaureate service in a small town near Denver, Colorado.  The school told her they wanted a female pastor who would as Kathy states “inspire the kids & open up some doors that hadn’t been opened previously.”

Sounds like a great idea, right?

Kathy was excited about it until she received an email a few weeks later that effectively rescinded her invitation.

Why?

Because she’s a woman.

I’m not making an assumption here and neither is Kathy.  She point blank asked them if it was about her particular beliefs or if it was because she was female.

Guess what?  It was her gender.

Here’s how it went down according to Kathy in her blog post titled “Why sometimes I get sad”:

“yesterday i got an email from him letting me know that unfortunately when the other pastors and leaders found out that a female pastor was speaking, they banded together to reject the idea.  they said they couldn’t listen to someone they didn’t agree with and strong-armed a very conservative evangelical into the spot instead.

his email was so kind, and he was so sad that his hope got hijacked.  he tried to fight the good fight and just couldn’t make it happen.  i ended up talking to him on the phone just to make sure i was clear what he was really saying and didn’t misunderstand.  i asked, “so, is it really just the woman pastor thing or is it about my beliefs or ?“  he said that the woman thing was definitely the main issue, the deal breaker, and anything that remotely is connected to the word “emerging” was just icing on the cake.”

“the woman thing was definitely the main issue, the deal breaker”

That is mind-boggling. If I were a student at that particular high school, I would be screaming “discrimination” and organizing a boycott of the service. I’m particularly angry that the school chose Kathy and then buckled under the bullying of some local clergy who didn’t want a woman to speak. What on earth are you teaching your students about sexism?

P.S. – if anyone from the school would like some protest materials, I would be happy to send you some posters and stickers with the Girls Can’t WHAT? Pastor design on it. Contact me to work out the details.

Why oh why did they change her costume?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lynda’s outfit is still better.  If I only I could change clothes that fast.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And the opening theme song…

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m not sure why Wonder Woman doesn’t get her own action flick, and I was all set to be disappointed by that until they released this photo of the “new” Wonder Woman.

Uh yeah. Let the bashing begin.

My movie disappointment has been trumped.

What. The. Heck. DC Entertainment and NBC.

Or whomever created this atrocity – you should be fired. This is NOT Wonder Woman. This looks like an anorexic in spandex with a boob job.

This is not about body-type bashing, but when I think “Super Heroine,” I’m thinking someone who looks strong, muscular – you know – someone who actually looks fit enough to rescue me from a burning building. I’m not sure the actress they picked has any biceps. Can we send her to the gym to bulk up a little or will that mess up the costume sizing?

I’m not picking on Adrianne Palicki for being who she is, but if I were trying to match up an actress to the comic book description of Wonder Woman, I’d be looking for someone who maybe works out or something.  Someone with some muscle tone and a tan. Why? Because the original Wonder Woman was from the Amazon.  I picture a tall, darker-skinned woman with an athletic look to her.  Not an over-inflated body-builder, but something that says power, strength and um “Super Hero”.  Give me a woman who looks like she ordered the steak for lunch, not a salad with dressing on the side. That photo looks like an ad for an adult halloween costume.

Contrast that with this image of a cartoon Wonder Woman…

See now that’s all “BA” as my daughter would say. I would not want to meet her in a dark alley with a bag of loot slung over my shoulder. Granted, her waist looks almost smaller than her wrist, but at least this version looks tough and ready to kick some serious butt. She’s got attitude and she knows how to use that Magic Lasso!

The new version looks like she’s gonna trip in her boots or maybe she’s standing that way because her spandex are just too tight. What do you think?

Do you like this new version of one of the most beloved female Heroines ever?

Mr. Packer? Really?

It’s seems interesting to me that when my friends move, the women do most of the packing. That may not be true in all cases, but I think if there were an actual survey on who does the majority of the packing… it’s probably not the men.

Have you seen any other crazy images like this one recently?  Let me know!

Thanks to my friend Angeline for posting this to Facebook.

Unbelievable!

Preposterous, you say!

But look – I have proof…she’s thinner and by golly she’s wearing a Girls Can’t WHAT? roller derby shirt!

Still sounds too good to be true…yet you clicked through to see what the heck this was all about. Why?

Maybe deep down you were hoping there was a grain of truth to that statement and you were already mentally placing an order for a new t-shirt.

Maybe you just realized it was an absurd statement and you wanted to call me out on it and tell me my photoshopping skills are pathetic.

Or maybe you know me well enough to know I just used that provocative title (and image) to get your attention and that although there’s not an ounce of truth to it, I do have a point to make.

Either way, welcome to my discussion on false advertising and marketing gimmicks.  In a nutshell, I despise them.  And that’s likely an understatement.  If you’re a regular reader of this site, you’ve no doubt seen my posts on airbrushing Britney Spears and other celebrities as well as the Dove videos and countless other crappy marketing shams targeted at women that I have exposed.  If you’re not a regular reader, grab the RSS feed or sign up for the mailing list (top right corner of the page) so you’re not missing out on these glorious advertising atrocities.

It continually blows my mind that marketers think we women are dumb enough to fall for some of these tricks. And yet there are people out there that do buy into it, which of course is why marketers continue to over-exaggerate, practice bad science and outright lie to us. That does not make some women stupid, just misinformed.

The key here is education.  That’s what I try to do here on the Girls Can’t WHAT? blog.  When I run across stupidness on the Internet like this little con, I feel it is my duty to shine some light on it.  Even if my readers are smart enough to recognize the deception, there may be someone out there who doesn’t.  And I’m not doing the world any favors if I don’t point it out to others. The smarter we are about this stuff, the better off we will be as women and as individuals.

So if you want to buy a Girls Can’t WHAT? shirt, or any other items from my shop, don’t do it because you read a headline that told you it will help you shed a few pounds. Order a shirt or gift item because you like the positive message or because you think it will inspire someone you love.

I make no extraordinary claims about what I sell.  They are T-shirts and gifts.  The designs are meant to inspire and encourage women everywhere to pursue their passions.  And 20% of all Girls Can’t WHAT? profits go to help women in need.  It’s a pretty simple concept and one that requires no deceitful marketing on my part.

And guess what?  People all over the world like the Girls Can’t WHAT? artwork. They like the style. They like the message. It motivates. It empowers.

In fact, today I am wearing the firefighter girl shirt as seen in the above photo. I’m not a firefighter, but I happen to love this design and I wear it in support of my female firefighter friends. I’m making a positive statement with a product I don’t have to lie about.

Have you seen any false advertising lately?  Post it in the comments below and let’s expose them for the snake oil sellers that they truly are.