{"id":280,"date":"2012-08-29T08:52:35","date_gmt":"2012-08-29T07:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/?p=280"},"modified":"2026-09-27T17:12:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T16:12:42","slug":"the-pen-is-girlier-than-the-sword","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/the-pen-is-girlier-than-the-sword\/","title":{"rendered":"The pen is girlier than the sword"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>These recent Amazon reviews for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/BIC-For-Amber-Medium-Ballpoint\/dp\/B004FTGJUW\/ref=sr_1_2?s=officeproduct&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1346226228&amp;sr=1-2\" target=\"_blank\">BIC For Her Ballpoint Pens<\/a> made me laugh and laugh, but there&#8217;s a serious point here too (leaving aside the whole &#8216;Really, BIC?&#8217; question). If the feedback had simply been a series of rants\/earnest comments\/serious points then I doubt very much that it would have got anything like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/femail\/article-2194496\/Amazon-shoppers-hilarious-reviews-Bics-pen-just-women.html\" target=\"_blank\">media coverage<\/a> that it has, or highlighted the issues raised here to such a wide audience. Sometimes a frivolous approach can be an excellent way of making a very serious point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These recent Amazon reviews for BIC For Her Ballpoint Pens made me laugh and laugh, but there&#8217;s a serious point here too (leaving aside the whole &#8216;Really, BIC?&#8217; question). If the feedback had simply been a series of rants\/earnest comments\/serious points then I doubt very much that it would have got anything like the media [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p71sY0-4w","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}