24k #5 -- Pink tax
Today's entry in our 24k for 24 series is the 1984 Epoch Lady Super Cassette Vision cartridge-based video game system by Epoch Co. Ltd. of Japan. Or Lady Cassette Vision, or Super Cassette Vision Lady's. Super Lady Cassette Vision? Yes, also used. We'll stick with Lady SCV.
In 1987, the Congress of the United States designated the month of March, 1987 as "Women's History Month". It became law 12 days into that March and that kind of syncopated rhythm really set the mood for several subsequent national observances. Did Congress just phone this in? Nay! Phone calls connect you to the present, where women are living today and can tell their stories, and a phone call may even extend into the future, where women will still be living. A phone call cannot connect you to History.
By the time this particular bill did become a law, the Epoch Lady SCV system had already been discontinued, driven from the Japanese and French markets by something with an evidently higher societal value – the Family Computer. Nintendo's "Family Computer", FamiCom in Japan and simply Nintendo in millions of US homes, did more than displace the SCV – Lady and otherwise. It delivered the final Mortal Kombat-style "Finish Her" to the staggering and disoriented market for 8-bit home computers in the US.
The Lady SCV was bright pink and didn't cost a yen more than the original SCV even though it came in a bright pink case and included a copy of the Milky Princess video game. Pink tax? Hardly! Except, of course, that the system had gone from competitive to obsolete by the time the pink version rolled out and that computers are fundamentally deflationary.
Did it have anything else? Well, every version of the SCV system had an obscure NEC uCOM-87 processor more usually found in cash registers and rebadged dot-matrix printers. It had 4k of external RAM for the uCOM and an additional 128 bytes internal to that processor, 2k for an external video processor chip and a few kilobytes of ROM in the system besides whatever was available on the cartridge.
In fact, the uCOM-87 processor is at the heart of our most recent 24k for 24 machine – the Apple ImageWriter II. Hold that thought for a moment as we stroll down gaslight alley together. I don't want you to think of the Lady SCV as a machine that offered less capability for the same price as the Famicom. I want you to think of the Lady SCV as a rugged dot-matrix printer that has been slimmed down to meet the needs of the "on-the-go woman" Dell targeted for exploitation in their 2009 Della campaign.
2009 is starting to be a long time ago. Definitely history. A survey today of the e-commerce portals of Asus, Lenovo, HP, Dell, Microsoft, Apple, and a few other firms turned up no evidence of pink taxing of computer hardware. Colors and textures and sizes and capacities seem to abound and be substantially interchangeable. In this regard, computing hardware seems to have pulled ahead of that other San Francisco staple – the Levi Strauss 501 jean.
(Side note: at the time rivets were first placed in denim to create the ur-Levi, it was illegal in California for women to wear pants. Marie Suize's tax there in 1871 was arrest and a court-ordered fine of $5. Later that year, Marie Suzie was arrested again and won the right to wear pants in a jury trial. Marie had herself been driven from the French market more than a century before the Lady SCV. In her home country, women had earned around 82% of the right to wear pants a few years after that spasm of violence and rationality that led France to adopt the metric system.)
Software often lags hardware. Microsoft's online store does have one curious software difference when searching for "men" vs. "women". Windows 11 Home showed up for me when I searched for "women", but not when I searched for "men". On the basis of no information at all, I think it's likely that someone has been letting Bing run the shop again – the software weakness is more likely in the e-commerce AI than in Windows 11 of whatever version. Microsoft's partners at OpenAI may have some work to do.
With that, I brought frequent contributor Chat into the studio for some conversation.
Me: "Imagine an ad for a laptop that is to be placed in a magazine with 80% female readership."
Chat: "
[Visual: A sleek and stylish laptop displayed prominently against a soft, pastel background. The laptop is open, showing a vibrant display with a welcoming user interface.]
" ... transcript trimmed for brevity because it's exactly the ad copy goop you would expect in the magazines in the doctor's waiting room ...
Me: "now imagine an ad for that same laptop, but to be placed in a magazine with 20% female readership"
Chat: "
[Visual: A modern and versatile laptop showcased against a bold, dynamic background. The laptop is depicted in a professional setting, surrounded by creative professionals collaborating.]
" ... nope. Not showing you everything Chat said. All unlock and seize and crunch and craft and excel and ample and unmatched that's built to last – elevate your professional game today ...
Barf. At this point, I felt like I was about to elevate some of my dinner game onto the floor.
Me: "now imagine an ad for that same laptop to be placed in a magazine about which no demographic information is available"
Chat: "
[Visual: A versatile laptop displayed against a neutral background, emphasizing its adaptability and universal appeal.]
" ... hmm Chat's saying 'redefine', 'possibilities', 'companion', 'limitless', 'fusion', 'sleek', 'contemporary', 'trust', 'aspirations', 'future' ...
Here Chat seemed to produced something that was half laptop ad and half storyboard for a lost episode of ST:TNG.
I would have to say that Chat seems pretty trained on the types of magazines in my optometrist's waiting room. Now, let's see if Chat will lead me straight into the jet engine like Gary Larson's seeing-eye dog pulling a mannequin on roller skates.
Me: "what is the price of the laptop in each magazine?"
Chat: "
Since the price of the laptop wasn't specified in the previous descriptions, I'll provide hypothetical pricing that aligns with the perceived value and target audience of each magazine:
For the magazine with an 80% female readership, where the ad emphasizes elegance, empowerment, and style, the price might be positioned as premium, reflecting the perceived value of sophistication and empowerment. Let's say the price for this demographic is $1,799.
For the magazine with a 20% female readership, where the ad focuses on professionalism, productivity, and reliability, the price might still be positioned as premium but slightly lower than the first demographic to reflect the emphasis on functionality and performance. Let's set the price for this demographic at $1,599.
For the magazine with no demographic information available, where the ad emphasizes versatility and universal appeal, the price could be positioned as mid-range to appeal to a broader audience. Let's set the price for this demographic at $1,699.
These prices are purely hypothetical and would depend on factors such as the actual specifications of the laptop, market competition, and the manufacturer's pricing strategy.
"
Chat thinks the appropriate pink tax here is two hundred bucks. Onward.
Me: "do the different prices for the same laptop above represent a "pink tax"?"
Chat: "
No, the different prices for the same laptop in the hypothetical scenarios provided earlier do not represent a "pink tax." The pricing differences were based on the perceived value and target audience of each magazine's readership, rather than the gender of the consumers.
In the scenarios:
- The higher price in the magazine with an 80% female readership reflected the emphasis on elegance, empowerment, and style, catering to the perceived preferences and purchasing power of that demographic.
- The slightly lower price in the magazine with a 20% female readership was based on the emphasis on professionalism, productivity, and reliability, aligning with the perceived value and preferences of that audience.
- The mid-range price in the magazine with no demographic information available aimed to appeal to a broader audience, reflecting the universal appeal and versatility of the laptop.
These pricing strategies are based on marketing tactics and perceived consumer preferences, rather than gender-based pricing discrimination. The concept of the "pink tax" specifically refers to situations where products marketed towards women are priced higher than similar products marketed towards men, solely because of their gender.
"
When we look back next year for Women's History Month 2025, I hope we see this as a watershed moment for AI platforms that let anyone dissemble like a boss. I think the Lady SCV system should be called the 2,4k Slim – a machine meticulously designed to complement your lifestyle and engage with your passions. Where clunkier systems drag dozens of kilobytes with them everywhere and can never find anything in a pinch, the 2,4k Slim system has 4k of processing memory for a day at the office and 2k of video memory for a night on the town. Available everywhere for no more than you'd pay for a much bulkier system.
Until then, take heart that there is no tax (pink or otherwise) on the work-in-progress emulator for the SCV (here) that treats them all equally. Perhaps useful for other uCOM-87 systems!
This post pairs well with the documentary "Sisters with Transistors", 2020.