On Wednesday, the social media website has announced a change in its "Friends" and "Groups" icons by taking the woman icon from behind the man icon/men icons and putting it in front of them.
Here is the old and new "Friends" icon:
and the old and new "Groups" icon.:
This redesign is the work of the website's design manager Caitlin Winner, who has made several changes to icons across its network to prominently feature women at the forefront. She had this to say about the change:
"As a woman, educated at a women's college, it was hard not to read into the symbolism of the (old) icon; the woman was quite literally in the shadow of the man, she was not in a position to lean in. My first idea was to draw a double silhouette, two people of equal sizes without a hard line indicating who is in front. Dozens of iterations later, I abandoned this approach after failing to make an icon that didn't look like a two headed mythical beast."
Well, this may have been drawn by a woman named Winner, but in my eyes, ironically, this isn't even a Loser
Because...To be honest...I don't care. I really don't care if a woman is in front of an FB icon (or even notice them anyway), because when you go onto Facebook, this is the last thing you'd want to notice or look at when logging on. Most of the time, you'd rather look at your notifications, or check your latest messages, or check the latest news from the news/entertainment/human interest companies or TV networks or film studios or whatever, new status update from your friends, look at the latest creepy/disgusting/funny meme/picture or "like & share or ignore" post (both of which I hate with a passion) or change your settings.
As progressive as it is, I don't think many people will care about this. At least not in this caliber. Hell, even some women don't care about this news! In this post from the page of the New York Daily News with the from update, some women have voiced their dis-concern under the comments section. Here are two that are some of the best and made the most impact:
In my opinion, I would've found this (specifically the "Friends" icon) much better if the man icon and woman icon stood side-by-side, so that both genders will be recognized (not that I would care anyway nonetheless). I feel that that's a better option than keeping the woman in either the background or foreground. Giving it more prominence without any dominance.
"It didn't seem fair, let alone accurate, that all friend requests should be presented by a man, so I drew a silhouette for cases where a gendered icon was inappropriate."And yet, it seems fair for a woman to front a group of friendships?? Okay, I call bullshit on this. I get where she's going with, but I think she went a little too far. Sure, friendships can be presented by someone, but it shouldn't matter the gender of the person; whether it's a man or a woman. Yet this clear-as-day feminist believes that a woman should be at the forefront because women aren't at the center of everything yet, and that this should happen now. That's not fair. Yes, I'm a man (named Andrew, by the way), but I think that putting women if front of everything (and I mean literally everything) (at least in this caliber) is just plain nuts. I've never been against women not having equal ground with men in life (it's been that way since birth), but I find this new thing that women see their society over men in everything (TV shows movie advertisements, websites, radio, online videos) and their quest to put other women in front of it all, just to please other women, now to be super sad.
Don't take this the wrong way (again, I'm all for gender equality), but if things like this
will happen for the rest of time, I gonna find this absurd.
So from here on out, I don't care about this new change, I don't find this a Winner (yeah, irony) and I'm relieved that a lot of people are on the same page. And this new era of feminism is too much for me
(a MAN--A misogynistic, anti-female, woman-hating MAN) to handle.
And another thing, Facebook also changed it's logo as well,
but at this point, I don't give a hoot about that either.
So go ahead. The comments section is open (always has been). Tear into me.
Facebook, congrats. I guess.
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