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Why can’t this headline say “two women?” Big yuck.



The title is literal, according to TFA the reason they started the company because they were bored with being housewives.

>”I cannot stand being at home,” said Lore in a 1983 New York Times article. ”It drives me insane. Everybody thought I was strange because I would not go to the bridge club or have my fingernails done.”

>Lore Harp met a kindred spirit in the form of a neighbor, Carole Ely, whose kids shared classes with the Harp children. Like Lore, she found the life of a homemaker wanting. “We were bored doing the housewife thing,” recalls Ely today. “I was ready to be something.” Just a few years prior, Ely had worked for large investment firms such as Merrill Lynch on the east coast, and she was itching to get back to business.


Because the objective of a 'headline' is to get people to continue reading, essentially it's clickbait. Which descriptive choice gets more notice and is more likely to provoke continued reading "two women" or "Two Bored...Housewives"?


women = adult females

bored 1970s housewives = bored adult females in the 1970s who have forgone a professional occupation to be a homemaker

They used the latter because it's far more descriptive, and these facts are relevant to the article.


Because the word "housewife" invokes a fuller mental image of what general boring conditions those two women might be living under?


I too get offended when salient information to the story is part of the headline.

I never want to read "Motorist kills 2 pedestrians", or "Policeofficer accused of planting evidence". It has to be "Person killed 2 other people" and "person accused of planting evidence" otherwise I am personally offended.

Bigger yuck.


Anyone else remember when journalists were on some strange anti-SUV crusade. "SUV crashes into pedestrians", "SUV runs off bridge", "5 killed by SUV". The titles really read like SUVs had been co-opted by Skynet and were causing all sorts of mayhem.


The same reason that the maker of the machine itself, the husband, isn't mentioned in the title -- doesn't fit the narrative. Who'd ever want to hear about a couple and a friend starting a company? "Two Women" will get more attention, and therefore sell more ads, which is the reason that the publication exists.




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