Back in April, I wrote one of my first-ever Gizmodo posts, a rant about the monthly mail-order grooming service Birchbox and how their male/female skewed boxes tended to reinforce gender constructs in a pretty annoying way.
Well, three months and three boxes later, it seems they've finally taken the hint. I received my Glamour-sponsored July box today and was pleasantly surprised to see—tucked in amongst the lip gloss and nail polish and perfume samples, etc—a pair of blue and pink earbuds wrapped around a cardboard note: "Glamour's beauty editors put together the perfect "getting pretty" playlist. Turn up the music at glamour.com/spotify."
If a "getting pretty" playlist is what it takes to convince Birchbox that ladies like tech, too, well...that's fine. I'd rather have these candy-colored earbuds—which are perfectly decent as far as free bonus gifts go—than another goddamn tea sachet.