A woman in a man's store.

I wanted to post this as a follow up to my entry on “glamping” from my other blog.

Last night Mike and I went on a date: thrift stores, dinner, and a movie. In between Goodwill and Salvation Army Mike noticed the massive sign of Gander Mountain glowing in the night.

In attempt to win some girl friend points, I volunteered to go in with him. After stepping two feet into the bright fluorescent man’s world, and discovering a pile of small bottles containing lady deer piss, I realized I was a little out of my element.

I live in Wisconsin, and many of my aunts and cousins cross “gender boundaries” and engage in the male typified activities of hunting, fishing, and camping. I myself always did enjoy camping, but I failed archery in gym class and never wore blaze orange.

So I decided to spend my time photographing my discoveries.

There were actually as many women in the store as there were men. A lot of the merchandise had transformed its violent purpose with a bright shade of “breast cancer awareness” pink.

Pink wasn’t the only woman-targeted marketing ploy.

There were times when the merchandise seemed a bit subversive, and once or twice it seemed as though I was in some kind of sex shop. I was like, is that a camouflaged gimp suit?

And of course the whole time I was thinking, I totally need to blog about this.  But as a warning to everyone else out there: taking pictures with a bright pink i-Phone while clunking around in high heeled cowboy boots and shimmery lipstick is a really great way to get noticed in a store like Gander Mountain.