Shark Tank's Endlessly Weird But Always Entertaining Gender Obsession

Though Corcoran said she brings “friendship” to the women pitching her, she also says she’s tougher on the women who come through than the men:

I’m tougher on anyone who will use any excuse as to why they didn’t get ahead because I’ve walked in the shoes knowing that I had a million excuses I could have used and I chose not to use them.

When dealing with men in her business life, Corcoran is all about reminding them that she’s a woman. “I always use the sex card,” she said. “I wear short skirts, I make sure I have make-up on and I flirt like crazy with the men and guess what: I get into them that way.”

Greiner and Corcoran consistently refer to their genders when “battling” over pitches with their fellow Sharks. They both believe that being female gives them an advantage over their male coworkers:

Corcoran: We sort of leveled the playing field by having two women on the set.

…

Greiner: It’s not a fair fight. Two women, three men. Not a fair fight for them.

Corcoran: It’s more than a fair fight because our combined IQ is more than three times theirs.

This fighting, fair or not, is regularly promoted by ABC, like for the season five, episode 23 episode they promoed as a “Battle of the Sexes.”

The “Battle of the Sexes” segment was over the product Hold Your Haunches, a line of very strong shapewear. Corcoran and Greiner went to head-to-head with their fellow male Sharks over these leggings and pants, accusing the men of not being interested in the product because it was marketed to women.

“Why is it every time there’s a female product on this show, you guys go out right away? We’ve invested in many male products, we give it a chance,” Corcoran said when a few of the men had said they were “out” or not interested in the pitch.

“You’re not saying women don’t need shapers, you’re saying, ‘Oh, I don’t want to touch that with a ten foot pole,'” Greiner added.

Mark Cuban took issue with that claim. “That’s like me saying to you, ‘Why don’t you do technology deals? You never do technology deals,'” he shot back, while O’Leary very appropriately suggested that he wasn’t interested in the product because it was “fraud” to misrepresent a person’s body that way.

In another instance this season, Corcoran and Greiner were pitted against each other in promos as if they were going to have a “cat fight,” like in episode five of this season, where they sparred over a product called Ruffle Butts. Except when the episode aired, what occurred wasn’t a cat fight, but Barbara asserting her strengths as an investor while Lori asserted hers back. Pretty boring stuff, but perhaps enough to get people watching.

Whether Corcoran and Greiner were entirely accurate in their claims that the men drop out of deals over female products more than the women do is unclear. First of all, hundreds of people apply to be on Shark Tank who never even make it through the door, so the producers could be filtering out great, diverse prospects. In the episodes that have aired so far, of the 17 products I counted that were pitched by women/for women (and/or children) that have gotten deals, Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran actually tie for most pitches invested, with a total of six each. Lori Greiner has invested in five, Daymond John has invested in four, and Kevin Harrington and Robert Herjavec are last with one each. (Many of the pitches the Sharks actually go in on together.)

As the website Shark Tank Success explains, at the end of season five before they were on the panel together, the women were “dominating” the other Sharks, investment-wise:

The biggest surprise of Season 4 was Barbara Corcoran and Lori Greiner’s Shark Tank Seat they share throughout the Season. When combined, our Lady Sharks dominated all the other Sharks in new Investments.

Looking just at “female” products pitched and accepted, the numbers indicate a few things. As alleged, Kevin O’Leary is truly not into lady stuff. The number of Daymond John’s investments is likely high because of his retail background (he started FUBU). Lori Greiner’s high investment count in female products makes sense given her background with QVC, a network that targets women.

But Corcoran, with her background in real estate, doesn’t make as much sense as the others with regards to her choice to invest in “female products” except that she’s is female. On the flip side, Cuban clearly has one of the best records of investing in female-centric products out there, despite his male parts. (These numbers also don’t take into account how many deals total each of the Sharks have made in comparison to each other, and how many have ended up working out.)

Though the men have invested in other companies pitched by women, some viewers think that doesn’t matter. They see Shark Tank as a show where gender dominates down to every last brilliant nail polish invention. “The women’s businesses are always ‘mommy’ businesses (and most of the female entrepreneurs have narrative about being SAHMs with a hobby that turned into a business) or fashion/beauty,” one reddit user wrote about the show recently. “Further, the judges have no problem objectifying the female entrepreneurs and making sexualized comments about them.”

Laura agrees with this to some extent. “There are lots of gender issues to unpack in Shark Tank,” she told me, “not least because a lot of the products pitched are items that are meant to solve beauty-related problems for women or ‘Mommy Problems.'”

In season one, for instance, most of the sharks didn’t know what to do when they were pitched Gayla Bentley Fashion, a fashion line for plus-sized women. Though Barbara and Daymond John eventually invested in the company, it was Barbara’s prodding that got the deal along, despite John’s background in retail.

“Is it possible that larger-sized women – and don’t beat me with a stick, because I’m just trying to find out – don’t care about fashion as much, that’s why the market doesn’t service them?” O’Leary asked during negotiations, like a fucking noob/troll. “I believe the market always serves demand. That’s the way the world works.”

He wasn’t alone; every other man on the panel except for John was totally unfamiliar with the idea that plus-sized women have trouble finding clothes for their demographic, prompting Corcoran to accuse her fellow Sharks of being willfully ignorant.

“You guys aren’t married to heavyset ladies, that’s the truth,” she said. Pointing to Kevin Harrington she added, “He’s on his third, fourth, fifth trophy wife or something. All skinny.”

“What does any of this have to do with money?” O’Leary responded.

“You’re not listening,” Corcoran responded. “Here’s an opportunity in an area you can do well with. Open your ears.”

But plus-sized fashion wasn’t for O’Leary. “Gayla, I cannot be the pioneer with the arrows in my back,” he told her.

This lack of knowledge about “women’s products” comes up time and time again on Shark Tank. While presumably there are areas that the female Sharks are not as knowledgeable about as well, they rarely say it’s because they don’t know enough about men’s…whatever. Take Boot Illusions, a product that adds decorations to shoes, that Barbara ended up investing in during season three. When it was pitched, Robert Herjavec said (as he says often), “I don’t understand anything about women’s shoes or fashions. I think it’s a pretty good idea, just nothing that I’m going to add any value to.”

“The bottom line is that I have no idea for retailing to women’s fashion, so for that reason, I’m out,” Cuban added. Weirdly, Cuban’s lack of background in women’s fashion wasn’t an issue when he also invested in the company Litter that season, a line of body jewelry presented by two very together young women.

“When women come on with very technically savvy inventions, there is usually some ‘Oh, you pretty lady with this complicated invention’ talk. And, almost always, questions about whether she can be invested in her company if she’s tending to a family full time. And that comes up a lot, since many of the female Shark Tank contestants happen to be mothers,” Laura told me. “But whenever a guy comes on with inventions his commitment to developing the product is accepted without regard to his domestic situation. Recently, a full-time male firefighter came onto the show and kept whipping out invention after invention. His time constraints are major – I mean, he’s a firefighter, that’s not a loosey-goosey, free-time heavy job. But he was applauded for being a prolific inventor, not questioned about whether he had the time to make his hobby into a business.”

Shark Tank’s back and forth about what to do with women – lift them up or shut them down – came to a head during a recent pitch for the product Angellift, a piece of plastic that fits in your mouth and allegedly smooths out wrinkles on your face. The product was brought in by definite skeezeball Aaron Bruce, who, while singing the praises of his product, said that, “The most difficult thing about wearing Angellift for women is just to be quiet for a few minutes.”

This comment prompted huge response from the sharks, especially O’Leary, who said, “We can really use Angellifts up here,” as he pointed to the Lady Sharks who surrounded him. “You obviously aren’t married,” said another Shark. Awkward laughter was heard when Bruce clarified that he was indeed married: to the woman modeling the strips silently.

Perhaps Shark Tank‘s obsession with the difference between men and women is just a reflection of reality. There are a lot of successful products out there that target female appearance insecurities and far fewer that do the same for men. There are more high-profile male CEOS out there than female ones. People do work on projects that they can see themselves using or being helpful to, and that often precludes them from taking risks in areas they might not be familiar with.

But the bottom line is that the business world is full of people who say one thing and do another in order to get what they want. In this sense, Shark Tank‘s producers are doing exactly what their Sharks and their contestants are doing: figuring out the best way to make a buck, even if they’re not sending a particularly consistent, uplifting or foreword-thinking message while they go about it.

Ultimately, despite red flags about the product and its inventor, Greiner decided to invest in Angellift. “If he doesn’t have the patent, if he can’t get on QVC, if he doesn’t have the trials, it’s all gone,” she said. Whether a female entrepreneur would have been given that same opportunity – or that another one of Greiner’s male Sharks would have considered themselves familiar enough with a product for women to back it – is anyone’s guess. In any case, it made for some good television.

Image via ABC