River Island and the Anti-nagging gag

I'm not sure if any of you have read about the River Island Anti-nagging product today. I read about it on the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27295797

I tweeted about this earlier, but there's more to this than 240 characters.

As a female human at twenty-six years of age, I thought I'd comment. Not least because as a female I've obviously experienced sexism. (The fact that this is even an obvious statement, irks me.) At school during A Level English, we studied the The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy and I loved it (read it, it's brilliant). It was, of course, then suggested that because of my appreciation of Duffy's poetry, I too must be gay. And, of course, the countless times when I have said that I studied English Literature at university and then the man with whom I was in conversation, would snidely suggest and assume that I therefore studied and was well-versed in feminist literature. Would I be boring him with these 1960s notions; the women have the vote and jobs now, isn't that all done and dusted? There are so many other daily experiences that I won't go into now and I'll only point out quickly that it is entirely by accident that both my personal experiences above feature sexism that surrounds being an educated female.

As I said in my tweet, it's 2014. Why are we having to read about a story like this?  It's is unfathomable to me that this product got approved any meeting in River Island at any level. Products don't just magically appear on a modern huge retailer's shelves, like River Island, there are months of product development and selling in, where it will be seen by lots of employees at different levels and not one of them was sensitive and intelligent enough to point the inappropriate sexism of an anti-nagging gag for women? So their response that "as soon as this product was brought to our attention" – at what stage in the product development through River Island was it not at their attention?

Perhaps people did point it out, but were at too low a level to have an impact on the chosen products, but of course that means that someone higher up got to where they did thinking that this sort of hilarious novelty product was fine to sell in store; it's a terrible state of affairs either way.

Just to highlight my own standings in terms of equality, be it gender, race or anything thing at all, I'd be equally irked if it was an anti-nagging gag marketed at women to shut the man in your life up, but then again, if it were this wouldn't be on the news: there's something wrong there too. Offensive things should be offensive, no matter which gender you are. People should be equal and should be treated with courtesy and respect. This should at least be achievable in 2014, right?

This isn't just an issue with River Island. Sadly, I think it's just them this time; it'll be someone else in the news for something equally as offensive and stupid soon.