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Are the iPad print ads sexist?For all the fanfare, the iPad certainly has had a bit of a rough launch -- first, there were giggles surrounding its incredibly ill-conceived name, and now some detractors are suggesting that its ad campaign is sexist.

Avi and Michal Schick, a Brooklyn couple with five children, found themselves wondering if the iPad performs differently for boys than girls -- after all, in all of the iPad's print advertisements, men are shown reading The New York Times, Ted Kennedy's memoir and The Wall Street Journal, while women are looking at pictures (because we can't read?) or a Nicholas Sparks novel (because we can't read?). Are digital scrapbooking and crappy literature the sole domain of women?

It's disappointing, because, in the past, Apple has been known for its imaginative and innovative advertisements. (We particularly loved Jeff Goldblum sputtering about how great email is and those kooky silhouette people dancing to their iPods.) But "imaginative" and "innovative" aren't really words we would generally associate with Nicholas Sparks, whose work is such predictable and stereotypical girl-bait, we can't even think of anything that matches it.

Besides, peddling hackneyed gender stereotypes that belong back in an age when it was believed men were from Mars and women from, well, never mind -- certainly doesn't make the iPad look like a product of the future.

While it may seem kind of a small thing to freak out over, suggesting that women can best use the iPad to read "The Last Song" is only slightly less offensive than if it were displaying brownie recipes and Cathy comics.