A couple years ago, I ordered the DVDs of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series for my daughter. I remembered loving the show as a kid especially the first episode with all the amazons. So I showed it to my daughter, and she said to me: “Why is she wearing her underwear?” At that time, pre-Reel Girl, I hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t thought about it. I wonder if, in a few years, seeing women in their underwear will be so natural for my daughter, she’ll no longer notice it either.And she’s one of the FEW women superheroes at all. It’s so fucked up. Here’s some great art from http://theamat.deviantart.com/
Today on Ms Magazine’s blog, whose audience tends to be women without kids, there’s a post about the power of “mommy bloggers.”
Mommy Bloggers. Just uttering that phrase brings forth mixed reactions…However, within this genre of blogs there’s a smaller group of women, and a few men, writing about parenting with a different spin: a feminist one (as Kara Jesella pointed out in her Summer 2009 piece in Ms. magazine). These mommy bloggers are true pioneers in the future of feminism online.
Andrea Fox, writer of the popular blog blue milk, explains how writing about motherhood is both crucial and intrinsically feminist:
“I write a personal blog that centers mothers, and myself as a mother, in motherhood. In doing that my motherhood blog is a radical feminist act because almost always we center children and ‘mothering’ in any discussion of motherhood. Mothers are frequently, quite literally, lost in the discussion of motherhood.”
No matter how hard cultural forces have worked to put motherhood and feminism at odds, desperately trying to create some kind of distorted, alternate universe, the combination is natural and powerful.
Yesterday, Forbes.com posted on the role women and social media played in bringing down Rush Limbaugh. But remember, it all comes down to economics. Komen turned around so fast only because after women read about it, they wrote checks. Money poured into Planned Parenthood. Rush only apologized because sponsors were dropping him. If you’re angry about Rush and his influence and you can afford to, please consider sending a check to an organization that supports women. I sent mine to NOW.
So much for post-feminism. The world of networked hurt that descended on the spiteful media enterprise that is Rush Limbaugh revealed a tenacious, super-wired coalition of active feminists prepared at a moment’s notice to blow the lid off sexist attacks or regressive health policy.
When I went to a Peggy Orenstein reading couple weeks ago, she said that never in her career has she seen an online community of feminist activists like there is now. She listed several victories: Komen backtracking on its policy to exclude Planned Parenthood from fundng, LEGO agreeing to meet with activist groups, and JC Penney taking its sexist T-shirts of the shelves.
When your brand’s Facebook wall is overtaken by feminist outrage, you can’t just write it off as a few man-hating cranks and continue on as usual.
This is just what happened when Reel Girl, Pigtail Pals, and others complained about a sexist ad from ChapStick. We complained on the company’s Facebook page and ChapStick deleted our comments when its own ad copy invited us to “be heard.” Several women took screen shots of their comments before their deletion, and I blogged about ChapStick’s removal of them on Reel Girl and SFGate. Jezebel picked up the story, then so did others including Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. When ChapStick’s unethical behavior became known to so many, ChapStick apologized and removed the ad.
“Post-feminism” has always been a bullshit term. One of the most effective ways to keep women in their place is to claim that sexism doesn’t exist. Social media is making it harder to pull off that lie.
My daughter is home sick today. She’s lying on the couch, watching TV, and eating Parmesan Goldfish. An ad for Goldfish crackers came on. She thought that coincidence was pretty hilarious. She held up one of her crackers and said, “Hi!” to the Goldfish on TV. Then she looked at down at the package. “Who are mine?” she wanted to know.
They are: Xtreme, Gilbert, Brooke, and Finn.
I know what you’re thinking: Xtreme must be female, right? Or maybe Finn? Pepperidge Farm would never put 3 males and 1 female on a package. So, I went to Wikipedia. Check out these character descriptions:
Finn– A cheddar flavored goldfish that wears sunglasses (though not in the commercials).
Gilbert– A pretzel goldfish that tends to be a worrier.
Brooke– The beautiful and intelligent parmesan flavored goldfish and the only female member of the goldfish club until both Candace and Coral showed up.
Xtreme– A flavor-blasted fish who enjoys doing crazy stunts. His real (and embarrassing) name is Fumbleton.
Swimmington Von Stuffington III Esquire– Xtreme’s snobby older brother.
IQ– A honey graham fish who wears eyeglasses lives in the vacuum and befriends Gilbert and helps him escape out of the vacuum.
Candace– A pink fish who wears a red bow on her head and has a small blue star on her tail fin. She has a crush on Gilbert. Candace is also the winner of the “Finn’s New Friend” contest.
Coral– A chocolate graham and fun-spirited fish with a Southern accent who currently befriends the club. She is possibly somewhat of a tomboy.
When I created this blog, I wrote that I was going to rate kids media and toys. I never considered blogging about sexism in food. Reese’s Puffs, Special K, M & Ms, and Goldfish have, unfortunately, changed my mind.
My daughter and I made up different names and stories for the Goldfish, of course. But don’t start telling me it’s a free country, and we can just make up anything we like. I’m a creative person, and I struggle with this. Give me something to work with here, Pepperidge Farm! I’m also, like most moms, busy. Can’t I just read the damn names off the bag?
It would be so much easier to foster creativity in kids (and the adults that they will become) if we weren’t mired with the same old, same old ridiculous, gender-stereotyped narratives at every turn.
Got this photo from Melissa Wardy at Pigtail Pals. A friend of hers took it in Las Vegas. Aren’t we Americans lucky that we can get a “boys rule” or “girls rule” M & Ms mix?
Can the gendering of products get any more stupid?
Really look at this picture.
This is how fucked up we are about gender. In the future, people are going to look back on 2012 and try hard to understand how intelligent human beings could ever be so deranged.
The absurdity of this product is no different than the relentless, aggressive marketing pushed on kids in movie theaters, Target stores, and at birthday parties across America every single day.
My kids were playing at the park up the street and made friends with a boy and girl who spoke fluent Norwegian. An hour later, my three daughters were in their backyard, splashing around in a hot tub. At some point, I was telling the mom, who is Norwegian and a doctor, about my blog. She said that her daughter is not, and never was, into princesses. She told me she’d noticed how sexist American movies and TV are, and that the media in Norway isn’t like that at all. (“What is going on with this American talk show host and contraception?” she asked. “That would never happen in Norway.”) She started pulling out books and DVDs from her shelves. Not only did most of them include female characters but they were pictured front and center. I bet the reason that her five year old daughter isn’t a “girlie-girl” is because she’s hasn’t been brought up on American media. You’ve probably heard of the Scandinavian Pippi Longstocking, but what about this Norwegian grandmother?
Or this elephant firefighter?
All of her DVDs look like that– the submarines, soldiers, police, and helicopters are female characters. I wish I spoke Norwegian.
“I’m not a feminist,” she told me. “I never had to be before I came to America. It’s so sexist here, maybe I am one now.”
Our current favorite cereal is Special K with red berries. It’s really good. And there’s a woman on the box! A superhero? A villain from Star Wars. Um, no. It’s a woman on a diet.
It is really driving me crazy that from cereal boxes to LEGO to card games to movies, we are bombarded 24/ 7 with these messages and images about gender. It sucks!
My children love card games, and even though I don’t, I’m learning to. Cards are a great activity for the whole family to do together. Playing them also teaches kids math, how to follow rules, strategy, and how to win and lose gracefully.
But what are the card games that we play with our kids also teaching them about gender?
So the all time worst has got to be Old Maid. Ugh. Horrible. Even before I knew I was a feminist, I was offended by this game that teaches kids no one wants to be stuck with the lone female card. I thought this game was so weird when I was a child and I still do. A racist card game would never be allowed to be sold to children. It’s not funny. As far as I’m concerned, Old Maid should be banned for its sexism. Reel Girl rates Old Maid ***SSS*** Do not play this game with your kids, or call it something else and use different cards.
My favorite card game right now is Slamwich. It’s really fun to play for my 8 yr old and 5 yr old. The cards are diverse in the gender representation. Most of the cards are food (the idea is to build your own sandwich) but there are also “muncher” and “thief” cards, three females and two males types. As far as amount, there is one more male thief card than female thief card. Reel Girl rates Slamwich ***GGG***
Another game we play is called Sleeping Queens. Can you tell by the name I have a problem with this game? At least it’s not called Sleeping Princesses, right?
The game was invented by a little girl, so that’s cool, except I wish she wasn’t influenced to play to this “female get rescued” script. It makes me sad about her imagination. The idea is to wake up the Sleeping Queens which you can do by picking a king card or rescuing her with a knight. Not so great. A dragon can block a knight from stealing a queen (we refer to the dragons as she). Playing a sleeping potion puts a queen back to sleep and that can be blocked with a magic wand. Queens are the power cards, the goal of the game is to get them, but they can’t wake themselves up. This game is pretty fun to play. Reel Girl rates Sleeping Queens ***G/ SS***
