‘Monster University’ sidelines females in plot about rival fraternities

Posted on June 21, 2013 by margotmagowan

When Pixar writers (Robert Baird, Daniel Gerson, Dan Scalon) showed the script for “Monster University” to producers, or execs at Disney, or whoever you go to up and down the chain of command to get the green light, did it occur to anyone, anyone at all, that making a movie about rival fraternities might make girls, half of the kid population, feel a tad ignored?

Here’s a pic of OK, the geek fraternity on campus, featuring our buddy-stars: Mike and Sully. “Monster University” centers on this group.

Here are the rivals of OK, the BMOC frat, ROR, led by Johnny Worthington, the one with the horns.

Rival frats. I am not kidding. That’s what this movie is about. So here on Reel Girl, I don’t have to even analyze or point out how or why this narrative is sexist. After watching it, I’ve got to conclude that in spite of the token “Brave,” Disney/ Pixar really doesn’t give a shit about including females in its narratives in a significant way.

Like most animated movies today that star males, “Monster University” features an excellent Minority Feisty. Dean Hardscrabble is played by Helen Mirren, and she is a bad ass, terrifying and complex. I loved her. I wish she had more lines and more scenes.

What do you think the chances are that Dean Hardscrabble will get her own spin off movie? (Sort of like how Puss In Boots got his own movie after no less than 3 Shrek movies.) Perhaps Hardscrabble will get a prequel, like “Monster University,” where we see how she grows up, changes from a scared little kid into the fierce and powerful monster she is? Along with the help of a courageous and devoted team of females, of course. See that film coming soon to a theater near you?

I’m also a fan of the librarian, a Minority Feisty who has a brief but impressive part.

Another Minority Feisty I liked is Claire Wheeler, the Greek Council President.

Claire isn’t fabulous, but she can be funny. She doesn’t do anything stupid or offensive.That area is totally covered with the look, name, and poses of the PNK (get it?) sorority: pink and purple, mini-skirted, furry boot wearing girls. I dread the toys and sippy cups.

“Monster University” is all about a competition but you hardly notice or care when females get eliminated, as they all do. We don’t get a chance to get attached to any of the female competitors.

There is a cooler sorority, HSS. Its role in the movie is even smaller than PNK, and it gets eliminated earlier. Again, the event is hardly noticed except that Mike and Sully’s frat advances.

A Minority Feisty I hated? Ms. Squibbles, Squishy’s mom. Throughout the movie, she is shown in curlers and a housecoat, cooking, doing laundry, or driving a minivan.Think the “Ms.” is feminist? Nope, the moniker is to elucidate her single status. I didn’t think Pixar could get any more gender cliched, but at the end of the movie, Ms. Squibbles actually gets engaged (to her son’s frat brother, no less.)

Before the movie even starts, Ms. Squibbles shows up in an ad for Swiffer. That’s right– a cleaning product. All the males are sitting on the couch watching football when a hot dog with ketchup gets dropped on the floor and Squishy says: “You guys, my mom just cleaned this place!” The ad could be worse, I suppose. Squishy cleans up the ketchup himself, and Ms. Squibbles dirties the floor up again cheering the team. It’s got that tiny speck of feminism within a sexist framework that we’re supposed to be grateful for. Here’s the ad.

I haven’t seen any Minority Feisty from the movie pictured on posters around San Francisco, where I live. Most show Mike, but some show Mike and Sully. The Leapfrog educational games also feature Mike and Sully.

I’m bottom feeding for images to be grateful for in “Monster University,” but I found a few. There are pink and purple male monsters in this movie. There are also male monsters with eyelashes. Sometimes, I couldn’t tell if a monster was male or female until she spoke, a highly unusual situation for an animated movie, even one about cars or robots or planes or fish or monsters, of course. Thanks a lot, Pixar/ Disney. My three daughters and I are super grateful.

Reel Girl rates “Monster University” ***SS*** for gender stereotyping

Where the fuck is Wonder Woman?

Posted on June 18, 2013 by margotmagowan

I’m at my wit’s end here. After a trip to Target, Kara Bara posted this pic on Reel Girl’s Facebook page of the store’s sexist Justice League display:

She writes:

I love your blog and I was in my local Target and I noticed Wonder Woman had gone missing from all their Justice League superhero stuff. She’s already outnumbered 7:1 on the team and now she’s completely missing from all the displays.

Kara posts a second pic:

Here’s the other side of the display with an even more obscure member, Cyborg, instead of WW – just in case we didn’t get the message that superheros should only be dudes.

After I saw this, I went to Target’s website, and guess what? Wonder Woman has gone missing from the all male group pic. Can you get any more sexist in your marketing strategy for children than excluding the only female? Seriously, Target, WTF? Please stop teaching kids that males are more important than females. Put Wonder Woman back where she belongs.

Victory for women in Supreme Court ruling against gene patenting

Posted on June 13, 2013 by margotmagowan

Finally, coverage of the Angelina Jolie breast cancer story/ BRCA gene shifts to a real issue. Here’s today’s New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Isolated human genes may not be patented, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday. The case concerned patents held by Myriad Genetics, a Utah company, on genes that correlate with increased risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.

The patents were challenged by scientists and doctors who said their research and ability to help patients had been frustrated. The particular genes at issue received public attention after the actress Angelina Jolie revealed in May that she had had a preventive double mastectomy after learning that she had inherited a faulty copy of a gene that put her at high risk for breast cancer.

The price of the test, often more than $3,000, was partly a product of Myriad’s patent, putting it out of reach for some women. The company filed patent infringement suits against others who conducted testing based on the gene. The price of the test is expected to fall because of Thursday’s decision.

Read the full decision here.

Huge shout out to Breast Cancer Action for winning this important victory. Congratulate and thank BCA here.

Susie Buell wants to know if I’m Ready for Hillary? Yes, I am!

Posted on June 11, 2013 by margotmagowan

This week, Hillary Clinton joined Twitter, and look what I got in my email today…

Dear Margot,

I hope you’re having a wonderful summer and enjoying time with friends and family.

Many of you who recall my active participation during Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president have asked me if she will run again. My first instinct is to say I hope she does, but the truth is, I don’t know the answer. Hillary has given so much of herself for so long and I’d like for her to take as much time as she needs to make that decision.

In the meantime, I’m sure by now you have heard about Ready for Hillary. It is an organization dedicated solely to building and supporting the national grassroots effort that today’s political campaigns demand. Ready for Hillary is doing this work now — giving Hillary the time she needs to make her decision. In fact, the reach Ready for Hillary has built on Facebook already has people paying attention. In a few short months, they have amassed a following of more than 200,000 supporters! We all watched President Obama’s campaign change modern politics. It showed the power of local organizing and the importance of investing in the use and development of new technology. We also cannot overlook the way the Obama campaign amplified its message using social media platforms. Should Hillary decide to run for president in 2016, her campaign is going to need us to use these strategies to win.

But the kind of infrastructure that powers a successful campaign requires an investment of money and time to build. It simply isn’t possible to grow a list, do the necessary analytics, organize activists on the ground, and maximize a return on social media overnight, in a week or even a few short months. This is why those of us who want to see Hillary run again need to support Ready for Hillary now. You can give $25, or $50, or $100 or more. I am wholeheartedly supporting this grassroots effort as I believe that Ready for Hillary will be a crucial element to ensuring that, if Hillary decides to run for president in 2016, her supporters will be organized and ready to hit the ground running from day one. I have made a financial investment in this effort and I hope you will join me in making a contribution to Ready for Hillary. Any amount you’d like to give will help and will be much appreciated. I’m ready for Hillary. Are you? If so, click here to contribute today.

With warm regards and appreciation,

Susie Tompkins Buell, San Francisco, CA

STB is probably the most passionate, clued in Clinton supporter I know of. This email tells me, more than any hint so far, that Hillary is running for President in 2016. Am I donating? Oh, yes, I am. I hope you do too.

Reel Girl summer slowdown to write book

Posted on June 5, 2013 by margotmagowan

You may have noticed that I haven’t been quite as obsessive about blogging as usual. Though it kills me to do it at 997 Facebook Likes (because I really would like to get a nice, even, lovely 1,000) I’ve gone deep into Fairyworld.

Most of you know that I’m writing a Middle Grade fantasy book. I’ve been working on this story for about two years and I’m about 2/3 done with the draft. Though I write everyday, when I blog, its hard for my mental energy not get stuck in the news. I don’t know if you’ve found this is true, but since becoming a mom, I need to be choose carefully where I focus my brain cells. Never have I been more aware that the space in my head is so limited. Between work and drama, schedules and crises, I have no extra bandwith (is there a better tech term? That one kept coming up when my blog was crashing and crashing, which is how I feel.)

In a way, it’s nice to be aware of limits, like the good feeling you get when you clean out the garage. I have no space for junk. Frankly, I don’t even have a garage, just tiny, flat closets in this rickety 1911 Victorian.

I don’t think blogging is junk by the way. I think it’s changing the world. I honestly don’t even know how I personally managed to sane before blogging (not to mention using the internet to connect with people who understood what I was saying and didn’t argue with me before I could complete a sentence.) It’s just I have to finish this book. For the summer, every hour is scheduled, all brain cells are committed, and this damn thing is going to get done.

I will be blogging now and then, and I do have scheduled in MG reading time, so I hope to get reviews to you. I’ll also be seeing movies with my kids that I’ll blog about. Please use this blog, Reel Girl’s FB page and Twitter feed to connect, post, and speak about issues.

Have a great summer!

Margot

Summer reading list for the dudes at Fox News

Posted on June 2, 2013 by margotmagowan

For the sexist dudes of Fox News, there’s a new book by journalist Daniel Bergner, What Do Women Want? You really should add it to your summer reading list. I think you’d learn a lot.

Salon reports:

The book, which grew from a much-discussed New York Times Magazine cover story in 2009, reveals how gender stereotypes have shaped scientific research and blinded researchers to evidence of female lust and sexual initiation throughout the animal kingdom, including among humans.

Feminists aren’t against science, we’re against bad science. Read the Q & A with the author. You might learn something because Bergner is a real journalist.

One fact Bergner reports:

More than one adviser to the industry told me that companies worried about the prospect that their study results would be too strong, that the F.D.A. would reject an application out of concern that a chemical would lead to female excesses, crazed binges of infidelity, societal splintering.

At the very least, can you recognize how art, narratives, religion, politics, and even “science” have, for thousands of years, systemically shaped and controlled female sexuality? And perhaps, consider these factors even influence the very words you speak when you go on the air.

Did you know BRCA (breast cancer) gene is owned by a corporation?

Posted on June 2, 2013 by margotmagowan

This week, news reports headlined that Angelina Jolie’s aunt died from breast cancer. Watching “Entertainment Tonight” yesterday, my husband and I saw graphs and images of Jolie’s maternal family tree back to her great-great grandmother, tracked by an investigative journalist. We saw images of death certificates and who signed them. I was wondering why, with all of this incredibly deep, highly researched, investigative coverage we never hear anything about the terribly creepy story of who owns the BRCA gene. That’s right, owns it. The “breast cancer gene” mutation that Jolie tested positive for, a discovery that made her decide to undergo a double mastectomy, is the property of a corporation called Myriad Genetics.

The ACLU/ Breast Cancer Action is currently challenging Myriad Genetics and gene patenting:

Breast Cancer Action opposes human gene patenting. We believe it’s wrong for the government to give one company the power to dictate all scientific and medical uses of genes that each of us has in our bodies. We urgently need more and better options for the treatment and risk reduction of breast cancer, and we cannot afford to have progress stymied by the monopolies that gene patents create.

How did I get the story about the BRCA gene amidst all the Jolie coverage? From CNN, the New York Times, an entertainment show? No, from a Tweet on Peggy Orenstein’s feed:

Myriad genetics OWNS BRCA gene. OWNS it. That’s a block to research & better options for someone like Angelina Jolie

I follow Orenstein because I’m a huge fan of her book, CInderellla Ate My Daughter. Orenstein is also a breast cancer survivor, who, coincidentally, wrote an in depth story for New York Times Magazine “Our Feel Good War on Breast Cancer” covering the corruption in breast cancer research, funding, and treatment published just a month before Jolie’s huge story broke.

Here’s something else we don’t hear about breast health that I learned from Orenstein’s blog:

I find that when I tell my friends that my reconstructed breast is numb they are shocked: they had no idea that would be so.

I’ve blogged before that breasts are secondary sex characteristics, but we hardly think of them that way any more in this culture. The value of breasts seems to be mostly the aesthetic and sexual pleasure of men. Almost as an afterthought, we realize that breasts exist to nurture babies. But what about recognzing that breasts are there for the sexual pleasure of women? Fake breasts are often numb breasts, and if you think about it, that’s about as asexual as you can get.

As I’ve blogged, Jolie made a viable choice. I admire her for speaking out publicly about what happened to her. When women tell their stories, it helps all women. But I hope that America takes advantage of this media coverage about breast health to find out more on the truth about cancer and treatment.

Last night, “Entertainment Tonight” showed images of Jolie’s two biological daughters, Shiloh and Vivienne, reporting that medical experts advise they get tested for BRCA at age 18. I hope Jolie works to give her daughters better options, continuing to speak out about the issues around breast health, and the problems that occur when a government allows a corporation to own genes. Americans need to know about it.

Why is Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes magical store as sexist as Target? #NotBuyingIt

Posted on June 1, 2013 by margotmagowan

In Half-Blood Prince, the sixth book in the Harry Potter series, Ron’s twin brothers, Fred and George Weasley, open a magic store.

I’ve been waiting to get in this store for five books. Its creation is the life dream of the Weasley twins, and Harry even gave them his galleon winnings from the TriWizard Tournament so Fred and George would have the funds to open it. I was so excited to finally enter Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes at the beginning of Book #6 along with Harry, Ginny, Hermione, and Ron. What a major disappointment. I was so bummed. Let’s just say this is not the store Margot Weasley would’ve come up with. Here’s the passage.

“Haven’t you girls found our special WonderWitch products yet,” asked Fred. “Follow me, ladies….”

Near the window was an array of violently pink products around which a cluster of excited girls was giggling enthusiastically. Hermione and Ginny both hung back, looking wary.

“There you go, said Fred proudly, “Best range of love potions you’ll find anywhere.

Ginny raised an eyebrow skeptically: “Do they work?” she asked.

“Certainly they work, for up to twenty-four hours at a time depending on the weight of the boy in question–”

“–and the attractiveness of the girl,” said George, reappearing suddenly at their side. “But we’re not selling them to our sister,” he added, becoming suddenly stern, “not when she’s already got about five boys on the go from what we’ve–”

“Whatever you heard from Ron is a big, fat lie,” said Ginny calmly, leaning forward to take a small pink pot of the shelf. “What’s this?”

“Guaranteed ten second pimple vanisher,” said Fred….

“What are those?”

She was pointing at a number of round balls of fluff in shades of pink and purple, all rolling around at the bottom of the cage and emitting high pitched squeaks…

“They’re really cute!”

“They’re fairly cuddly, yes.”

Pink, love potions, pimple cream, cute, and cuddly stuff for girls? Why is the girl section segregated out at all? Pink wasn’t even a “girl” color a hundred years ago, so why does it dominate marketing strategy in Diagon Alley? Why, in the magical world, for goodness sake, is a store selling products to kids as gender segregated as a Target in California? Don’t wizards get pimples? Is the point that guys just won’t care if they have a break out? They don’t need to be “attractive,” the efficacy of their love potion doesn’t depend on that?

At least Hermione and Ginny seem skeptical, right? They hang back, the products are “violently” pink. But why do the cool girls have to be the exception, different from the rest of their pathetic gender? The other females are shown in “excited” cluster, “giggling enthusiastically.” Ginny ends up joining the crowd, anyway, seduced by a cute, fluffy thing.

Why do my kids have to read gender cliches in a series as imaginative as Harry Potter? In the imaginary world, anything is possible: animals talk, kids fly, unicorns prance around. Can’t we show children a magical land where girls and boys are treated equally? Is that so hard? Why do we have to bring stereotypes to fantasy land?

I’m on Book 7 now, and I’ve got to write: If Harry Potter, a series with a male protagonist, titled for that male, where the author was told by her publisher to use initials to hide her gender, is considered feminist because a third of the characters in power positions are female, we have a long way to go before achieving gender equality in the fantasy world.

Good job on race, Cheerios, but what’s with the gender stereotypes?

Posted on May 31, 2013 by margotmagowan

A new Cheerios ad featuring an interracial family is receiving such a hateful reaction that the comment section on YouTube had to be closed. Here’s the ad.

Once again, the internet shows us that hate is alive and well in 2013.

While I applaud Cheerios for showing a diverse family, what’s with the gender stereotypes? Just imagine this: the mom is lying on the couch while the dad is talking to the kid about health. Think that’s nitpicking? Since creating Reel Girl, I’ve become quite the connoisseur of cereal and gender roles and females rarely appear in marketing unless they’re promoting health. (Also, I own an entire book about that dad stereotype called Bastard on the Couch.)

Here’s a typical example from Cocoa Pebbles. There’s Fred, the star, in close-up, right on the front of the box. Above, Fred and Barney drive cars, beckoning kids to play a game.

The game on the back shows Fred and Barney driving, racing, and having fun together. Boys will be boys.

Is there a female anywhere on the box? My kids and I actually came up with a game called Find the Female on the Cereal Box. Children are obsessed with cereal boxes, and this activity seemed like a viable way to help my three daughters defy the incessant training to always focus on the males. So, we found Wilma, literally marginalized, tiny and on the side of the box, concerned that kids aren’t getting enough Vitamin D.

Notice any similarity with the Cheerios ad? Exact same gender roles. Male shown having fun, female shown talking about cholesterol.

If these images were a couple of varied gender roles, it wouldn’t matter, but cereal marketing, for the most part, turns out to be incredibly sexist. All of the mascots on children’s cereal boxes are male. Check out this gallery. Girls are half of the kid population and half of cereal eaters, so why do females go missing on cereal boxes for kids?

Give Cheerios a break, you say. The TV ad features a girl. The mom appears to be working, not grinning madly or having multiple orgasms over vitamin content. And anyway, regular, old Cheerios doesn’t even have its own mascot, so what’s my problem? Perhaps, I would’ve given Cheerios a break today if I hadn’t just blogged about how sexist the Cheerios box is. Cheerios doesn’t have its own male mascot, it’s true, so what does it do? Borrow all the male characters from the movies and then give kids a sexist game to play with them.

Here’s the Cheerios box that my husband just brought home for our kids.

On the front: Shrek, Puss In Boots, and Donkey, 3 male characters from “Shrek.” A movie starring a male, titled for the male, and spawning not only two sequels but also, a spin off. A spin off featuring Princess Fiona? Nope, it was Puss In Boots who got his own eponymous spin off movie, a buddy movie costarring his BFF Humpty Dumpty. Kitty Softpaws is a cool female character in that movie, a Minority Feisty who I loved, but where is her own movie, titled for her? Where is she on a cereal box? Have you even heard of Kitty Softpaws? Do your kids know who she is?

Here’s my 4 year old daughter after playing “Find the Female,” showing the back of the Cheerios box.

Here’s the answer key to Find the Female: “How to Train Your Dragon,” the first DVD, pictures a boy and his male dragon, the two stars of that movie, but you do see a girl behind the boy, “riding bitch” a repeated, sexist motif in kids’ media. The rest of the DVDs feature no females and 6 male characters, with”Madagascar” leaving out the Minority Feisty played by Jada Pinkett Smith. Smith’s hippo does show up in the “fame game,” 1 female to 7 males. The goal of that game is “match each character to what they are famous for.” (And here again, the problem of Kitty Softpaws vanishing into obscurity.) Characters in Cheerio’s game are known for “Training the Furious Five” or “Being the Dragon Warrior.” Hippo’s claim to fame? “Loving a Giraffe.”

Cheerios is teaching my kids sexism with this box, showing them that males are the important ones, the stars who get to have fun, while girls are in the minority, limited to supporting roles, stuck on the sidelines. So, Cheerios, good job with being a trailblazer on race, but please put some daring female characters on your box, front and center; take sexism out of your games, and while you’re at it, show us a mom on a couch.

Hey Fox News, here’s some ‘anti-science’ feminism for you

Posted on May 30, 2013 by margotmagowan

Right after director/ rapist Roman Polanski publicly blames the pill for masculinizing women, the guys at Fox News express related terror about the future of America. A new Pew study reveals that women are now breadwinners in 40% of households.

Jezebel reports:

Fox News contributor Erick Erickson, not one to be outdone, explained that women are naturally submissive because of “biology”:

“I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science…When you look at biology, when you look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complementary role.

I cracked up when I watched the video because I was just about to post on Reel Girl this title: “Scientific” studies on gender turn out to be biased, who knew? More on that soon.

If there’s one thing that drives me crazy, it’s trendy evolutionary psychologists and social Darwinists going off incessantly for the last twenty-five years about how everything is the way it is– sexism, racism, white privilege, standards of beauty and on and on– because our biology makes it so.

Bullshit. You can call me anti-science, Fox News Dudes, but evolutionary psychologists went way too far in pinkwashing childhood, inadvertently exposing the roots of ridiculousness buried deep in biogender theory. A few months ago, Elizabeth Sweet wrote a great piece in the New York Times summarizing:

Moreover, expert opinion — including research by developmental and evolutionary psychologists — has fueled the development and marketing of gender-based toys. Over the past 20 years, there has been a growth of “brain science” research, which uses neuroimaging technology to try to explain how biological sex differences cause social phenomena like gendered toy preference.

That’s ridiculous, of course: it’s impossible to neatly disentangle the biological from the social, given that children are born into a culture laden with gender messages. But that hasn’t deterred marketers from embracing such research and even mimicking it with their own well-funded studies.

Sweet goes on to describe the aggressive gender-marketing aimed at children, marketing which starts, by the way, before the baby even exits the womb. When people speak to boy babies in strong voices and female babies in lilting voices, when so much of what we we do and how we act– including parents, teachers, and doctors— is based on cultural expectations of how girls and boys are supposed to be, how can we pretend to be beyond bias?

And then, of course, children grow up. Last week, the New York Times published a lengthy magazine article on female desire which argues previous “scientific” studies on sex drive show a cultural bias. Turns out women may not be “naturally” monogamous.

A meta-analysis done by the psychologists Janet Hyde and Jennifer L. Petersen at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, incorporates more than 800 studies conducted between 1993 and 2007. It suggests that the very statistics evolutionary psychologists use to prove innate difference — like number of sexual partners or rates of masturbation — are heavily influenced by culture.

Does new science debunk old science? Looks like evidence is showing evolutionary psychologists weren’t so scientific after all.

Can we at least agree on this: we live in a culture that, for thousands of years, has punished women for expressing sexuality while rewarding men. How can we possibly, objectively measure sex drive?

Hypothetically, say men ruled the world, and say that men were also incapable of giving birth. Would it be so surprising for the group in charge to come up with this theory: Every time women have sex with us, they fall in desperately in love. They want to marry us, be with us forever and ever. In fact, getting married is the happiest day of a woman’s life. Naturally monogamous, women will never stray.

Sounds like a pipe dream to me.

Reel Girl

Imagining gender equality in the fantasy world

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