Author Archives: margotmagowan

Facebook helps debunk myth of America’s ‘post-feminism’

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YAY! Facebook FINALLY recognizes: misogyny exists. It’s real, FB says, and that’s a giant social media step in the right direction. In 2013, gender-based hate and violence is epidemic and still, for the most part, accepted as normal.

I’m  44 years old, a member of the notoriously apathetic Generation X. Since I started speaking out about feminist issues, back in my twenties (not lazy or apolitical, by the way, didn’t really know anyone who was) I’ve been told sexism doesn’t exist. We live in a post-feminist world. What could American women, not to mention white, educated, privileged ones, possibly be whining about? We weren’t under Taliban rule for goodness sake. Not that college kids, all of us so well versed in South Africa’s racist history, had any clue about the gender apartheid of the Taliban. And if we had known of it? Gender bias, while kind of a shame, was just a cultural difference, not a political issue. “Relative ethics” was the term my sociology professor taught us for female genital mutilation: Who were we, in all our privilege to judge?

So for years, Facebook has been receiving reports on posts depicting gender based violence. While the company actively bans religious or racist hate speech, here’s just one example of its past response to misogyny.

facebook

(via Amazing Women Rock . If you go to the link, and you have a strong stomach, you can see many more.)

So why did Facebook change its tune, pledging to take misogyny seriously? Obviously, in no small part, because of a well-run, well organized campaign by Women, Action, and Media. THANK YOU WAM and thank you to all of you who responded. In days, 5,000 emails and 60,000 Tweets went to Facebook’s advertisers who started to take their ads off the site. Facebook, if anyone could, saw where all this viral action was headed. Women have been using social media to change the world for some time now.

In the Nation, Jessica Valenti writes :

Jaclyn Friedman, executive director of WAM… points to the outrage over the social media-documented rape in Steubenville, gang rapes in India and the suicides of several young rape victims as indications that Americans may have had enough of the consequences of rape culture. While she’s still unsure that the country is ready for widespread change, she believes “there’s a critical mass right now; it could be a tipping point moment”…

But this glaring, in-your-face misogyny may be the spark that pushes culture forward—there’s no arguing with these images, these court cases, these stories. Maybe it needed to get a lot worse—or more visible—for it to get better. For years, the most common anti-feminist talking point has been that American women don’t have it all that bad. That we should stop complaining and focus on women in other countries who are “really” oppressed.

But today, telling women that sexism doesn’t exist anymore is a really hard sell. Thanks to the Internet and the speed at which stories move—not to mention the vile sexism in most online spaces—any American woman who spends more than five minutes onlines hears about or experiences misogyny every day.

 

I started this blog, Reel Girl, because I have 3 daughters, and I was so horrified by the gender stereotyping marketed to kids like it’s okay, like it’s normal, and then how everyone participates in it. It’s so sad that sexism, packaged and sold to kids, is so ubiquitous that, paradoxically, it’s become invisible. I feel like 90% of my work is just pointing out that sexism exists. I’ve posted this a couple times, but here it is again:

Violence against women is epidemic. A first step to abuse is always dehumanizing the victim. Propaganda, in the form of images and narratives, effectively dehumanizes on a mass scale. Here’s some propaganda marketed to kids:

 

Images/ narratives of Jews circa 1938

nazibook

 

Africans circa 1931

tin_tin_in_congo11

 

Females circa 2013

bratzwallpaper-source_4cj

It’s easy to look back on history and wonder: How did people ever put up with that? I’d never buy into it. But what are you participating in right now that is completely accepted, not to mention celebrated, by our culture?

 

Since my post, I’ve gotten comments asking how dare I compare sexism to racism and antisemitism. I’ve been rebuked for taking sexism seriously for a long time. When I was a senior in high school, I was talking to a good friend of mine about sexism, and he said to me, indignantly, “A woman has never been lynched for being a woman!” Maybe, maybe not, but women have been murdered throughout history for being women. Does getting raped or sexually assaulted qualify as pretty bad treatment?

Here’s a classic comment from Chinwe:

What I find embarrassing, shameful, and flat out appalling is you comparing the current state of girls in 2013 to the days that Blacks and Jews were stereotyped, discriminated, and killed in the early 20th century. Girls and women have gained so many rights in the last 40+ years and you compared its ”oppression” to Blacks and Jews in the 1930s.

Really?

That’s absolutely and utterly lazy comparison and analysis.

Years ago, the Wall Street Journal used to have a Bad Writing Contest where readers can submit writing that’s truly awful. Too bad they don’t have this contest because I would personally submit this post–and your blog–to judges of the Bad Writing Contest and you would win hands down.

Honestly, you need a new hobby because you come across really immature, out-of-touch and bitter towards the world. Once again, do yourself a favor and enroll in an English 101 class at your local community college and learn how to write. Everytime I see a new post, 1) you are embarrassing yourself and 2) you put yourself further down the cultural rabbit hole by making piss poor arguments.

*waiting for your condescending reply*

You are pretty predictable, ya know

Huh, think Chinwe heard about the three women sexually assaulted for 10 years in Cleveland? How their captor, Ariel Castro, got out of domestic abuse charges years earlier because his ex-wife’s lawyer didn’t even show up to prosecute? Or perhaps Chinwe knows that in America, 3 women are murdered by a domestic partner every day? And still, our congress fought over passing the Violence Against Women Act?

I guess that’s my sarcastic, predictable, and, of course, poorly written reply.

We don’t live in a post-feminist world. We never have. According to the Geena Davis Institute, at the rate we’re going, will might in about 700 years. Don’t you think that’s too long for your children to wait?

 

 

 

 

‘Epic’ features cool heroine, celebrates matriarchy

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My three daughters and I loved “Epic.” The central heroine, M.K. is smart, brave, funny, compassionate, and independent. I loved her look, too. She’s dressed in a hoodie with a messy ponytail. She doesn’t have a Barbie face, I’d recognize this girl in a crowd.

MK

M.K. narrates the movie. YAY. Do you know how rare it is to get a female narrator in an animated movie for children?

There’s more good news. Queen Tara is another brave, powerful female in this movie who is central to the narrative. Please note QUEEN, not princess. Not only that, GOOD queen, not evil. And…she’s not white. This may be a first, but let me know if there is another animated film with a good queen of color.

tara

Queen Tara is played by Beyonce, and the movie concludes with an awesome song about the matriarchy. The matriarchy, people! It’s so fitting and perfect because the whole movie is about protecting the heir. I was super worried that the next ruler would be male, especially because the evil character, Mandrake, keeps referring to said heir as his “dark prince.” Luckily, the evil dude is wrong, and just after you find that out, the matriarchy song comes on. I laughed when I heard it because I felt like Beyonce was saying to me, “Don’t worry, Margot, I got the girls covered.”

I do have some complaints. I wish M.K. was in the movie more. Much more. You cannot deny she is the protagonist– she is the narrator, she has the quest, and she goes through the transition. M.K. acts, takes risks, and makes choices. She is such a great character, but based on lines and screen time, “Epic” is pretty much an ensemble movie. Most of the other characters are male. The Queen dies early. M.K.’s mother is also dead. The central relationship in the movie is with M.K. and her father.

The evil character is male and he has an evil son. M.K. pals around with two male heroes, so in most of the action scenes, the same old Minority Feisty gender ratio is in your face. Speaking of, M.K. is riding bitch most of the time. Her position “makes sense” in the story because she’s the visitor to the tiny world, but still, writers can make anything happen. I am sick of sexism making sense in plots, and I had hope for M.K. taking the lead here. At one point, she gamely hops on a bird and says, “Come on, let’s go!” Nod, the young male hero, hops on behind her, but in the following scenes, Nod is the one in the driver’s seat again. Argh.

There’s an army of Leafmen, and from what I could tell, they are, in fact, men: 100% male. Comic relief is a male slug and his BFF, a male snail. That pair kind of reminded me of the male krills who steal the show in “Happy Feet 2” or the meerkat/ warthog duo in “Lion King” and countless other cartoon buddy boys. It would be so nice to see a couple of females being friends and being funny in an animated movie.

Finally, I wrote I love M.K.’s look and I do, but both she and Queen Tara are super skinny, and why not give her a blue hoodie, or brown, or red, or any goddam color in the entire universe but pinkpurple?

M.K. is prominently featured on many of the posters seen around San Francisco, another total rarity for children’s movies. Though I didn’t see this one, I want to order it for my kids.epic

Reel Girl rates “Epic” ***HH***

 

 

Calling it out: Backwards, sexist propaganda of 2013

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Let Toys Be Toys for Girls and Boys posted this image on its Facebook page:

backwards

This product was seen at the John Lewis store in High Wycombe. Not familiar with this UK institution, I looked it up to find it has almost 650,00 likes.

I imagine the day this product is on display in a museum, an artifact. People will look at it, baffled, not even understanding. Students will study how backwards the world was in 2013, wondering how and why our culture allowed and accepted sexism as if it were okay or funny or normal. Can you imagine a game showing a Caucasian brain battling an African brain along with a bunch of stereotyped categories?

Today, Salon posts: “On Facebook, hating a religious or ethnic minority gets you banned, but hating half of humanity gets you Likes.” Women, Action, and Media wrote an open letter to Facebook detailing how pics of breastfeeding women get banned when images of rape don’t.

The latest global estimate from the United Nations Say No to Violence Campaign is that the percentage of women and girls who have experienced violence in their lifetimes is now up to an unbearable 70%. In a world in which this many girls and women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime, allowing content about raping and beating women to be shared, boasted and joked about contributes to the normalisation of domestic and sexual violence, creates an atmosphere in which perpetrators are more likely to believe they will go unpunished, and communicates to victims that they will not be taken seriously if they report.

Here’s an ex-girlfriend shooting target seen at an NRA convention this Spring.

exgirlfriend

Violence against women is epidemic. A first step to abuse is always dehumanizing the victim. Propaganda, in the form of images and narratives, effectively dehumanizes on a mass scale. Here’s some propaganda marketed to kids:

Images/ narratives of Jews circa 1938

nazibook

 

Africans circa 1931

tin_tin_in_congo11

 

Females circa 2013

 

bratzwallpaper-source_4cj

 

It’s easy to look back on history and wonder: How did people ever put up with that? I’d never buy into it. But what are you participating in right now that is completely accepted, not to mention celebrated, by our culture?

meridamakeover

Propaganda works in steps and stages. The product marketed may not be as extreme as a bloody, scantily clad woman, but it’s likely to be a sexualized female, one that is, remarkably, often advertised to kids.

So tell John Lewis to stop selling sexism or join Women, Action, and Media’s campaign and to get Facebook sponsors to stop promoting violence against women or post on Target’s site that you’re not buying its new doll. Please do something for your kids. Take action to end everyday sexism because it numbs all of us to the mass objectification of women.

 

 

New game to play with kids: Find the Girls on the Cereal Box!

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I complain a lot on Reel Girl about how there are no– ZERO– female mascots on children’s cereal boxes. It’s an example of the radical gender inequality in the imaginary world, and how girls gone missing seems normal to kids and parents alike. This annihilation conditions us all to expect and accept a world where females go missing.

Today, my kids had Rice Krispies for breakfast. You all know about the famed three: Snap, Crackle, and Pop. If you’re my age, you know their theme song, too.

Rice-Krispies-Box-Small

But check out the new material we found on the back of the box:

rcfullback

It’s an “IMAGINATION ADENTURE!” Isn’t that great? The directions are as follows:

Can you look at the pictures and tell a story? Make up a tale for each picture or string them together for a creative journey.

How cool, my kids are going to get to use images to make up stories. What could be better than that? Let’s see how Rice Krispies is going to help to inspire children to imagine. Here’s the first picture.

rcfirstpic

Rice Krispies provides children with 8 characters to work with on this imagination adventure: 6 males and 2 females.  Girls are half of the kid population, half of the kids eating Rice Krispies, so why are they presented as a minority in this “creative” game? Am I nitpicking? The box is asking your kids to look at the details of these pictures and make up a story. Obviously, whoever created these pictures put thought into how to develop your kids’ imagination. But If your kids play this game as directed, it’s one more way they’re being trained to create, be familiar with, and pay attention to stories where males are the main characters and in the majority, while females fade into the background.

Looking at picture #1, I asked my four year old: “Can you find the girls? Can you count them?” She was so excited about that, it’s how we came up with the game: Find the Girls on the Cereal Box!

Moving on to picture #2. Who is the protagonist here? Hmmm…

rcsecondpic

Again, I asked: “Can you find any girls? What is the girl doing? Why?” At this point, my other two daughters, ages 6 and 9, joined in. They were into it, and I found myself hoping that maybe my kids are learning creative skills now, how to notice the female and more importantly, to make her the protagonist in the story. “Find the Girls!” continued…

Picture #3 is the closest a female gets to a starring role in this “imagination adventure,” and she is still, clearly, placed behind the boy. My kids noted she is riding a sea horse. Picture #4 makes up for that tiny step forward, with five males to one female. The girl is clearly in the background, but at least, the girl is in the driver’s seat, right? I asked my daughters what the girl was doing here, and my four year old said, “Watching the boy!”

rc45

And now, for the final pic.

rcclimbing

When I asked my kids what the girl was doing? “Same as the last one! Watching the boy.”

“Can you make up a story about her?” I asked.

I try to censor the sexism I can, but so much of the time, it’s obviously  impossible since gender stereotypes are everywhere. I think the most useful strategy, as parents, is to train our kids to respond with a critical and creative eye. If you try playing “Find the Girls on the Cereal Box,” let me know how it goes. For my family, it helped squeeze some real creativity out of the same old, same old.

You know what’s crazy? After stuff like this Rice Krispies box all over the place, Disney execs, marketers, media people, parents will say that girls go missing in kids’ media because girls will watch stories about boys but boys won’t watch stories bout girls. Huh. How do you think kids get to be that way, Hollywood? Girl aren’t born more generous, open-minded, or altruistic. Girls watch movies about boys because they are trained to.

More posts of girls gone missing from cereal boxes:

Raj of Big Bang Theory lists the sexist, all-male line up of cereal box characters

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

Why isn’t Pebbles on the Cocoa Pebbles?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inoculate your daughter, teach her these basic mirror skills

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Here’s a great tip to inoculate your daughter against internalizing the barrage of criticism about her appearance. If that critical voice gets trapped and trained in your kid’s head and wiring, it becomes a bad habit that, like any addiction, is difficult to break. I got this tip from Melissa Wardy of Pigtail Pals, and so far, it works really well. I can see my kids using it.

snow_white_mirror

Tell your daughter that you use a mirror to see if you have food on your face or something like that. You don’t look in the mirror to see if you are beautiful. Beauty is a feeling that comes from within you, and a mirror can’t give you that. Let your daughter see you use a mirror this way as well.

Repeat this lesson as often as necessary. It’s basic but effective.

Extra tip: If your daughter protests or seems confused, which she may not, explain that the correct way to use a mirror is the exact opposite of how the wicked queen relied on it in “Snow White,” asking “Who is the fairest of all?” Explain how the Queen’s misuse of the mirror, her dependence on its voice instead of her own, sapped her power and helped to cause her downfall.

 

 

 

New toy release shows “Monsters University” practically single sex

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Just received an email promo from LeapFrog which sells “educational” toys for kids. This one features characters from Disney/ Pixar’s upcoming Monsters University. Looks like while your kids get skills on “reading comprehension” and “problem solving,” they’ll be learning females stay in the background, it’s all Mike and Sully. And they say girls are the ones who care about “friendship”…

MU

Cat’s comment below: “Please tell me [Disney] remembered to add [females] in a movie about a UNIVERSITY!”

 

Thank you Angelina Jolie and Peggy Orenstein for speaking out

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Today, actress and director Angelina Jolie wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about her decision to undergo a double mastectomy. She made that choice after discovering she carried a dangerous gene and also because her mom died of cancer.

olie-1

Last week, Peggy Orenstein, an author and breast cancer survivor, wrote an in depth piece on cancer for the New York Times, that included why she she made a different decision.

peggy-orenstein-bio

 

I am so grateful that both of these women have the courage and access to tell the truth about their lives publicly. When women can speak out and tell their own stories, that helps all women. Both of you are making sure that a “woman’s issue” gets on the front pages and into the forefront of national discussion. Hopefully, we’ll come out of this more educated than we were. THANK YOU.

Update: Here goes the nat’l public discussion: Did u know corporations can own genes? Tweet from Peggy, check out the link:

Myriad genetics OWNS BRCA gene. OWNS it. That’s a block to research & better options for someone like Angelina Jolie http://ow.ly/l1XTX

After massive protest, Disney pulls new Merida from site

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Exciting news! Today, Rebecca Hains, blogger and media studies professor, reports:

“As of today, Disney has quietly pulled the 2D image of Merida from its website, replacing it with the original Pixar version. Perhaps we’ll be spared an onslaught of sexy Merida merchandise yet.”

YAY! Check out the link, it’s true! BRAVE Merida is back.

I guess Disney was right to be so terrified of creating a strong, BRAVE, female protagonist (along with Pixar studios which hadn’t had ANY female protags before “Brave.”) It looks like Merida could be turning Disney’s franchise on it’s head. That’s pretty damn heroic.

Another mistake Disney made with “Brave?” They hired a female director. They fired her, but it was too late. Brenda Chapman wrote “Brave” based on her daughter. She was furious with the character’s transformation and wrote publicly about Disney’s terrible mistake.

Of the debacle Hains writes:

That’s right: Although Merida was created by a woman as a role model for girls, the male-dominated consumer product division at Disney has ignored the character’s intended benefits for young girls, sexualizing her for profit. Compared with her film counterpart, this new Merida is slimmer and bustier. She wears makeup, and her hair’s characteristic wildness is gone: It has been volumized and restyled with a texture more traditionally “pretty.” Furthermore, she is missing her signature bow, arrow, and quiver; instead, she wears a fashionable sash around her sparkly, off-the-shoulder gown. (As Peggy Orenstein noted when she broke the news of the redesign, “Moms tell me all the time that their preschool daughters are pitching fits and destroying their t-shirts because ‘princesses don’t cover their shoulders.’” I’ve heard the same from parents, as well.)

Is the sexualized  image of Merida gone for good? Has Disney learned a lesson? Or will that lesson be: No more strong female characters leading a film! No more female directors writing about their daughters! Keep the females weak and quiet!

It’s up to you. This could be a turning point. Parents, please use your voice and your wallet to keep strong, heroic females showing up in narratives and images marketed to your kids. Right now, girls are missing from children’s media and when they do appear, they’re sexualized. This is normal. Not healthy, but tragically, perfectly normal.

Yesterday, Melissa Wardy posted this image on her Pigtail Pals Facebook page, reminding us Merida’s new image was not created in a vacuum.

pigtails

Objectifying and sexualizing girls is dangerous. A first step to abuse is always dehumanizing the victim. Propaganda, in the form of images and narratives, effectively dehumanizes on a mass scale.

Images/ narratives of Jews circa 1938

nazibook

Africans circa 1931

tin_tin_in_congo11

Females circa 2013

bratzwallpaper-source_4cj

 

It’s easy to look back on history and wonder: How did people ever put up with that? I’d never buy into it, not to mention expose my child to it. But what are you participating in right now that is completely accepted, not to mention celebrated, by our culture?

Be part of the solution. Demand narratives with strong female characters for your kids.

Update: New Merida may be off Disney’s site but she’s showing up all over the place including Target. Below is Target’s web page.

meridatarget

 

 

 

King Fergus of ‘Brave’ demands to know: ‘Where’s my makeover?’

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Since his daughter, Princess Merida, made national headlines with her makeover– she’s skinnier with tamed curls, a new off the shoulder gown, and the belt that once held her quiver has morphed into a fashion sash– King Fergus wants to know: “Where’s my makeover?”

"BRAVE"

Fergus says, “It’s not fair. I’m the King! Why are princesses always the ones who get to look pretty? Some would call me fat, hairy, and I’m missing a leg for goodness sake. Where’s my stylist?” Throughout DunBroch, Fergus has posted these before and after pics of Merida:

meridamakeover

Now, King Fergus wants to know:  “Artists, what can you do for me?”

Fergus won’t be getting a makeover because male characters are allowed to occupy a whole range of looks (including rats or planes) and personalities. Male characters aren’t clones. Please sign the petition to Disney: “Say No to the Merida Makeover, Keep Our Hero Brave.” (100,000 signatures and counting!)

If Castro forced Knight to give birth 5x, another kind of hell

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A couple days ago, shocked that psychopath Ariel Castro might be charged with murder, I posted on Reel Girl: Focus on the torture and rape of 3 women, not fetuses

Here’s what I wrote:

Multiple news sources are reporting that prosecutors may seek the death penalty against Ariel Castro, bringing aggravated murder charges in connection with 5 pregnancies that he terminated by starving and punching Michelle Knight. A murder charge would be a terrible mistake in bringing Castro to justice. Castro raped and tortured three women. Isn’t that evil enough? That the prosecution would shift the focus to fetuses to bring the worst charges against Castro mitigates the value of the lives of these women and sickens me.

The only way to stop the epidemic of violence against women in America is to empower them financially, physically, socially, culturally. Charging Castro with murder of fetuses does the opposite. If Castro can be charged with murdering fetuses, than a woman getting an abortion, even if that woman was raped Michelle Knight herself, she, too, would be “murdering” fetuses. Castro tortured, raped, and assaulted these women in multiple, horrific ways. Keep the focus on the women, not the fetuses, and bring Ariel Castro to justice for his evil crimes.

Since that post, I have been unliked, unfollowed, and only further convinced that prosecuting Castro for murder is the wrong crime and fails to do justice to these women. There’s a post on Slate with a similar argument: “Should Ariel Castro Be Prosecuted for Fetal Homicide? Maybe. But we should focus on the harm he did to the women he’s accused of abducting.” Writer Emily Bazelon argues:

I still think, though, that there would be something very strange about executing Castro for the harm he did to fetuses, as opposed to the harm he did to three living and breathing women.

And what if Castro had allowed the fetuses to live? What if Michelle Knight had been forced to give birth 5 times in captivity to babies fathered by a rapist? That would have been its own hell. But would that use, manipulation, and violation of Knight’s body be recognized by our legal system beyond rape charges?

A regime, whether enforced by a government or a madman, that forces women to have abortions is the same regime that can force them to give birth. Reproductive rights are human rights, and violating them ought to carry the severest of penalties. But when will violating the human rights of women be recognized by the U.S. legal system as the heinous crime it truly is?