Author Archives: margotmagowan

PBS blind to its own sexism says former employee

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This comment from Lisa on my post “PBS puts another male protag in coveted morning line up:”

Oh, Margot, you have just hit upon one of my pet peeves. I used to work for a PBS affiliate many years ago. At one point in the late 1990s I attended a PBS conference at which they rolled out the slate of new kids’ shows for the coming season. I was appalled not only at how few of them featured female characters, but how several of them were named for the male character: Caillou, Arthur, Franklin, on and on. As we were walking out of the ballroom and everyone was talking excitedly, the (female) VP of Development for our station said something to the effect of, “Wasn’t that great?” to me. I said, “Yeah, but where were the GIRLS? Did you notice these are all shows with boys in the lead?” She looked shocked and then as light dawned she said, “You’re right, where ARE the girls?”

I am disgusted but not surprised that even some 13+ years later, nothing has changed. I think there’s a tendency to think of PBS as more progressive, but presenting a more gender-balanced kids programming division is clearly not a priority for them.

One show that I really enjoyed on PBS once I had my daughters was Sagwa, which followed the adventures of a female Chinese Siamese cat – the title character! Notably, created by the wonderful author Amy Tan. Of course that is no longer on the air….OMG!!  I just looked up Sagwa to see when it aired, etc. and discovered this (via Wikipedia, though cross-checked in a couple other places and it seems to hold up):  “The name of the titular character, Sagwa, literally means “silly melon head”. Although innocuous without context, this phrase is typically regarded by Chinese to be an insult, carrying connotations of incompetence, foolishness, and even mental retardation.”

Wow. So one of the few shows actually named for a female character insults her by giving her a derogatory name. So frustrating!!

 

I love what Lisa says about “progressive” too, because you so often hear about the “liberal” media, especially PBS. I guess invisible females is just politics as usual. Isn’t it nice that people across the aisle can agree on something?

Girls are as self-centered as all kids

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Girls are not born more open-minded or altruistic. Girls read stories about boys and watch movies about boys because they are trained to. (Thank you, PBS. Please see my last post.)

Doesn’t every psychologist and teacher tell us that kids need to be “mirrored?” To create healthy self-esteem, parents aren’t supposed to project their own opinions on to little kids, but reflect what the kid expresses: “You are lifting the box! You’re smiling!” etc.

So why do the “experts” forget mirroring when it comes to gender? Why do we show our kids a warped, stereotyped mirror and then exclaim, “Look at that, girls just love princesses!” Girls want to see girls. They are just as self-centered as all children are. Unfortunately, in kid world, representations of females are severely limited. They will take what they can get.

There’s a positive side to this. We can train all kids to stay open to diverse stories by exposing them to all kinds of protagonists. Please read your kids books, show your kids movies, tell your kids stories and help them write their own, do imaginary play featuring strong female characters. It will help their brains grow not to mention their self-esteem.

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PBS puts another male protag in coveted morning line up: Daniel Tiger

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My youngest daughter and I used to have a schedule where, after the older 2 went off to school, I put on PBS while I did morning chores. PBS is good for kids, right? Educational and all. Sadly, all the three shows in the morning line up had a male protagonist whose name was featured in the title: Caillou, Clifford, and Curious George.

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For a while, instead of Clifford, we had…Arthur!

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All year, I’ve been doing drop-off, so now I leave the house with 3 kids at 7:10 (and don’t get back until 9AM but that’s another blog rant.) Today, our schedule is off so I have the little one, and I turned on the TV with an eye roll, expecting the bald 4 year old (don’t get that) the giant red dog, or the monkey with his yellow buddy-man, or the aardvark with no nose. What did we find? A new show! “Daniel the Tiger.” ARGH.

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It’s really shocking to me how unimportant (or should I say “important”) gender is to PBS programmers. Thanks, PBS, for the early morning lesson in sexism for my four year old daughter. It’s great to know we’ve got a channel dedicated to education that teaches kids males are front and center while females are sidelined or not there at all.

Can you get more offensive than this sexist Aston Martin ad?

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Words desert me. Ass-ton Martin? Crass-ton Martin?

PHOTO REMOVED

Update: Word is this ad is a fake. And if it is, I’ve got to wonder, why do we believe it’s real? This 4 breasted woman, real or fake?

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Answer: real ad for PlayStation

Update: I removed the photo after receiving this email from Marketing Playboy:

Dear Margot,

 

I was informed that your website http://reelgirl.com/2013/03/can-you-get-more-offensive-than-this-sexist-aston-martin-ad/ contains copyright infringing material, consisting of (a part of) the fotoshoot with Rosanne Jongenelen.

 

This content is owned by Playboy. I therefore kindly request you to remove this material / these pictures from your website TODAY. Please send me a confirmation that you will comply with this request. If the material has not been removed by tomorrow, I have to take other actions and will send you a cease and desist letter.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Marketing Playboy Netherlands


Reel Girl and typos

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Just wanted to say sorry for all the typos on Reel Girl. This is the deal. I have little time to blog, and so I blog very fast. Usually, I’ve been thinking about what I want to write when I’m driving my car, up in the middle of the night, or pushing my kid on the swing. By the time I get to the keyboard, my ideas are clear but time is fleeting. Mostly, I work on my book when I’m alone in the house but I sneak off to blog by stealing minutes when my kids and my husband are around. Invariably, while I’m writing, someone is screaming for me or there is something else I need to be doing.

I’ve tried to save drafts for later when I can proofread them, but I’ve learned that those posts never go up. For me, blogging seems to be a combination of obsessively thought out ideas that are finally shared compulsively and impulsively. Once the blog has been posted, unlike one that hasn’t been, I do go back and proofread because it’s out there for everyone to see. My pride won’t let me leave up “higher” when I meant to write “hire.”

Sometimes I give myself a hard time about this fast and sloppy style of writing. No matter how important what you’re saying is, if you spell it wrong, it can look stupid. But, as I wrote, the fast posting in fits and spurts is the only way I am able to blog in way that is fulfilling and useful. Also, that’s what kind of cool about blogging, especially if in other areas of your life, including writing, you’ve got to be exact and fastidious.

I’m posting this without re-reading and will probably be revisiting when I find a minute or two again in the day to check all the typos.

Thanks for reading and your patience.

Margot

Feminism, class, and the problem of privilege: Caitlin Moran on plumbers

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Has anyone read Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman? This book is so damn good. I’ve been wanting to read it since it came out in 2011, but only got to it last month. Moran is British, she started out as a teen writer for a rock magazine and became an award winning journalist.

How to be a Woman

There is so much that is great about this book, but here’s a section I found particularly interesting and original.

First, Moran quotes a column from The Guardian called “What I’m Really Thinking” written by a cleaner:

Sometimes…I ponder the ironies of the job: for example, that all the ironing consists of men’s clothing. In a bid to escape domesticity, women are refusing to iron their husband’s shirts. Congratulations: your act of feminism means the job is shunted onto a different woman, assigning her a different rank.

Moran responds:

“I’ve seen this idea put forward a hundred times– that a proper feminist would do her own hoovering. Germaine Greer cleans her own lavvy, and Emily Wilding Davis threw herself under a horse, hands still piney fresh from Mr. Muscle oven cleaner. On this basis alone, how many women have had to conclude, sighing as they hire a cleaner, that they can’t, then, be feminists?

But of course, the hiring of domestic help isn’t a case of women oppressing other women, because WOMEN DID NOT INVENT DUST. THE STICKY RESIDUE THAT COLLECTS ON THE KETTLE DOES NOT COME OUT OF WOMEN’S VAGINAS…

Mess is a problem of humanity. Domestica is the concern of all. A man hiring a male cleaner would be seen as simple employment. Quite how a heterosexual couple hiring a female cleaner ends up a betrayal of feminism isn’t terribly clear– unless you believe that running a household is in some way:

(a) an inarguable duty of womenkind– that, in addition can

(b) only ever be done out of love, and never for cash, because that somehow “spoils”  the magic of the household. As if the dishes know they’ve been washed by hired help, instead of the woman of the house, and will all feel sad.

This is, clearly– to use the technical term– total bullshit. There are places that will bleach your anus for you…If you have mines in your field, you can pay someone to risk their life removing them. If you want to watch people pound each other’s nasal cartilage to a pulp with their fists, you can go see cage fighting….And yet, somehow, in the midst of all this, it’s still wrong for a woman in North London to employ someone to clean the house. When I was 16, I was a cleaner…Twenty years later, I now have  a cleaner myself. And having a cleaner has nothing to do with feminism. If a middle-class woman is engaging in anti-feminist activity by hiring a woman to do the cleaning, then surely, a middle class man is engaging in class oppression by hiring a plumber?”

Update Great comment from Somebody42:

I think what’s more telling is that, even though the cleaner is ironing the man’s shirts, she blames the woman for having someone else iron them — not the man they actually belong to. Of course, no one will call the cleaner “anti-feminist” for doing so. I realize this is a restatement of your point (a), but it just grates on me so badly!

 

 

Sara Gruen, author of ‘Water for Elephants,’ on ‘chick lit’

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Speaking of Us Magazine, I’m reading a book that’s so good, it’s like literary porn. It’s Us for bookworms. The book is called Why We Write, and it has a few pages each on one of  20 literary superstars. Each section describes how and why the writer writes. The section begins with vitals including when and where the writer was born, married or not, schooling, day job, and awards. Each section ends with tidbits of advice for writers. If you love to write, you’ve got to get this book. It’s so fun to read and super inspiring.

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A section by Water for Elephants writer, Sara Gruen, called “Why did the chick lit cross the road,” bummed me out. In case you don’t read Us, Water for Elephants became a movie starring Reese Witherspoon and vampire heartthrob, Robert Pattinson.

Gruen writes:

 

There are very good, very successful authors of ‘chick lit’ and ‘women’s fiction,’ but that’s not how I self-identify. I think if you’re a woman and you write novels with female characters, the industry tends to pigeonhole you, and if you’re not careful, you get slapped with a pink cover no man would be caught dead with reading on a subway. Why woudl I want to discount male readers? I want men and women to feel they can pick up my books.

I feel (correctly) that I was labeled a woman’s fiction author with Riding Lessons and I hate very little as much as I hate being labeled. So I very deliberately wrote Water for Elephants as a book that would be difficult to classify. I figured having it narrated by a ninety three year old man would help. And you know what? I think it did.

I get what Gruen is saying the same way I get why J.K. Rowling is “J.K.” and why her protagonist is male. But still, how I wish women writers could get universal readership writing as women and about women. Is that so much to ask?

Girls don’t see movies about boys and read books about boys because they are born altruistic and open minded. Girls read books about boys because they are trained to. Therefore, isn’t the best time to shift this training when kids are kids? And this is exactly why it depresses me to no end that children’s media is so infected with caricatures of sexism. That early sexism doesn’t go away but lasts a lifetime. Parents, please help your child’s brain grow by reading books about strong girls to your kids.

 

 

 

Are girl’s shoes designed to disintegrate?

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When my daughter begged for a pair of shoes that reminded her of Dorothy, the salesperson smiled sheepishly at me. “You might want to cover those with hairspray,” she warned me. “It keeps the sparkles on.” Because I’m not the kind of mom to remember to spray my daughter’s shoes (not to mention own a can of hairspray) coupled with my daughter’s active lifestyle, here’s how her shoes looked a couple weeks later:

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My mother has a theory. Not only are “girl” shoes ridiculous for running or jumping or anything that kids love to do, they are designed to fall apart. A new pair loses its shine, glitter, or bow within days. Kids beg for new shoes and parents, agreeing the shoes look dilapidated, comply. Abracadabra, your daughter’s shoe-shopper rate rivals Carrie Bradshaw’s.

Speaking of, just read this tidbit in Us Magazine:

Sarah Jessica Parker, 48, revealed that she has given up heels (except for special events) due to a foot deformity caused by years of walking in stilettos for “Sex and the City.”

 

How do you protect your daughter’s feet and do your part not to program her for a lifetime consumerism by age 3? Buy “boy” shoes. My three year old got a pair of Star Wars sneakers because her male cousin has the same ones. Almost six months later, they look brand new.

How do sexist movies affect boys?

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I got this comment from Clare:

As a mother of 2 little boys I’m constantly struggling to find movies for them to watch that aren’t completely sexist. And it is frustrating because he is too young to have an opinion on what girls can or can’t achieve. I want him to grow up knowing girls an be strong leaders, smart and funny, not just pretty to look at. But hardly any kids movies give you a decent female protagonist worth bothering with. For me “Brave” was embarrassing as Pixar’s first female lead movie. Despite the film having a stereotypically “feisty” heroine (when is that word ever used to describe a boy/man?) it is still all about whether Merida will marry or not. Merida is seen as subversive, difficult because she won’t do as her mother asks and get engaged, but why not a movie where strong, independent Merida has a great adventure that’s nothing to do with romance like any number f her Pixar lead character counterparts? Also as Merida seems to be a young teen the whole idea of marriage is particularly creepy.

I’m glad Clare wrote in because, just like “women’s” issues, people tend to think sexism in animated movies is a girl issue. It’s not. What are our kids learning about gender when the males get to do all the cool, fun, brave stuff, when they get to be the center of attention, while girls are stuck on the sidelines?

Yesterday, my daughter brought a light up fairy to show and tell. She earned that fairy for reading her first chapter book, and she was proud of it and her accomplishment. A couple first grade boys yelled out, “Stupid! Boring!” The boys wanted to be clear that they wouldn’t be interested in something as uncool and girlie as fairy, Fairies, are sadly, on eof the few images we can find in our culture of magical females. Unfortunately, the boys’s reaction isn’t a rare reaction when girls show and tell “girl” stuff. How’s that for an early lesson in public speaking?

What if fairies flew out of the Pink Ghetto? What if kids saw fairies go on exciting adventures in narratives marketed to all kids? What if fairies didn’t look coy, with short skirts and shy smiles?

What happens when kids learn, from the moment they exit the womb, that there are girl toys and boy toys, and that girls are less important than boys? How does it affect who our kids grow up to be?

‘Escape From Planet Earth’ humiliates working woman

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Can I express how much I hate “Escape From Planet Earth” in one post?

My daughter’s preschool had a staff development today and thus, we had three options for films showing in theaters: “Oz, the Great and Powerful,” “Jack, the Giant Slayer,” and “Escape From Planet Earth.” I picked the movie with no male in the title with the hope of seeing strong female characters. Also, my daughter is 3, so “Escape” is supposedly the best movie for her age group. This is my issue with the MPAA, by the way. This movie is terrible for kids. Note to MPAA: If you are going to make a movie about a desperate, bitter working woman vs a heroic, fulfilled stay-at-home mom, warn us. You could do what I do and slap on an ‘S’ for stereotyping.

First things first. The protagonists of “Escape” are two brothers. That’s right, brothers.

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If that’s not enough of a male paradigm for you, one brother has a son, Kip.

 

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Kip rescues his father at the end of the movie. “Escape,” like so many animated movies for kids, is a father-son story.

The evil guy of the movie, the one who wants to destroy the universe, is of course, also, a guy.

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The possy of aliens that surround him include just one Minority Feisty, the one-eyed Lo.

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I loved Lo, and I wish this had been her movie. There was a group of triplet aliens who didn’t speak for most of the movie. I thought they might be mute females. But, at the end of the movie, when they rescue the brothers, they talk. All three are male. We spend most of “Escape” in the company of all of these aliens and the evil guy.

OK, want to know about 3 more girl parts? After multiple characters and scenes, the first female speaking part enters into the movie. She’s our protagonist’s boss. Cool right? Except turns out Lena Thackleman is a bitter shrew. She’s furiously resentful of the central Minority Feisty, Kira Supernova, who is Gary’s wife and Kip’s mom (that’s right, wife and mom.) Kira left her job to be a stay-at-home mom where she is fulfilled and happy.

In spite of her power position, Lena is desperate, unhappy, and alone. To make matters worse for her, Lena has fallen in love with the movie’s villain who she met on-line dating. The villain doesn’t even love her, he’s using her to get material he needs to blow up the universe. How is that for humiliating? Just to rub it in, when Kira punches Lena out, she says triumphantly: “Just because a chick had a baby, doesn’t mean she can’t belt it out.” GAG. Is there anything worse than a sexist narrative marketed as a feminist one? Oh yeah, a sexist narrative marketed as a feminist one in a movie for kids.

Sexist lines continue throughout. When Kira is carrying her husband, flying through the air with her rocket boots, he says: “I feel emasculated.” Why screw up a cool scene like that? One reason I liked “Wreck-It, Ralph” is because when female characters showed their skill, they were admired by the male characters. It’s crucial to show kids that females acting strong is cool and beautiful. “Escape” communicates the opposite.

When guards are watching over Kira and Kip, one says: “A lady and a kid? What is this, daycare?” Hollywood, why put sexist jokes in your movies for children? How are girls supposed to feel when they see women laughed at for being weak and ineffectual? if it happened once in a while, that would be one thing, but its a dominating, repetitive theme in children’s movies.

Just to conclude, the final Minority Feisty is the sex-pot news reporter in love with one of the brothers. Guess who plays her? Sofia Vergara. Can you see the part now? Making it worse, if possible, the movie ends with her wedding. Isn’t that happy?

Watching “Escape From Planet Earth,” I felt like I was watching some kind of sick parody of my blog, like someone was making a joke about what a sexist movie made for kids would really look like. I can’t believe Hollywood put out this awful propaganda. Who green-lighted this? Who could possibly think these caricatured gender stereotypes are good for little kids?

Reel Girl rates “Escape From Planet Earth” ***SSS***