Anyone who has ever written a book will tell you, heroes act. They make choices. They take risks. Heroes are not passive.
Geena Davis saw a problem and instead of safely sitting around griping about it, she took a risk and took action. She started a non-profit, raised some money, and now she’s changing the world with the Geena Davis Institute.
I just got this email from the Institute about a new program they’ve developed for schools that includes an “eight-lesson curriculum introduces topics like media and bullying in the context of gender equality.”
Courses include: Do TV Shows and Movies Influence Careers Held by Women and Men?Do TV Shows and Movies Make Sexual Harassment a “Normal” Part of the School Experience? and Who is Your Hero?
Please go to this link to see all the curriculum and consider talking to teachers and administrators about bringing it into your children’s schools.
IMAGINE walking into the toy department and noticing several distinct aisles. In one, you find toys packaged in dark brown and black, which include the “Inner-City Street Corner” building set and a “Little Rapper” dress-up kit. In the next aisle, the toys are all in shades of brown and include farm-worker-themed play sets and a “Hotel Housekeeper” dress.
If toys were marketed solely according to racial and ethnic stereotypes, customers would be outraged, and rightfully so. Yet every day, people encounter toy departments that are rigidly segregated — not by race, but by gender. There are pink aisles, where toys revolve around beauty and domesticity, and blue aisles filled with toys related to building, action and aggression.
When I write or speak about this stereotyping as gender Jim Crow, it is not uncommon for a white, educated dad to tell me that I’m trivializing segregation.
I still am unable to understand why this generation of parents – the most educated, most informed, most well-traveled, most well-rounded generation of parents to ever raise children accept the gender divide in the marketplace and believe it to be biological truth.
I have no doubt that humans in the future are going to look back on the radical gender segregation of children, babies, fetuses, accepted and ubiquitous, and wonder how loving parents became so brainwashed.
It’s getting worse. It really freaks me out how accepted it is. From the NYT:
What’s surprising is that over the last generation, the gender segregation and stereotyping of toys have grown to unprecedented levels. We’ve made great strides toward gender equity over the past 50 years, but the world of toys looks a lot more like 1952 than 2012…But by 1995, the gendered advertising of toys had crept back to midcentury levels, and it’s even more extreme today. In fact, finding a toy that is not marketed either explicitly or subtly (through use of color, for example) by gender has become incredibly difficult.
Read the NYT post for details of the research.
Why is this happening? Reporter, Elizabeth Sweet, writes:
On a practical level, toy makers know that by segmenting the market into narrow demographic groups, they can sell more versions of the same toy. And nostalgia often drives parents and grandparents to give toys they remember from their own childhood.
I like how Sweet brings up “nostalgia” of parents because this is an important factor. Not only with toys but with stories. We remember and love the stories we read in childhood and want to share them with our kids, often ignoring the stereotyped gender roles the narratives promote. The result is, as Orenstein writes in her book, children are saturated with gender stereotypes as their brains are growing and developing. At the very least, parents are priming the next generation to be “nostalgic” about sexism.
If the brain development issue is hard for you to buy, think about this:
But if parents are susceptible to the marketers’ message, their children are even more so.
So true. If you, a grown-up, are influenced by all of this, how do you think it affects your little kid?
Here is my favorite part of the article:
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.
I am so happy she wrote this! It is so amazing to me when biased “experts” create biased studies on biased children and then call it objective science.
I better stop pasting or the NYT will come after me, but you should read it. It’s a great piece.
Thank you, and thank you for the important work you do! I think the term you use, “gender Jim Crow” is so fitting. It’s de facto versus de jure (though that seems to be coming right back too in regards to women’s rights), but what troubles me the most is how untroubled so many are by it. And it’s happening on all fronts–media, products, science…
My daughter, Rose, with her new Christmas friends: Catwoman, Buffy, Serafina Pekkala, Hawkgirl, Lyra Silvertongue, and Coraline.
My favorite is Coraline. She belongs to Rose’s older sister, Alice, who loved the book.
These characters are so much better than the ones photographed above for Reel Girl’s header just after Christmas, three years ago, when I started this blog. I took that photo because, as the mother of three young daughters, I was so freaked out and disgusted by the grinning plastic strewn around our living room.
I’m going to post a photo of the whole new crew soon. There are about 15, and I think, seriously, if this group doesn’t comprise all of the non-sexualized female action figures out there, it’s most of them.
Thank you to A Mighty Girl and Toward the Stars. It is on these new sites that I found all of my daughters’s Christmas presents this year. Let’s just say the figures above are not aggressively marketed or found in my neighborhood Walgreens along side the Barbies, stacks of princess coloring books, or Monster High dolls. Cool, inspiring female figures do exist and can be found in targeted searches. But for the most part, they are not mainstream. Coraline costs $100.
We need more figures to be more accessible to more people. Before we can have more female action figures made or mass marketed– featured in games or embossed on clothing sold at Target– we need more movies, TV programs, and books with strong female protagonists. Since the beginning of time, stories have always been the best marketing tool.
When heroic females go missing from stories, they go missing everywhere.
Not only will a record 20 women hold U.S. Senate seats next year, but women voters also greatly influenced the 2012 election, making an impact in swing states such as Ohio.
As founder of reelgirl.com Margot Magowan says, Hollywood needs to catch up.
The sheer increase of strong female characters isn’t enough, Magowan said, noting that role models such as “Wreck-It Ralph’s” Vanellope (voiced by Sarah Silverman) are often secondary characters.
“It’s important for the female to be the star of the movie,” the mom of three girls said. ” ‘Harry Potter’ has Hermione, but her role is to help Harry on his quest. … You can be the first lady, but you can’t be the president. … If you can’t imagine it, you can’t be it.”
My favorite quote is from Joss Whedon:
In 2006, while accepting an award from Equality Now (an organization promoting the human rights of women), Joss Whedon (“The Avengers,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) said he’s often asked why he creates such strong women characters.
His response: “Why aren’t you asking 100 other guys why they don’t write strong women characters?”
It’s been three days of straight rain starting out Winter Break. These books are helping us get through:
Imogen: The Mother of Modernism and Three Boys
I think this book just came out. In any case, I saw it for the first time a couple days ago, and I love it.
Imogen is the real life story of the great photographer, Imogen Cunningham. What I love most about this book is that it shows the challenge of being and artist and a mother and how that challenge was not only overcome but used to create art. Reading this book made me think of a post I wrote some time ago: Why aren’t there more women artists? The theory I wrote about– and that this book shows– is that in order to create, if you’re a mom as well, you need to be healthy as possible. The tortured, romanticized Marlboro Man, separated from the rest of life, doesn’t apply. This book shows all that beautifully.
Reel Girl rates Imogen: The Mother of Modernism and Three Boys ***HHH***
The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything
My daughters adore this story about a woman who goes off by herself in the woods to gather herbs, spices, nuts, and seeds.
When she starts back home, she is followed by a pair of shoes. Not freaked out one bit by shoes without feet in them, the woman says: “Get out of my way you two big shoes! I’m not afraid of you!” A pair of pants is added, a shirt, and on and on, each with a different movement: the shoes go clomp, clomp; the pants go wiggle, wiggle, the shirt goes shake, shake. You get the idea.
So my confession here is that I have a hard time with repetition. It gets on my nerves. Goldilocks is an absolute nightmare for me. I get so bored reading the same thing over and over, knowing more of the same is to come. But repetition is in so many stories for kids because they love it; it helps them learn, too. My three daughters get so excited when they know what’s coming next. They call out all the sounds with huge grins on their faces. I love the old lady, so this book works for us.
Reel Girl rates The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything ***HHH***
Zita, the Spacegirl
This graphic novel features one of the few female superheroes. Zita is very cool.
This epic describes Zita’s journey from earth to another world, all to rescue her friend, Joseph. This story features monsters, magicians, and all kinds of scary space creatures. My only issue is that most (all?) of the other characters in this story appear to be male. Unfortunately, that gender division– when the female gets to be the protagonist, she is surrounded by males– is all too common in kids media. Still, I cannot wait to see the movie. I wish someone would make it.
I’m thrilled that my letter is in a national magazine with the reach and audience that the New York Times has. It’s a tiny step, obviously, but I’m hoping that more people, and parents especially, will start realizing and reacting to how sexist kidworld is. Almost every time children go to the movies, they learn that boys are more important than girls.
What about movies for children? I have three young daughters. Aside from the pink ghetto, kids’ media — whether PBS or Disney — put male characters front and center. Female characters are sidelined or not there at all — just look at the posters for children’s movies (with the exception of ‘‘Brave’’). There is no reason for the imaginary world to be sexist.
Margot Magowan, San Francisco, posted on nytimes.com
Here’s to hoping female characters in children’s movies fare better in 2013.
Since the annual issue was created, only four solo women have ever been on that cover.
Until 1999, Time’s title for the honor was “Man of the Year.”
This week, Martha Nelson became Time’s first female Editor-in-Chief in the magazine’s 90 year history.
Here’s to hoping women leaders get recognized more regularly and publicly. “Women’s issues” should be the headlines of the world’s news. We are half of the population.
Malala Yousafazi, the fifteen year old activist, was shot in the head by the Taliban for her activism, fighting for girls to get equal access to education.
Yousafzai is not Time’s “Person of the Year.” That title goes to President Obama.
When a magazine edited by men reports on stories about a world run by men, and designates awards for those major players with an award titled for men, how likely is it that we can imagine women’s stories will break through these ranks?
Until 1999, Time’s title was “Man of the Year.” 1999.
Is the word change just cosmetic?
In 26 years, Time Magazine has not had a solo woman on its cover with this title. Since the issue was created, only four solo women have ever held that title.
This week, Martha Nelson became Time’s first female Editor-in-Chief in the Magazine’s 90 year history. FIRST EVER WOMAN EDITOR IN CHIEF. The year is 2012.
Will things change now?
Of course, you could argue Yousafzai doesn’t influence world events anything like President Obama. She’s not “important.”
I remember before in the late 90s, when I was a producer for a talk radio program, trying to get the liberal talk show host to talk about the Taliban. “Who cares about the Taliban?” he said. “We live in San Francisco. No one even knows what that is.” Of course, on 9/11, everyone knew. You can’t isolate that kind of hatred, but because tha Taliban’s oppressive apartheid government was hurting women, no cared much. It was a “cultural” difference, not a a political one.
How would our world be different if issues that affected women were taken seriously? Certainly, women would be seen regularly on the cover of newsweeklies, not sucking up asparagus.
Miss Representation has popularized the phrase: “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.”
I would go even further: if you can’t imagine it, you can’t see it, you can’t be it.
Yousafzai blogged her ideas on the internet. She was voted for as Time’s Person of the Year by supporters on the internet. On the internet, we see this picture of her on Time’s cover.
Thank you to the internet for its virtual reality and helping us to imagine it, see it, be it.
Caro gives several examples about how women no longer have to “cop insults about their gender in impotent silence. Thanks to social media and the unmediated access it gave them to the public conversation they could — and did — make their point of view heard loudly.”
Certainly just for basic sanity and health, Caro is right. After Romney made that idiotic comment about “binders full of women” it felt so good to express rage, frustration, and laughter on Twitter with everyone else who “got it.” Romney’s political career didn’t fare too well in that process.
What women have too often been missing is a voice, to express reality as we experience it. Social media allows us to do that, do it easily, and connect with others who are engaged in the same kind of activity.
A few years ago I read a similar article in the New York Times suggesting that instead of getting out of the house, with the internet, women empowered the home. We can all travel the world without getting up from our desks.
Not only that, but given the post I just put up about a less linear, more “looped” understanding and experience of reality, what illustrates the dominance of that symbol better than the “world wide web.” Seriously. Remember when Al Gore, and everyone else, used to describe the internet as a “super highway” that went in “two directions.” Looks like that limited understanding has gone by the wayside…
Can you imagine gender equality? Really see it? What does it look like to you? Or is it impossible to picture because we are so influenced by how things “are?” Or perhaps, too difficult because my idea of gender equality could be different than your idea of gender equality?
I’ve been thinking about all of this because I’ve been hard at work on Reel Girl’s new logo. I’m creating the image with an exceptional artist I met on line, and in order to come up with the right symbol, we’ve been revisiting the blog’s title, tagline, and mission.
“Imagining gender equality in the fantasy world” has never felt more appropriate. Now, more than ever, three years after I started blogging, I am amazed, fascinated, inspired, and disheartened by the way I see fantasy create reality and reality create fantasy in an endless loop.
What happens when children, even pre-birth, experience a world that is so saturated with gender segregation? How do parents’s expectations for their sons versus their daughters affect brain growth?
However, the traditional dichotomy of nature versus nurture that has dominated Western philosophy and psychology has been profoundly challenged by recent advances in neurophysiology. The stratification model of human experience, nature versus nurture– was predicated on the assumption that human biology was a complete package at birth…
The brain of the newborn, we now know, is only partially developed. Nerve cells and neural pathways are incomplete at birth; they are shaped to a considerable extent by the baby’s experience with others.
To show this visually, Mitchell uses Escher’s “Drawing Hands.”
Would this be a great logo for my blog or what? If only Escher wouldn’t mind. I could stick some jewelry on those fingers, maybe some cool nail polish too? A Bic pen “for her” in those big, strong hands?
Too heady, I know. But looking at this image reminded me of Lise Eliot, author of Pink Brain, Blue Brain. She wrote:
“Babies are born ready to absorb the sounds, grammar, and intonation of any language, but then the brain wires it up only to perceive and produce a specific language. After puberty, its possible to learn another language but far more difficult. I think of gender differences similarly. The ones that exist become amplified by the two different cultures that boys and girls are immersed in from birth. This contributes to the way their emotional and cognitive circuits get wired.”
Both Mitchell and Eliot support the idea that humans are born into the world with “potentials.” Qualities humans are designed for can “turn on” or “emerge.”
These ideas on brain development take on the basic assumptions of Enlightenment, the driving theory behind the last century, which Mitchell summarizes as “a correct, rational, scientific, fantasy-free way to understand the world.” Mitchell summarizes the Enlightenment world view into three basic assumptions:
(1) All genuine questions have answers
(2) All true answers are discoverable and teachable to others
(3) All answers are in principle compatible
Mitchell describes reality, or realities, instead where fantasy and reality continually create each other i.e. the Escher drawing. Mitchell writes:
It is the hallmark of the shift in basic psychoanalytic sensibility that the prototype of mental health for many contemporary psychoanalyitc authors is not the scientist but the artist. A continual objective take on reality is regarded as neither possible nor valuable in contrast to the ability to develop and move in and out of different perspectives of reality.
When I read this, it seemed radical to me. Most of everything I’ve ever learned or heard about artists is not a model for psychological health, but rather that they are “totured.” Artists are crazy, art comes out of pain, and all that.
There is one exception I recalled that I blogged about as well: Peter Kramer’s Against Depression. Kramer was inspired to write this book after his more famous Listening to Prozac. Everywhere he went on that book tour, people asked: “What if van Gogh had taken Prozac? What about Kierkegaard?”
Kramer argues artists are not creative because of their depression but in spite of it. Depression is a “stuck switch,” the opposite of resilience. Art, a career of it, requires resilience. (So does long term romance, by the way which is the real topic of Mitchell’s fantastic book.)
I have to say, these theories make sense as far as my experience writing a Middle Grade book. I’ve been working on it for a year and a half, and if I’ve learned one thing about writing: it requires optimism and faith.
I’ve written novels before, but I’ve never been able to stick with one as it gets torn up and put back together multiple times. I think the difference here is that I know a MG book requires plot. (Maybe all books do, but I was never so committed to plot before.) I can’t tell you how many times I’ve faced a plot problem that completely overwhelmed me. The only way to get through the challenge is to believe there is a way out, a solution. The only way to find that solution is to be able to try on multiple outcomes. For me, that is a terrifying process of allowing one version to disintegrate and another to emerge. But, the more I do it, the better I get at it. It’s a skill, like any other skill.
Mitchell wrote Can Love Last in 2002. In the ten years since, more information on “brain plasticity” continues to emerge and support his thesis. It seems that not only is Mitchell correct (he died soon after he wrote the book) but that the only place he was off was in believing “brain plasticity” didn’t last for a lifetime.
Until recently, our 20s were considered the point when our brain’s wiring was basically complete. But new evidence suggests that not only can we learn into old age, but the structure of our brains can continue to change and develop.
Could imagination be far more powerful and useful than we, well, ever imagined?
