And here is my FIFTH blog on sexism in food!
Sorry, people, but these images are EVERWHERE. They tell kids that boys do stuff and girls don’t. Males are important while females are invisible.
Check this link to the 30 Greatest Kids Cereals of All Time sent to me by Lori Day.
Are there any kids’ cereals with female characters? I know there’s that dieter, her greatest accomplishment EVER, on Special K, but I suppose that’s a woman’s cereal.
My daughter is home sick today. She’s lying on the couch, watching TV, and eating Parmesan Goldfish. An ad for Goldfish crackers came on. She thought that coincidence was pretty hilarious. She held up one of her crackers and said, “Hi!” to the Goldfish on TV. Then she looked at down at the package. “Who are mine?” she wanted to know.
They are: Xtreme, Gilbert, Brooke, and Finn.
I know what you’re thinking: Xtreme must be female, right? Or maybe Finn? Pepperidge Farm would never put 3 males and 1 female on a package. So, I went to Wikipedia. Check out these character descriptions:
When I created this blog, I wrote that I was going to rate kids media and toys. I never considered blogging about sexism in food. Reese’s Puffs, Special K, M & Ms, and Goldfish have, unfortunately, changed my mind.
My daughter and I made up different names and stories for the Goldfish, of course. But don’t start telling me it’s a free country, and we can just make up anything we like. I’m a creative person, and I struggle with this. Give me something to work with here, Pepperidge Farm! I’m also, like most moms, busy. Can’t I just read the damn names off the bag?
It would be so much easier to foster creativity in kids (and the adults that they will become) if we weren’t mired with the same old, same old ridiculous, gender-stereotyped narratives at every turn.
Love this:
“according to a high-level Huffington Post source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, but with a distinctly Greek accent.”
This is why we need women in power positions (even if they don’t pay bloggers.)
Read the rest here.
Got this photo from Melissa Wardy at Pigtail Pals. A friend of hers took it in Las Vegas. Aren’t we Americans lucky that we can get a “boys rule” or “girls rule” M & Ms mix?
Can the gendering of products get any more stupid?
Really look at this picture.
This is how fucked up we are about gender. In the future, people are going to look back on 2012 and try hard to understand how intelligent human beings could ever be so deranged.
The absurdity of this product is no different than the relentless, aggressive marketing pushed on kids in movie theaters, Target stores, and at birthday parties across America every single day.
My kids were playing at the park up the street and made friends with a boy and girl who spoke fluent Norwegian. An hour later, my three daughters were in their backyard, splashing around in a hot tub. At some point, I was telling the mom, who is Norwegian and a doctor, about my blog. She said that her daughter is not, and never was, into princesses. She told me she’d noticed how sexist American movies and TV are, and that the media in Norway isn’t like that at all. (“What is going on with this American talk show host and contraception?” she asked. “That would never happen in Norway.”) She started pulling out books and DVDs from her shelves. Not only did most of them include female characters but they were pictured front and center. I bet the reason that her five year old daughter isn’t a “girlie-girl” is because she’s hasn’t been brought up on American media. You’ve probably heard of the Scandinavian Pippi Longstocking, but what about this Norwegian grandmother?
Or this elephant firefighter?
All of her DVDs look like that– the submarines, soldiers, police, and helicopters are female characters. I wish I spoke Norwegian.
“I’m not a feminist,” she told me. “I never had to be before I came to America. It’s so sexist here, maybe I am one now.”
A couple days ago, I blogged about how my kids love to read the cereal boxes while they eat breakfast and how the games and toys advertised are ridiculously male dominated.
Our current favorite cereal is Special K with red berries. It’s really good. And there’s a woman on the box! A superhero? A villain from Star Wars. Um, no. It’s a woman on a diet.
It is really driving me crazy that from cereal boxes to LEGO to card games to movies, we are bombarded 24/ 7 with these messages and images about gender. It sucks!
Reel Girl rates Special K ***SSS***
My children love card games, and even though I don’t, I’m learning to. Cards are a great activity for the whole family to do together. Playing them also teaches kids math, how to follow rules, strategy, and how to win and lose gracefully.
But what are the card games that we play with our kids also teaching them about gender?
So the all time worst has got to be Old Maid. Ugh. Horrible. Even before I knew I was a feminist, I was offended by this game that teaches kids no one wants to be stuck with the lone female card. I thought this game was so weird when I was a child and I still do. A racist card game would never be allowed to be sold to children. It’s not funny. As far as I’m concerned, Old Maid should be banned for its sexism. Reel Girl rates Old Maid ***SSS*** Do not play this game with your kids, or call it something else and use different cards.
My favorite card game right now is Slamwich. It’s really fun to play for my 8 yr old and 5 yr old. The cards are diverse in the gender representation. Most of the cards are food (the idea is to build your own sandwich) but there are also “muncher” and “thief” cards, three females and two males types. As far as amount, there is one more male thief card than female thief card. Reel Girl rates Slamwich ***GGG***
Another game we play is called Sleeping Queens. Can you tell by the name I have a problem with this game? At least it’s not called Sleeping Princesses, right?
The game was invented by a little girl, so that’s cool, except I wish she wasn’t influenced to play to this “female get rescued” script. It makes me sad about her imagination. The idea is to wake up the Sleeping Queens which you can do by picking a king card or rescuing her with a knight. Not so great. A dragon can block a knight from stealing a queen (we refer to the dragons as she). Playing a sleeping potion puts a queen back to sleep and that can be blocked with a magic wand. Queens are the power cards, the goal of the game is to get them, but they can’t wake themselves up. This game is pretty fun to play. Reel Girl rates Sleeping Queens ***G/ SS***
I loved this movie. I loved it so much that I wasn’t going to blog about it, because I do have some of my usual complaints about gender stereotyping, and there is that awful sexist joke. But then I read a harsh review in the LA Times and feel like I must defend the movie.
The LA Times is upset that the film strayed too far from the original, created new characters, and also implied that it was too colorful.
I don’t mind the journey away from the book. I enjoyed the new characters.
Of course, I wish more of those new characters were female. I wish Audrey’s role was not the love interest/ muse, that Ted’s whole quest wasn’t about trying to impress her. I’m pissed the movie shows kids that boys are attractive for what they do, how heroic and brave they are, but girls are attractive for how they appear. Still, Audrey is a Token Feisty. She’s an artist and it is her love of trees that inspires the movie. She also has a role to play at the end.
And I was laughing through this whole movie. I was not bored one time. I loved the short, evil corporate guy (Ted’s mom calls him a “babyman.”) and his Girl With a Dragon Tattoo bob. In fact, all the hair in this movie made me smile. The mom and the Granny sport high piles of curls that look like mountains of fancy mashed potatoes. And speaking of the Granny (played by Betty White) she is also a Token Feisty. One of my favorite animated characters ever.
I didn’t think the movie was too colorful. I loved the swirly orange and pink trees. And those pink trees are used to make the famous thneeds, the useless accessory that everyone decides they must have. So you know what that means, right? The thneeds that everybody wants are pink! The thneed cracked me up and reminded me of those baby slings I see all the moms is San Francisco wrap around themselves in 12 different ways and wear so beautifully, but for the life of me, when I had tiny babies, I could never figure out.
One of my consistent complaints about animated movies is that the crowd scenes leave females out (not to mention Dr. Seuss books crowd scenes.) The crowd scenes in “The Lorax” are stunning and fascinating with lots of diversity shown, especially with body types.
Finally, I love the message about environmentalism and the warning not to let corporate greed steal your soul. There are allusions to contemporary times such as a “Too big to Fail” sign. The once-ler is not a bad guy, he just got on the wrong path. He redeems himself in the end WEARING PINK. I wish I could post a picture for you, but I can’t find one so you’ll have to see the movie.
Reel Girl rates “The Lorax” ***GG/S***
My kids are obsessed with placing their cereal box directly in front of their bowl at breakfast. Each girl carefully situates her box and then reads it (or pretends to) while she eats. Today, my five year was staring at this picture:
She asked me: “Why do girls always wear pink?”
I wanted to know: Why is there one girl in this group of 5 kids in the “Create your own rap and dancing avatar!” game? Why do kids have to get bombarded from every direction with multiple images of boys and few if any images of girls?
Frustrated, I flipped her cereal box.
Darth Maul, Yoda, R2-D2, C-3PO, Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jar Jar Binks and our Token Feisty: Queen Amidala. These images are all advertising pens that are prizes inside the box. My daughter got Jar Jar Binks. She decided to give it to her male cousin. Why do you think?
Can you imagine a cereal box picturing 8 female heroes and villains to 1 male? Or 5 female rap avatars to 1 male?
Reel Girl rates Reese’s Puffs ***SS***
We live in a Victorian built in 1911. I love my house but space is limited, all three girls share a room. Desperate for space, we decided to get the most out of the bay window landing on the stairs. The glass reaches too low to build a window seat, our the first idea. So we lined it with cushions, put in a carpet, painted it, and squeezed the piano in. Love, love, love, it’s like another room!
