Parents, you buy your kids shoes. You have the money. Do not cave into this. It is a big deal.
If you’ve been reading my M & Ms posts, the main physical difference between the hyper-sexualized females and the playful, funny males are shoes. The males get sneakers; they can move. The females get heels; then they straddle trees and pose for SI Sports Illustrated.
I saw the link to Hain’s shoe piece on three descriptors and other such nonsense. That blogger takes her daughter outside to play everyday. Totally admire that. I am going to try harder. As I told three descriptors, it’s easiest for me when my kids are quiet, reading or doing art, but every time I actually get myself outside, I love it. I live in California for God’s sake. And in the long run, it is better for me, too, to get them out because my kids are happier.
Thanks to all the mom bloggers for writing about this stuff and being aware. It’s the first step.
Reel Girl rates Stride Rite ***SSS*** for major stereotyping.
That’s the caption for an Elizabeth Arden ad I saw in O Magazine. Here it is:
I know there’s hardly any point in getting pissed off about sexist ads from cosmetic companies, but the mom being “beautiful” gives her daughter something to look forward to?
Are you kidding me?
What really drives me crazy about this fucked up commercial is that we get all pissed off and holier than thou about moms who put their daughters in beauty pageants or shows like “Toddlers and Tiaras.” This ad from Elizabeth Arden in a mainstream magazine sends the exact same message: mothers and daughters are connected by a mutual obsession with beauty, and beauty will lead them both to success and adventure.
The difference between “Toddlers and Tiaras” and this Elizabeth Arden ad? Class. Moms with money may buy expensive cream. Moms with less money may put their kids in beauty pageants. Getting upset by one and not the other is like saying you’re not an alcoholic as long as you drink aged scotch or expensive wine. We owe our children more than this.
Elizabeth Arden, my daughters have more to look forward to than being “beautiful.” Please leave my kids out of your stupid commercial.
If you agree and are offended by this ad, please tell Elizabeth Arden on its Facebook page.
Yesterday, I blogged about how, except for the pink ghetto, female characters marketed to kids are usually shown as a minority. They are also sexualized. See the M & Ms below as a typical example. Ms. Brown, the new female M & M character, also shown in heels, is missing from this photo. You can see her here.
I wrote about how presenting females as a minority is dangerous because it normalizes invisible women. Adults stop noticing that girls have gone missing. So do kids.
Females are 51% of the population but we manage to make the illusion of a female minority real when it comes to power positions across America. At the top, women are stuck at 16%.
Where else are females a minority? In the imaginary world, a place where singing lions befriend warthogs, rats can cook, and toys come to life, where anything should be possible. So why is the animated world so sexist? Why do the female M & Ms have to be in the minority, wear high heels, and bat their eyelashes? Why is this OK with parents? What is this gender stereotyping teaching our kids?
A couple things happened after my blog yesterday.
I got even more than the usual amount of hate emails on SFGate: Who cares about M & Ms, I’m stupid, I’m ugly, I can’t write blah blah blah.
And finally, my daughter is turning three this week. When I went to Party City this morning, I was greeted at the door by a giant green M & M in go go boots. Every kid who walks in the store sees that. It is messed up. It’s no better than that cartoon Camel selling cigarettes to kids. Sexualizing girls is dangerous, and it needs to stop.
So, if you think the above picture is messed up, if you think female M & Ms should be allowed to wear sneakers and run around just like the males get to do, please go to M&Ms Facebook page. Ask M & Ms to stop sexualizing cartoon characters. It’s bad for kids.
Reel Girl rates M & Ms ***SSS*** for extreme gender stereotyping.
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!
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***
It’s so great that a female architect designed and gets to intro the new LEGO Town Hall set. Here’s the video.
Do you think this architect is grateful she didn’t have to play with the ridiculous Friends set when she was a kid?
But my enthusiasm waned when the architect introduced the minifigs. First comes the Mayor, the boss and the most important one, the star of the set. He’s male. (We see his cool office inside as well.) Next comes his secretary, guess what gender?
I was spacing out listening to this video and the reason I even started to pay attention was I heard the architect was going on and on about “a new print on her torso and there is this old tradition that you have to wear something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. And she’s wearing a new necklace and yeah, a new print.”
I did a double take and realized she was talking about the bride. Specifically, her dress and accessories.
LEGO deserves kudos for letting a female intro this set. When she comes on she says: “I bet you’re surprised to see me,” so I’m thinking its the first time she’s gotten this role. I hope she had a big role in the Town Hall design as well. But LEGO, please try to break out of the gender stereotypes with your minifigs. Remember, you’re marketing these characters to kids. You’re giving kids tools for fantasy play and showing children what they can be when they grow up. Except for the “lady reporter” the adult figs are all limited to “traditional” gender roles. What about a female mayor and a male secretary? Would LEGO ever consider that?
Parents, please: enough with the “we’re just giving kids what they want.” Children learn through play. Segregated toys are inhibiting kids’ brain development by severely limiting their experiences. Children’s brains have more plasticity than at any other time in life, that’s why they can learn languages rapidly. Once those synapses make connections or shut down, its harder for brains to grow later. Read more about all that here. And here. And here.
What can you do? Resist marketing. It’s messing with your kid’s brain. You are the parent. You’re the shopper, the one with the wallet. Buy wisely.
How?
Get your daughters out of the monochromatic world of pink. Or any monochromatic world. Your kid may resist. This may be a challenge for her because kids love routine. But, still, challenge your kid with toy choice the way you would with any other learning activity. Help them to branch out and encourage them to try new things. Get excited about the toy. Play with it with them. Most of all, they want your attention.
Schedule play dates with kids of the opposite sex. If your kid’s preschool tends to segregate by gender, or allows them to self-segregate, talk to teachers and the head of school about mixing it up. Kids learn when they move out of their comfort zone.
Read your sons books where the main characters are girls.
Show your sons and daughters animation where the main characters are female (Miyazaki is a great choice.) After we all see “Tintin” or “Lord of the Rings” or “Arthur Christmas” on the screen, the posters all over town, and then the video games that follow and the toys derived from the movies, all practically without females, it seems normal that there are so few girls represented everywhere except for the pink ghetto. The annihilation of girls passes us by unnoticed. Girls are half of the kid population, yet children’s movies today normalize an imaginary reality where females hardly exist at all. Then we all literally buy into it. How do you think that makes girls feel? What does it make kids think? What are kids learning about which gender is more important?
Let stores and toy companies know how you feel about their relentless drive to segment toys by gender in order to sell products. Write to the companies directly. Blog about them. Tell your friends about it on Facebook.
We are SPARKing this movement armed with Post-It notes and cameras in the blue and pink aisles. (Seriously, some stores have actually have colored their toy aisles pink and blue! When will it end?) With your Post-Its, make a note using slogans like “Where My Girls At?” in the blue aisle, “Your Girl Needs Joe, too” on a GI Joe, “This Is An Option For Everybody” and “What About Dads?” on the baby dolls.
SPARK advises to use statistics:
women make up only 13% of architects (I wonder why LEGO?), 14% of active US military (Where is G.I. Jane?), and 4% of executive chefs — so, why are all the kitchen gadgets pink when so many chefs are men?
I’ve thought about these kinds of stats a lot, and it comes down to this: if it’s low status, its assigned as “feminine” (cooking), and women dominate; but if its high status, all of a sudden it becomes “masculine” (being a chef) and men dominate. This bait and switch applies to the whole stereotype that boys like action while girls are more literary, good with words, and artsy. Unless we’re talking about the Pulitzer Prize or the latest exhibition at the MOMA, in which case, all of a sudden men rule the roost.
A department store in London, Hamley’s, decided to break out of the current trend and organize its toys by toy type instead of by the gender of the kid: arts and crafts, building toys, outdoor toys etc. Congrats to Hamley’s. Let’s hope the land of the free and the brave and its Targets and Walmarts learn something. In the meantime, parents need to shop carefully.
If you watch “Tom and Jerry” on DVD, before the cartoon begins, a disclaimer appears on the screen informing the viewer that while some episodes show racial stereotypes, they haven’t been censored because editing them out would be denying the racism ever happened which is worse than showing it. There is also an introduction by Whoopi Goldberg, which does not come on automatically but can be selected on the menu, essentially explaining the same thing.
The racism in “Tom and Jerry” is often shown when a character gets too close to an explosive, it goes off, and he turns up in blackface. Ha ha ha.
I know this because I have three daughters ages 2 – 8. A while ago we saw a “Tom and Jerry” episode on TV (no racism in that one.) They loved it, and I enjoyed it as well. I liked the old fashioned, no bells and whistles animation, and I thought the classical music accompaniment along with the minimal dialogue was pretty cool. So I bought them a couple of DVDs full of cartoons.
But as we watched them together, not only was there some racism, but in all of the episodes, there were practically no female characters. If one did finally saunter onto the screen, she was so sexualized with her bow-red lips curling and spidery eyelashes incessantly batting as Tom and Jerry competed over her, I wanted to put my hands over my daughters’ eyes.
The non-sexualized female in Tom and Jerry? That would be the African-American one, Mammy Two-Shoes, most often shown headless with a pink ruffled apron snugly tied below her large breasts.
So why is there no disclaimer that appears on the screen about the female stereotypes in “Tom and Jerry?” Where is the introduction from Gloria Steinem explaining the historical relevance of this distorted gender stereotyping as a product of its time?
Unfortunately, the reason that there’s no disclaimer and no introduction is because sexist stereotypes in kids’ cartoons are just as accepted in 2012 as they were sixty years ago. Sexist jokes in animation are, apparently, still hilarious. In fact, if you go to theater right now, you’ll be treated to two of them prominently featured in previews for upcoming films: one about how girls can’t fight in Madagascar 3and an ugly woman joke in The Lorax.
Keep in mind that these movies are made for kids. Parents, do you really want to pay $10 a pop so your sons and daughters can be taught to laugh because girls supposedly can’t toss a pillow or aren’t skinny enough to be pretty?
What can you do about the rampant sexism in animation? That girls have basically gone missing from kids’ films? If you’re in a theater and you see one of these sexist jokes, start with calling out: NOT FUNNY. Do it for your kids.
Update: I’ve gotten a couple comments on SFGate about how in her foreward, Whoopi Goldberg refers to “women.”
It’s clear that the emphasis of her intro is race. She talks about the how “racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in the name of entertainment” and how people were made fun of “especially when it came to racial and ethnic groups.” She talks quite a bit about Mammy Two Shoes and the talent of the actress who voices her as well as the artist who drew her. She never refers to the sexualization of women and girls. I never get the impression that this is the kind of stereotyping that she is referring to. Because the racism in “Tom and Jerry” is worse, more blatant, and less accepted today, just as with Tintin, it gets called out while most of sexism is allowed to pass unnoticed. The same kind of sexism is rarely called out when it appears, as it often does, in animated films today. You can watch Goldberg’s intro here.
