In my post about “Tom and Jerry,” I wrote about the exclusion and stereotyping of female characters. I didn’t write about the extreme violence in the cartoon. If I blogged about other animated male duos who relentlessly, brutally attack each other– Sylvester and Tweetie or Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd– I’d also complain not about the violence, but that the girls have gone missing as well. In fact, on my blog that rates kids’ media on how appropriate it is, I’ve hardly written about violence at all. Why?
I’m no fan of tons of blood and gore, but I also believe that violence is a crucial part of fantasy play. I don’t take the violence in fairy tales, myths, or stories literally. That is, I think of the violence in narratives mostly as a metaphor. For example, you could look at the story of David and Goliath as primarily a violent one (along with many stories in the Bible.) David kills Goliath. Or you can look at as story about the little guy going after the big one and winning: Erin Brockovitch taking on a corrupt power company. We all look at the story that way, right? So much so that the characters have become part of our language when we describe contemporary battles.
What happens when that language leave girls out?
Everyone slays dragons. In myths, in our dreams, in movies, we see it happen visually and literally on huge scales. In our own lives, we do it every day, in ways that are smaller and less dramatic, but can seem enormous in the moment: getting a project in on deadline, winning a debate, or organizing a messy closet.
I also think the violence in narratives provide useful metaphors and imagery for kids to experience emotions in a healthy way. Little kids live dramatic lives. They don’t get to go to a movie and they feel like their whole world is caving in. Narratives are a safe way to practice experiencing intense emotions: they actually see a world cave in.
Just in case you’re missing my point: I’m not advocating for violence where the males are always the heroes and the females are the victims. Violence shown as men hurting women in kids’ media, the way it is in the adult world of “entertainment,” is not my goal. I’d like to see female heroes acting bravely. If we had more female heroes, it wouldn’t be weird to show female victims as well.
“Violent play is not by definition bad or harmful for kids. Any child shrink worth her sand table will tell you it can help them learn about impulse control, work out the difference between fantasy and reality, and cope with fear….Children of both sexes crave larger than life heroes. They need fantasy. They also, it seems, need a certain amount of violent play…something that allows them to triumph in their own way over this thing we call death, to work out their day-to-day frustrations; to feel large, powerful, and safe.”
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.
A 6os period show, “The Playboy Club” attempted capitalize on the popularity of the swanky “Mad Men” series. But as former undercover bunny Gloria Steinem has said repeatedly: “Playboy clubs were not glamorous. They were tacky.”
Guess she’s not the only one who thinks so. Meanwhile, Women and Hollywood names “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm Hollywood Feminist of the Day for his astute comments on rape made at a benefit for a rape treatment center in LA.
“A much-needed commentary, a refreshing alternative to the “Reality TV killed him” angle elsewhere. I think this is very much worth writing about because of the tremendous popularity of this show (and admittedly, its sheer addictiveness). NBC is even running other “Real Housewives” franchises during the day in its old soap slot, so it’s not limited to just cable (Bravo). It’s an opportunity to help take domestic violence out of the closet and focus on this root problem.”
Instead of wishing Reality TV would just go away, which it won’t, why not use its mass appeal to educate the public about domestic violence? Or suicide prevention? RHOBH could run PSAs, could help bring the issue of DV to light in a multitude of ways including where abusers can go to get help. Why not advocate for that instead of trying to get Reality TV off the air?
Taylor Armstrong secretly revealed to cast members she was beaten so badly by Russell Armstrong she had to undergo surgery– and when he found out she spilled the beans, he sent Camille Grammer a threatening email…this according to multiple sources connected with the show.
The story goes on to report that Armstrong was hospitalized as a result of the beating. She tried to keep the abuse a secret but, because her face was bruised, she couldn’t show up for work and worried she’d be fired. Apparently, Armstrong confided in Camille Grammer and Kyle Richards who urged her to tell Bravo the truth about the abuse. When Taylor told Russell about her talk with her costars, he sent Grammer a threatening email.
The source for this story is TMZ which we all know is not the New York Times. But the New York Times also probably considers itself above following ‘gossip’ about Reality TV, even if the story is really about domestic violence, a drastically under-reported crime. If the TMZ story is true, it shouldn’t be hard to prove– there would be medical treatment, an email, and the reports of others on the show.
Yesterday, after reading so much media demonizing Reality TV for its role in making private ‘marital strains’ public, putting undue pressure on a quiet man who didn’t care about fame and helping to lead him to suicide, I posted: Did Reality TV save Taylor Armstrong?
Did being on Reality TV– the exposure, money, fame, and power, that came with it– help to make Taylor one of the rare women to speak out? Because she was not invisible but exposed, was she, on some level, more protected against further violence than the millions of other women? As the stats above cite, three women are murdered by their intimate partners in this country every day.
Obviously, I have no idea what was going on in Russell Armstrong’s head or in Taylor’s. Obviously this is all sad on many levels, but Reality TV’s role in bringing public awareness to the ‘private’ issue of domestic violence is not the tragedy in this story.
After Russell Armstrong, estranged husband of “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Taylor Armstrong, committed suicide this week, the internet was ablaze, pointing the finger at Reality TV, wanting to know: Did it kill Russell Armstrong?
Today on Salon.com TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz writes:
It’s time to get real about reality TV. As your parents may have warned you, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. People are getting hurt.
Armstrong, the estranged husband of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Taylor Armstrong, commited suicide on Monday. Friends have said the show changed him, that the pressure of having his marital strains examined on national TV and the financial stress of keeping up with much wealthier cast members all contributed to his emotional collapse.
Seitz calls Reality TV a blood sport and likens it to a modern day gladiator’s arena. His analogy is brilliant, and I’m no fan of the trainwreck that is reality TV. But I also find it disturbing that so much media commentary focuses on the aberration of Armstrong’s behavior becoming so public. What about his behavior? Is the tragedy here that Russell’s violent past, his “marital strains,” became known? Or is it that Russell couldn’t or wouldn’t get the help he needed to treat his sickness?
Violence against women is epidemic but far too invisible. Most survivors are so mired in shame, they don’t talk about the abuse to their friends, family, or the media. Until more survivors choose to speak up, as I wrote about for Salon in 2002, the public, including our legislators, will remain apathetic about taking any real steps to stop the violence. And of course, as long as survivors stay hidden, so do the perpetrators.
One in four women (25%) has experienced domestic violence in her lifetime.
85% of domestic violence victims are women.
Women ages 20-24 are at the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence.
Nearly three out of four (74%) of Americans personally know someone who is or has been a victim of domestic violence.
On average, more than three women are murdered by their intimate partners in this country every day.
Domestic violence is one of the most chronically under reported crimes.
Only approximately one-quarter of all physical assaults, one-fifth of all rapes, and one-half of all stalkings perpetuated against females by intimate partners are reported to the police.
Taylor Armstrong bucked the statistics. She said she was abused, she said so publicly, and she left her husband. Two weeks after she left Radar online reported Russell had two restraining orders against him and had pleaded guilt to battery in 1997.
Historically, the time when women are most vulnerable to more violence is when they leave their abusive partners. Did being on Reality TV– the exposure, money, fame, and power, that came with it– help to make Taylor one of the rare women to speak out? Because she was not invisible but exposed, was she, on some level, more protected against further violence than the millions of other women? As the stats above cite, three women are murdered by their intimate partners in this country every day.
Obviously, I have no idea what was going on in Russell Armstrong’s head or in Taylor’s. Obviously this is all sad on many levels, but Reality TV’s role in bringing public awareness to the ‘private’ issue of domestic violence is not the tragedy in this story.
Thank you Peggy Orenstein for writing the brilliant book Cinderella Ate My Daughter. Every parent should read this new, excellent analysis of the ubiquitous princess kid-culture and its various mutations in the world of grown-up women.
Orenstein, a NY Times journalist, mom, and writer takes on and deconstructs two (so annoying!) messages every parent hears if she dares to challenge the monarchy of these frothy creatures.
Myth number one: we’re just giving girls what they want!
Orenstein responds with a brief history of marketing and information on child brain development– some major points paraphrased here:
Pink Children were not color-coded until early twentieth century. Before that, babies wore all white, because to get clothing clean, it had to be boiled. Boys and girls also used to all wear dresses. When nursery colors were introduced, pink was more masculine, a pastel version of the red, which was associated with strength. Blue was like the Virgin Mary and symbolized innocence, thus the girl color. When the color switched is vague. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Alice in Wonderland all wear blue. Sleeping Beauty’s gown was switched to pink to differentiate her from Cinderella.
Baby doll In an 1898 survey, less than 25% of girls said dolls were their favorite toy. “President Theodore Roosevelt… obsessed with declining birth rates among white, Anglo-Saxon women, began waging a campaign against ‘race-suicide.’ When women ‘feared motherhood,” he warned, our nation trembled on the ‘brink of doom.’ Baby dolls were seen as a way to revive the flagging maternal instinct of girls, to remind them of their patriotic duty to conceive; within a few years, dolls were ubiquitous, synonymous with girlhood itself. Miniature brooms, dustpans, and stoves tutored these same young ladies in the skills of homemaking…”
Princess When Orenstein herself was a kid, being called a Princess, specifically Jewish-American, was the worst insult a kid (and her family) could get. How had a generation transformed this word into a coveted compliment?
Disney Princesses as a group brand did not exist until 2000. Disney hired Andy Mooney from Nike. He went to a Disney on Ice show and saw little girls in homemade princess costumes. Disney had never marketed characters outside of a movie release and never princesses from different movies together. Roy Disney was against it, and that’s why, still, even on pull-ups, you won’t see the princesses looking at each other. (How’s that for a model for girls in groups or female friendships?) Princesses are now marketed to girls ages 2 – 6. Mooney began the campaign by envisioning a girl’s room and thinking about a princess fantasy: what kind of clock would a princess have? What type of bedding? Dora and Mattel followed suit with Dora and Barbie princess versions and then along came everyone else.
Toddler Clothing manufacturers in the 1930s counseled department stores that in order to increase sales they should create a ‘third stepping stone’ between infant wear and older kids clothing
Tween Coined in the mid-1980s as a marketing contrivance (originally included kids 8 – 15)
More on tweens, toddlers, girls and boys: if there is micro-segmentation of products by age and gender, people buy more stuff. If kids need a pink bat and a blue bat, you double your sales. Orenstein writes: “Splitting kids and adults, or for that matter, penguins, into ever tinier categories has proved a surefire way to boost profits. So where there was once a big group called kids we now have toddlers, pre-schoolers, tweens, young-adolescents and older adolescents, each with their own developmental and marketing profile…One of the easiest ways to segment the market is to magnify gender differences or invent them where they did not previously exist.”
http://www.jeongmeeyoon.com/aw_pinkblue.htm SeoWoo and Her Pink Things by JeongMee Yoon
One major fallout of gendering every plaything? “Segregated toys discourage cross-sex friendships.” Boys and girls stop playing together. Orenstein writes about the long-term effects: “This is a public health issue. It becomes detrimental to relationships, to psychological health and well-being, when boys and girls don’t learn how to talk to one another…Part of the reason we have the divorce rates we do, domestic violence, dating violence, stalking behaviors, sexual harassment is because the lack of ability to communicate between men and women.”
Orenstein argues: “Eliminating divorce or domestic violence may be an ambitious mandate for a pre-school curriculum, but its not without basis: young children who have friends of the opposite sex have a more positive transition into dating as teenagers and sustain their romantic relationships better.”
Myth #2: that princess stuff is just a phase– she’ll grow out of it!
Princesses are marketed to girls 2 – 6 years old; there’s something very creepy and dangerous about making these kids victims of billion dollar industries. Kids brains are literally being formed, they’re malleable. So this little phase is helping to create a brain that lasts forever.
Scientists have pretty much moved on from the anachronistic, simplistic debate of nature versus nurture. It’s now understood that nature and nurture form and create each other in an endless loop. Your experiences influence your wiring.
For example, small kids can make all kinds of sounds to learn languages. Lise Eliot, author of Pink Brain, Blue Brain is quoted by Orenstein: “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.”
“It’s not that pink is intrinsically bad, it is such a tiny slice of the rainbow,” Orenstein writes. To grow brains, kids need more, varied experiences, not fewer.
Phases don’t vanish, they mutate.
Orenstein’s book traces how the real life Disney stars/ girl princesses (i.e. Lindsay Lohan, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus etc) attempt to make their transitions from girl-princesses into adult ones; or more crassly, from virgin to whore. Orenstein writes it’s impossible to commodify one end of the spectrum and not the other, and there are so few models of healthy female sexuality out there. She writes, “Our daughters may not be faced with the decision of whether to strip for Maxim, but they will have to figure out how to become sexual beings without being objectified or stigmatized.” All that early training for girls to focus incessantly on their appearance lasts a lifetime. What happens when these girls try to grow up? Orenstein writes girls learn, “Look sexy, but don’t feel sexual, to provoke desire in others without experiencing it themselves.”
How does this emphasis on dressing up and attention for appearance affect kids as they grow? Stephen Hinshaw, quoted from his book The Triple Bind, explains, “Girls pushed to be sexy too soon can’t really understand what they’re doing…they may never learn to connect their performance to erotic feelings or intimacy. They learn how to act desirable, but not to desire, undermining, rather than promoting, healthy sexuality.”
The basic message I got from this book: the issue is not pink or princesses, but to give your kid more experiences not less. Remember– many colors in the rainbow!
(1) Encourage and reinforce cross-gender play. If your daughter is playing with a boy, acknowledge it, reinforce what they’re doing. You are the biggest influence in your kid’s life, you’re not ‘just another person.’ Talk to your kids pre-school teachers and administrators about encouraging cross-gender play. There is lots in this book about how teachers are not trained in this area at all and miss opportunities to help brains grow.
(2) Remember, your kid is not a small adult. She has a different brain. Help that brain grow! If your son picks up a My Little Pony, buy it for him instead of yet another car. It won’t make him gay! It will make him smart!
(3) Your kids are watching you! Again, they are not just little people with fully formed minds. If you criticize your appearance (or another woman’s), how you treat your partner, how you eat, she takes note.
Lucy and me like Little Einsteins. Rose always interrupts. We like it because there are always problems in it. But we watch the whole thing before Rose wakes up. Then, after that, another one comes on. Finally, it’s over. Then another one comes on.
Here’s a story about Cinderella:
Cinderella has a dragon step-mother who tries to get her bad. Along the way comes the dragon step-sisters. Cinderella sometimes has her dress getting ripped by dragon claws and dragon feet.
Since I had kids, I can’t stay awake for a entire movie. Also, I’m not that into going out. I’ve tried to force ‘date night’ but the cost is insane– with the sitter, parking, and a movie or dinner. I’m also exhausted by the time we go out and starving, I’m used to eating at 5pm.
So here’s the solution: watching series. I love it! It’s perfect for our attention span, My kids go to bed at 7pm so Dan and I light a fire and watch. Its relaxing, cheap, and fun.
We started out with “The Wire” which, like many people, I think is the best thing on TV ever. Though it took me a long time to ‘get it.’ I saw the first episode in the hospital, after I had Rose, and had to watch it, literally, over 10 times before I could follow the plot.
Now we’re watching “24.” We started watching this on vacation, when the house we were renting had it in their DVD library. Its entertaining but total propaganda. Everyone in the show is always watching FOX News. The hero in the episodes we just watched is the Secretary of Defense. His daughter spotted the villain at a Heritage Foundation dinner. And the idiot of the show is a lawyer for Amnesty International. The series is basically a dramatized justification for torture. That said, it’s well acted and keeps your attention.
Any suggestions for us when we’re done? I tried “Mad Men” which I understand is about sexism, not sexist. I liked it very much. But it depressed me. I can’t watch it when I have three little kids.
Even though I wasn’t a supporter of Sarah Palin, she was recently hired at Fox News, and I feel I need to warn her. After all, she’s a brunette who often wears glasses– a breed targeted for extinction in Foxworld.
There’s something creepy going on at Fox, and it’s not just the skewed way they choose to report the news. When a woman gets a job on the “fair and balanced” news network, she gets “Foxified.” No matter how she looks or how old she is when she signs her contract, these female contributors transform, appearing on our screens strangely clone-like, blonde and so heavily made up they all look around 40.
Greta Van Susteren famously made the cover of People after she scored her own show on the network and got “Foxified,” sporting much lighter hair and tighter skin.
When I used to produce talk radio programs for the ABC affiliate in the Bay Area, and the host had a legal issue he wanted to discuss, I often booked a brilliant and beautiful law professor as an expert: Lis Weihl. After 9/11, she was hired by Fox News. The next time I saw her on TV, I only recognized her by her name in the byline.
Fox News is a modern day Stepford factory for accomplished women. By turning professors and authors into porn star doppelgangers, the network effectively communicates what women say is not as important how they appear.
The older, winkled, balding male stars of the news channel obviously have different physical requirements to get a job on TV. Maybe Palin earns some of those privileges, because she’s already famous with her own loyal following. We’ll have to wait and see if her brown hair and Tina Fey glasses survive the preferences of Fox News President Roger Ailes, himself not the most svelte, glossy headed guy in town.
Update: I’m not attacking these women for getting jobs; I’m pointing out the sexist requirements for men versus women on TV. Furthermore, being “Foxified” doesn’t translate to being attractive or beautiful. As a commenter pointed out, it has to do with becoming a “femmebot.” The blonde dye jobs and overly made up faces on Fox News women are indicative of a culture dominated by caucasians and capitalism, keeping women in line by rewarding them when they conform to the rules. It’s a reflexive, but still clever, way to keep women in their place and uphold the power structure as it is.
http://www.jeongmeeyoon.com/aw_pinkblue.htm SeoWoo and Her Pink Things by JeongMee Yoon
dailyuw.com
Lis Wiehl, “Foxified”
People
