Category Archives: Toys & products

After massive protest, Disney pulls new Merida from site

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Exciting news! Today, Rebecca Hains, blogger and media studies professor, reports:

“As of today, Disney has quietly pulled the 2D image of Merida from its website, replacing it with the original Pixar version. Perhaps we’ll be spared an onslaught of sexy Merida merchandise yet.”

YAY! Check out the link, it’s true! BRAVE Merida is back.

I guess Disney was right to be so terrified of creating a strong, BRAVE, female protagonist (along with Pixar studios which hadn’t had ANY female protags before “Brave.”) It looks like Merida could be turning Disney’s franchise on it’s head. That’s pretty damn heroic.

Another mistake Disney made with “Brave?” They hired a female director. They fired her, but it was too late. Brenda Chapman wrote “Brave” based on her daughter. She was furious with the character’s transformation and wrote publicly about Disney’s terrible mistake.

Of the debacle Hains writes:

That’s right: Although Merida was created by a woman as a role model for girls, the male-dominated consumer product division at Disney has ignored the character’s intended benefits for young girls, sexualizing her for profit. Compared with her film counterpart, this new Merida is slimmer and bustier. She wears makeup, and her hair’s characteristic wildness is gone: It has been volumized and restyled with a texture more traditionally “pretty.” Furthermore, she is missing her signature bow, arrow, and quiver; instead, she wears a fashionable sash around her sparkly, off-the-shoulder gown. (As Peggy Orenstein noted when she broke the news of the redesign, “Moms tell me all the time that their preschool daughters are pitching fits and destroying their t-shirts because ‘princesses don’t cover their shoulders.’” I’ve heard the same from parents, as well.)

Is the sexualized  image of Merida gone for good? Has Disney learned a lesson? Or will that lesson be: No more strong female characters leading a film! No more female directors writing about their daughters! Keep the females weak and quiet!

It’s up to you. This could be a turning point. Parents, please use your voice and your wallet to keep strong, heroic females showing up in narratives and images marketed to your kids. Right now, girls are missing from children’s media and when they do appear, they’re sexualized. This is normal. Not healthy, but tragically, perfectly normal.

Yesterday, Melissa Wardy posted this image on her Pigtail Pals Facebook page, reminding us Merida’s new image was not created in a vacuum.

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Objectifying and sexualizing girls is dangerous. A first step to abuse is always dehumanizing the victim. Propaganda, in the form of images and narratives, effectively dehumanizes on a mass scale.

Images/ narratives of Jews circa 1938

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Africans circa 1931

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Females circa 2013

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It’s easy to look back on history and wonder: How did people ever put up with that? I’d never buy into it, not to mention expose my child to it. But what are you participating in right now that is completely accepted, not to mention celebrated, by our culture?

Be part of the solution. Demand narratives with strong female characters for your kids.

Update: New Merida may be off Disney’s site but she’s showing up all over the place including Target. Below is Target’s web page. It’s shameful and dangerous that Disney sexualizes girls.

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Artist’s how-to video shows distorted propotions for female characters

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On Reel Girl’s Facebook page, Ana Campos shared a YouTube video by Marc Crilley, one of her favorite Manga artists. Crilley is an incredibly successful writer and illustrator of children’s books. The video is fascinating because Crilley takes you through the steps of how artists distort female anatomy. First, Crilley draws a regularly proportioned teenage girl. Then, he demonstrates the typical pattern and process of how artists exaggerate her proportions, drawing three well-known, female animated characters.

Crilley narrates:

It’s troubling, really in a way that artists, maybe many of them male, have this way of reducing the width of the female waist when they’re drawing it to just ridiculously small proportions and you know, you do sort of fear that this contributes to women’s body image, this crazy idea of the super narrow waist, but nevertheless you see it again and again. Finally, the big difference here, the knees, the line of the knees, much, much higher than in real life. So what’s interesting is you see that the whole area of the waist is being raised up here so as to create these incredibly long legs as an exaggerated style. To me, its sort of like Barbie doll style legs…

While watching this video, I was thinking about the incredible influence of the artist to create reality. When you combine images with narratives, it can be so powerful, like being God. Not to mention repeating and repeating the same sequence to the growing brains of little kids.

Here’s the video:

Cheerios box shows kids girls gone missing

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My four year old daughter loves Cheerios, and last night, my husband brought home a new box. Excited for breakfast this morning, we got it out. Here’s what we saw on the front: Shrek, Puss In Boots, and Donkey, 3 male characters from “Shrek.”

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“Shrek,” a movie starring a male and titled for the male, has two sequels. Where is Fiona, Shrek’s co-star (though I admit that moniker is stretching it) on this package? Puss In Boots got his own eponymous spin off movie. Perhaps that’s why he made it on the DVD/ package? “Puss In Boots” is a buddy movie starring Puss’s frenemy, Humpty Dumpty. Kitty Softpaws is a great Minority Feisty in that film, but where is her own movie, titled for her? Have you ever heard of her? Do your kids remember who she is?

Besides “Shrek,” there are 3 other Cheerios collectible DVDs where we can “catch up with all our favorite DreamWorks characters.”

Unlike other cereal brands that have their own mascots, a cast of no less than 100% male characters, Cheerios borrows its crew from DreamWorks. But, apparently, these favorites don’t privilege females either, to say the least. “How to Train Your Dragon” pictures a boy and his male dragon, the two stars. We do see a girl riding bitch. Then, there’s “Kung Fu Panda” starring…Kung Fu Panda! And finally, Madagascar showing 6 male characters: the zebra, lion, and 4 penguins. Where is the hippo, the Minority Feisty in that movie?

Hippo does show up in the “fame game” on the reverse side of the box.

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See, there she is down on the left. There are 8 characters and she is the only female. The game your kids play is “match each character to what they are famous for.” While characters are known for “Training the Furious Five” or “Being the Dragon Warrior,” what’s the hippo known for? “Loving a Giraffe.” No joke. Incidentally, my six year old daughter told me that hippo’s feelings are not reciprocated; giraffe never wants to dance with her.

See that little box to the right with the Croods character? He’s one the males from that movie too.

I write this a lot, but if this Cheerios box were one of many images kids see, it would not be a big deal. But again and again, kids see females go missing. It’s totally normal in their world. They don’t think anything of it and neither do we. But females are half of the population, so why are they presented as a tiny minority in kidworld practically everywhere outside of the Pink Ghetto? It’s an annihilation that acclimates a whole new generation to expect and accept a world where females go missing. Hey, Cheerios, can you make at least half of the characters on your box female? There’s no reason for the imaginary world to be sexist.

 

Little LEGO men are harassing me? WTF?

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As if LEGO, with its idiotic, dumbed down LEGO for girls, its pet-shops and hot tubs, isn’t offensive enough, now this? A worker calling out, “Hey babe!” Are you kidding me?

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Please Tweet: Hey @LEGO_Group, these stickers teach kids that #streetharassment is OK. I’m #NotBuyingIt

(via Miss Representation)

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 glitter 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.

Toy companies start marketing sexism as progressive

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I’ve blogged about the Nerf’s new, idiotic toy line “for girls,” Rebelle, which includes a pink bow and arrow called the Heartbreaker. What’s remarkable is that the toy makers are marketing this line as progressive.

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First, the headline on CNN: “Barbie, Nerf, redefine ‘girl’ toys.”

Isn’t that great? Leaders in breaking gender stereotypes! Read on.

Parents have gotten more open minded when it comes to how children play and what kind of toys are appropriate for their kids, according to Maureen O’Brien, a developmental psychologist who consulted with Mattel (MAT, Fortune 500) on its Mega Bloks set.

More open minded? I guess open-minded means going to a mega store chain like Target and shopping in a “girl” aisle full of pink. Gender segregated toys have never been so homogenized and mass-marketed and cross-marketed through movies, clothing, videos, apps and diaper icons as they are today. Here’s an ad for  LEGO ‘for girls’ from 1981, when I was a kid.

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Here’s an ad for LEGO for girls, literally, today:

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The CNN post rewrites history and misleads further here:

“There has always been this artificial gender distinction when it comes to play, but now it’s falling away as we learn more about the advantages of different toys,” said O’Brien.

 

It’s not falling away. It’s getting so defined, kids can hardly cross it.

Here is the “to be sure” paragraph. When I teach Op-Ed writing, I always talk about the “to be sure” graph writers must include to anticipate counter-arguments. You’re not supposed to actually use the cliche phrase as this writer does here:

To be sure, the new toys continue to play into some stereotypes. A Barbie construction set lets children build a fashion boutique, Lego Friends sells a pet salon, and the Nerf Rebelle comes in shades of hot pink and purple.

 

Except for that little, tiny issue, everything is cool, right?

Here’s the hilarious thing about the post. Toy companies actually admit that gender segregation is about making money.

 For toy makers, it is a relatively inexpensive move because they don’t need to develop an entire new line of toys from scratch. In fact, most of them use the same tools and models they use for the traditional toys, says Johnson.

And then again, at the end of the post:

“It’s driven by a simple fact,” said Sean McGowan, a toy analyst with Needham Co. “If you can get a product targeted to one gender to be appealing to the other, you can significantly increase sales.”

The reason these “experts” have the guts to confess the drive isn’t “nature” but capitalism is because the post frames the choice under the umbrella of a bold and non-traditional move.

In her book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Peggy Orenstein is more clear:

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.

Get it? Instead of buying one, you buy 2. Or you’re supposed to pick this one, instead of some other brand, because it’s made especially for YOU.

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This image, via The Society Pages, is so stupid its almost funny. If this product looks ridiculous to you, so should Nerf’s Heartbreaker bow. Not only that, you should help your kid see how stupid gender segregation is. We now understand that kids learn gender the same way they learn language, meaning they are born full of potential for a wide range of behavior, and based on learning, specific wiring is developed. Do you want multi-national companies whose main goal is to make money to have this level of influence in shaping your child’s brain?

 

Kids underwear with female superheroes sells out!

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Sick of going to Target and seeing only princess, Hello Kitty, or Monster High underwear for your daughter?

Check out this totally cool female superhero underwear that I saw on  A Mighty Girl’s Facebook page:

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Supergirl:

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And Batgirl

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Seeing this reminded me of a Huffington Post story a few people sent me last month: “Why I Bought Boys Underwear for my Daughter.” The post was written by a frustrated dad trying to shop for his 5 year old daughter:

Our underwear shopping system seemed to be going fine until my daughter discovered the existence of the boys’ underwear aisle.

“Dad! Come over here!”

I followed her voice and found my daughter standing, slack-jawed and indignant, looking at the much, much larger and more varied selection of character underwear in the boys’ aisle.

 

“They have LEGO ‘Star Wars’ underwear! And superheroes! OH! And ‘Phineas and Ferb!’ Dad, can I get these? Do they have girl ones?”

And I had to stand and tell her that no, no, they didn’t make girl versions of these brands of character underwear and I didn’t really have a good explanation why.

If you’re unfamiliar with the world of children’s character underwear, here’s a quick breakdown:

In the girls’ aisle, they have underwear featuring Disney princesses, Hello Kitty, Monster High (a goth-themed toy line), and maybe a few Nickelodeon-branded kids shows (“iCarly,” for example). That’s it.

In the boys’ aisle, they have underwear featuring ‘Star Wars’ (both LEGO and regular versions), DC Superheroes, “Phineas and Ferb,” “Toy Story,” “Batman,” “Transformers,” “The Avengers” –- it’s a much larger character pool.

 

So up to there I’m totally with this Dad. But then, this:

Do kids’ underwear manufacturers think that, if they put an image of a male character on girls’ underwear, that it will somehow turn the girls into boy-crazy sex maniacs? The logic completely escapes me.

 

The logic is that there are limited female characters on underwear, because there are limited female characters at all. Even though females are half of the kids population, in kidworld, except for the pink ghetto, girls are shown as a minority.

My big issue is that my daughter is a huge comic book, “Star Wars,” and superhero fan, and, in my vast shopping experience, I have never found any girls’ character underwear that spoke to any of those creative properties. Fine — If you think that having Anakin Skywalker on her undies will turn my daughter into a lusty, inhibition-challenged Jedi-chaser, then just let her have some underwear with Princess Leia or Ahsoka Tano on it, OK? But none exists.

There’s a pack of boys’ DC Superhero underwear that only has the logos of various superheroes on them. Why couldn’t they make those for girls? If the Superman “S” or the Batman bat symbol can appear on boys’ undies, why can’t you stick the same logo on girls’ undies and just call them Supergirl and Batgirl underwear? I couldn’t even find her any Wonder Woman underwear, even though I know my sister was the proud owner of Wonder Woman Underoos back in the ‘80s.

The dad, as you can tell by the post title, ends up buying his daughter boy underwear:

I’m glad this dad saw a problem here, but the larger issue is the lack of heroic, female protagonists in stories marketed to girls and boys.

But here’s the good news. Now there is female superhero underwear. Not only that, but on its Facebook page, A Mighty Girl reports:

Last week we posted about our discovery of a new line of superhero underwear for girls but they were so popular that they sold out on Amazon half an hour after our post. Well, we said that we’d let you know when they were restocked and thanks to A Mighty Girl supporter Megan Millaway Burks for giving us a heads up that they are now available again.

Of course, we can’t promise that they will last very long this time as well so our apologies in advance if they become unavailable. To check out the new superhero line for girls, with seven different designs featuring Batgirl, Supergirl and Wonder Woman, visit http://www.amightygirl.com/7pk-dc-comics-girls-briefs

Also, due to the many requests for more options, we found several new superhero underwear sets for teens and adults and added them to our clothing section at http://www.amightygirl.com/clothing?clothing_type=153

To check out all superhero-related clothing on A Mighty Girl, including many t-shirts and PJs, visit http://www.amightygirl.com/clothing?clothing_themes=144

Sold out. Are you listening Hollywood and Target? We are starved for narratives, toys, and clothing with female protagonists.

Buy female superhero underwear here. (Or try to!)

 

M &Ms, Goldfish, cereal boxes, and the Minority Feisty

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I know you probably think I’ve gone over the deep end with all the vitriol I’ve expressed towards M & Ms for presenting its female characters as a high heeled, kissy-lipped minority.

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But the problem here is that this same old image and narrative is everywhere in kidworld. Whose kids eat Goldfish? Here’s our package:

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There it is again: Brooke, the Minority Feisty.

And kids cereal? Even Raj of “Big Bang Theory.” Raj said he’d done the research and there are no female cereal box characters at all.

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What happens to kids when they grow up saturated in a world where everywhere they look, girls go missing?

Don’t think sexy M & Ms are marketed to kids? Remember Joe Camel?

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If you’re going to argue that kids aren’t the market for M & Ms’ sexist ads, children are attracted to animation. You can debate whether that’s natural, conditioning, or a mix of both, but anyone who has a child knows her eyes go to cartoon characters like a magnet. That’s why the U.S. government banned Joe Camel.

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If a company is going to use cartoon characters to sell products, not to mention a self-described “family brand” whose product is candy, it should take the responsibility not to promote sexism in its advertising. That’s bad for kids. This mom won’t be buying any more M & Ms. I hope you join me.

Please Tweet or go to M &Ms Facebook page #NotBuyingIt