Category Archives: Toys & products

Female desire and the princess culture

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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.”

SeoWoo and Her Pink Things by JeongMee Yoonhttp://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.

Cheapskate Santa gave best Christmas ever

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This year, my husband and I told our kids that Santa was probably going to give each of them just two presents. Not because they were bad, we said, but Santa was exhausted. “He really tired himself out last year, trying to haul so many presents around the world, many of them way too heavy for him and the reindeer.”

My daughter prefers her old teletubbie to new presentsMy daughter prefers an old teletubbie to new presents 

“The elves are burnt out too,” we said. “And if they work too hard again, they might not be able to do anything next Christmas.”

Last year, my husband and I went crazy with gifts. Flashy ones like kitchens you had to build that came with fake wooden food and matching plate sets, plastic cars big enough to sit in, and pretty clothes from Mudpie. And in spite of our efforts, maybe even because of them, it seemed like everyone ended up in a bad mood.

I was unhappy surveying the loot, because I had no idea where to put all that stuff. I didn’t want a tent in my living room.

Santa gave my kids an air hockey table so large a family of five could eat Christmas dinner on it. My husband was upset, because I didn’t appreciate the air hockey table that he transported in his truck, home from Target, and then spent hours and hours putting together– along with the play kitchen and the car. I was mad about that too, because while he assembled, getting in a progressively horrible mood as he misplaced tiny parts, I was left to do all the wrapping, in beautiful paper sold by individual sheet, tied up with sheer, wiry ribbons that he didn’t seem to admire at all.

Needless to say, on Christmas morning a year ago, when the kids woke up and tore open their presents, there were no cries of “how lovely!” about the wrapping. They were disappointed when all the unwrapping was over. No more presents! And then they went on to covet and compare and argue over each other’s gifts.

So this year each kid got a Penbo Penguin— a penguin that waddles around, talks when you pet it, and lays an egg. (Apparently, my kids along with many others across America, saw this creature on TV and fell in love.) My toddler also got some monster trucks, my four year old received a stuffed, lavender unicorn, and my seven year old, a rockstar Zhu Zhu pet.

Penbo Penguin

Here’s the thing: my kids got upset when there were no more presents to open, but no more upset than they were last year when they received more than triple the presents. Seriously. I could time the minutes they spent on regret, and it would be the same.

Here is what I learned: no matter how many presents there are, the ending will always come and endings are always kind of sad. The major difference this year was that I was able to just let my kids be sad. I didn’t get mad at them about how ungrateful or spoiled they were for not appreciating the time and money that went towards making the day perfect for them. For the first time, I didn’t try to use my adult reasoning on their child-minds to get them see the light. I let Christmas be about them and not about me. Not taking it all personally, I was able to see their point of view, let them bum out a little, and then move on in their own time.

I could do this because I felt serene. I didn’t have my annual anxiety attack about all the stuff and how there was nowhere to put it. And maybe the best thing, for my family and the planet: there were no mounds of garbage! Not only were there less presents, but there was no pile of gorgeous paper and $10 bows. On Christmas Eve, instead of swearing as he assembled toys with directions as elaborate as nuclear bombs, my husband and I wrapped together, using thin paper from Walgreens that ripped easily. I let him help, appreciating his lumpy wrap-jobs, white undersides showing at the corners, just happy to do it together. In twenty minutes, we were all done, and we had a great night, watching a movie by the fire.

I wonder what it would be like to start 2011 well-rested with no hangover?

Share your Christmas stories

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Please share with me any stories you have about shopping and what you found marketed to boys or girls, what you bought, and what they end up liking or hating.

One of my resolutions for 2011 is to make ReelGirl a great resource for parents looking for media and products that will empower their kids. I’m going to focus on rating toys, books, TV, and movies. I can use your help telling me what’s out there.

Thanks and Happy Holidays

‘Tis the season for stereotyping

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Please, Santa, not another pink christmas!

I’m the mother of three daughters, and last Christmas, my first with three kids, I was overwhelmed by pink presents, waxy haired dolls, rainbows, fairies and stuffed animals with curly eyelashes and bows. Shocked at the remarkable difference between toys marketed to girls versus boys, when my nine month had far more in common with her ten month old male cousin than her older sisters; frustrated and annoyed that boys’ toys were action based– building, driving, moving– while girls’ toys, at baby age, were about grooming and looking pretty, I started my blog ReelGirl to rate toys and media for girl empowerment as a resource for parents.

SeoWoo and Her Pink Things by JeongMee YoonSeoWoo and Her Pink Things by JeongMee Yoon 

One year later, I’ve discovered some incredible allies everywhere from the blogosphere to think tanks to the art world, all communicating the message to parents: stop falling into the easy trap of gender stereotyping and programming our kids at the youngest possible age.

There’s the story of Katie Goldman that went viral on the internet: Katie is a seven year-old sci-fi fan from Evanston, Illinois, who carried her “Star Wars” water bottle to school every day, until crying, she asked her mom if she could take an old pink one instead. Kids at school teased her, insisting “Star Wars” was only for boys.

There is The Pink Stinks campaign in the UK.

There is the Korean artist, JeongMee Yoon, his work pictured above, who created The Pink and Blue Project. He photographed boys with all their blue things and girls with all their pink things. On his website, Yoon writes: “The saccharine, confectionary pink objects that fill my images of little girls and their accessories reveal a pervasive and culturally manipulated expression of femininity.”

Lyn Mikel Brown, author of Packaging Girlhood, launched a campaign to get some girl themed balloons included in the Macys Thanksgiving Day parade. She says, “In the 84-year history of the parade, only 8% of all the balloons were of female characters. That’s 10 out of 129! Macy’s has over 3.5million people lining the New York streets to watch the parade and another 50 million viewing from home. Don’t the little girls deserve to see themselves reflected in the event?”

A Ms. Magazine blogger, Emily Rosenbaum, has a post up about how toy stores don’t offer gender neutral aisles, but want everything divided into girls’ or boys’ sections because its easier to move merchandise that way.

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media released a comprehensive study on the lack of female characters in films. The study examined 122 top-grossing domestic family films rated G, PG, PG-13 from 2006-09. Of the 5,554 speaking characters studied, 71% were male, 29% female. That’s a ratio of 2.42 males to every 1 female, which has not changed in 20 years! A higher percentage of females than males are depicted in sexualized attire (24% vs. 4%) and as physically attractive. Females are also often portrayed as younger than their male counterparts, reinforcing the idea that youthfulness, beauty, and a sexy demeanor are more important for females than for males. It’s o surprise that this depiction is rooted in gender inequities behind the camera: only 7% of directors, 13% of writers and 20% of producers are female. Films with one or more female screenwriters depict 10% more girls and women on screen than do those films with all male screenwriters. It’s the male run film industry that creates our movies that in turn, creates the accompanying toys, lunchboxes, bed sheets, diapers, clothing and on and on.

We know that the most important human conditioning happens in the earliest years of our lives. Tragically, this is when the commercialized gender programming is at its most vicious. It’s not the kids keeping this going, but their parents, who feel safe and secure whenever their kids fit neatly into gender stereotypes, happily exclaiming, “See, look at that– she turned that truck into a doll bed!” and then choosing to ignore the times when their sons clip barettes into their hair or wear beads.

Yes, of course it’s much easier for kids and parents to cave in to ideas pushed at us and in turn by us in an endless Escher loop. We’re interacting with billion dollar film and toy industries and thousands of years of institutionalized gender roles. If we follow the rules, our kids are less likely to get teased. There’s Christmas shopping to be done, much for people we hardly know, and if we just opt to get a girl kid something pink, we can be reasonably sure, everyone will be happy. But this Christmas, why not try something radical? Especially those of you buying for the youngest kids who usually aren’t too indoctrinated yet. I’ve never met a two year old who didn’t love pushing a doll stroller and a car. To the kid, they’re both just objects on wheels. They can’t tell the difference yet. You’re the one who can.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mmagowan/detail?entry_id=79661#ixzz18yN57uJG

Can’t get past the hair

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On the blog, Girl w/Pen! Natalie Wilson writes about sexism and racism in Disney’s “Tangled:”

Renee of Womanist Musings points out, the glorifying of blonde hair – yet again – is problematic. She writes:

“As a Black woman, I know all to well how complicated the issue of hair can be.  Looking at the above image [of Tangled’s Rapunzel], I found that I could not see beyond her long blond hair and blue eyes.  I believe that this will also become the focal point of many girls of colour.  The standard of long flowing blond hair as the epitome of femininity necessarily excludes and challenges the idea that WOC are feminine, desired, and some cases loved and therefore, while Disney is creating an image of Rapunzel that we are accustomed to, her rebirth in a modern day context is problematic, because her body represents the celebration of White femininity.

…

The fact that Tangled is coming on the heels of the first African American princess is indeed problematic.  It makes Princess Tiana seem like an impotent token, with Rapunzel appearing to reset the standard of what princess means and even more precisely what womanhood means.”

I watched “Tangled” with my sister, both of us brunettes, and when we heard the line about how Rapunzel’s hair, if cut, loses its magic and turns brown, we looked at each other and started cracking up.

There is some other reference in the movie to “browness.” Does anyone remember what it is? Flynn takes Rapunzel into a bar full of drunken men, and he says something, or someone says something like: “It seems very brown in here” or it “smells brown.” Please tell me if you know what I’m talking about.

It is notable to, as Girl W/ Pen! refers to, that the princess death sentence is coming right after the first African-American young royal finally made her way to the animated screen. There’s lots of talk about ending the only cartoon vehicle that repeatedly allowed girls be stars, but not so much discussion about the racism involved in the timing of this decision. Also, I keep hearing that adjusted for inflation dollars, “The Princess and the Frog” did just as well as “The Little Mermaid.” If this is true, I don’t get why Disney execs claim the film was such a failure.

Again, I don’t want to be defending princesses here. I don’t like them. But I don’t like the way they’re being used to get rid of starring girls roles all together.

Natalie Wilson writes the cast of “Tangled” isn’t quite all white. On Rapunzel’s wicked mother:

Notably, Mother Gothel, Rapunzel’s evil abductress, has dark hair and eyes and non-Caucasian features.

According to Christian Blaulvelt of Entertainment Weekly, “Mother Gothel is a dark, dark character. I mean, she’s a baby snatcher.” Ah yes, and she is dark in more ways than one – her dark skin, hair, and clothing contrasting with the golden whiteness of Rapunzel.

Alan Menken, the musical composer for the film, similarly notes that “Mother Gothel is a scary piece of work. Nothing she is doing is for the good of Rapunzel at all. It’s all for herself” Emphasizing her manipulative relationship with Rapunzel, Menken admits, “I was concerned when writing it. Like, will there be a rash of children trying to kill their parents after they’ve seen the movie?” Wow – how about worrying if there will be a rash of children who will see DARK-SKINNED mothers (and non-wedded ones) as evil and sinister?

In addition to carrying on Disney’s tradition of problematic representations of race, the film also keeps with the tradition of framing females beauty obsession as evil and “creepy” (Flyn’s words) rather than as understandable in a world of Disneyfied feminine norms. A mirror worshipper to rival the evil queen in Snow White, Gothel is presented as a passive-aggressive nightmare — she is the tyrannical single mother that is so overbearing Rapunzel must beg for the opportunity to leave the tower.

I always ask my daughter when we’re watching these movies: where are the moms? Belle in “Beauty in the Beast,” no mom. “Ariel” in The Little Mermaid, no mom. “Jasmine” in Aladdin, no mom.

ReelGirl Star of the Week: Willow Smith

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Girls and hair, girls and hair, girls and hair! Toys marketed to girls– more often than not– involve hair. Very long hair. Barbie, of course, is well known for her waxy blond locks. Strawberry Shortcake and her friends Plum Puddin’ and Lemon Meringue wear stiff rectangles of hair that stretch to their knees. Even toys that don’t make you think about hair, say horses, get transformed into “My Little Pony” with girls shown on TV brushing their animals’ flowing manes and curly, pink tails.

Rapunzel Braiding Friends hair Braider

The latest addition to the plethora of hair based toys is Disney’s Rapunzel doll, sorry, I mean “The Braiding Friends Hair Braider” that “lets your little lady easily braid the Rapunzel doll’s hair.” This toy goes with the new Rapunzel movie, now called “Tangled” because the guys who run Hollywood decided they didn’t want to award a female character the title role. The abundance of toys marketed to girls and focused on grooming relentlessly reinforces that what’s important for them isn’t what their bodies can do, but how they appear.

This is why I was excited to see that Willow Smith, the nine year old daughter of actors Jada and Will, has a new video out called “I Whip my Hair.”

Yes, it’s abut hair. But sometimes the most effective way to create change is to make use of our current obsessions in order to alter them. This video is about what hair can do, not how it looks; which of course translates to what’s important is what Willow can do, not how she looks. Willow dances around her school, swinging her hair, obviously enjoying not only her singing and dancing skills, but the way it feels to move her body. She is also enjoying being looked at, not in an objectified way but she is celebrating being a dancer and singer and yes, being a star. In the video, she is admired by both boys and girls watching her– no small accomplishment for a girl when men too often decide it’s bad marketing to put her in the title of a movie.

Watching Willow jump around her school, past the rows of lockers is reminiscent of the well known Briney Spears catholic school girl video where she’s got her shirt tied up, baring her midriff in the cliched sexual fantasy. Ten years later, I feel like we’ve made some progress. Willow isn’t wearing sexualized clothing. She is wearing some make up– including what looks like white mascara and rhinestones– but she looks like she’s having fun with it, playing with costumes, not made up in a serious, creepy Jon Benet Ramsey way.

Willow Smith

Not only that, but Willow is a girl of color enjoying her hair– sadly, a radical statement. Even girls restricted to decorating their locks on TV usually aren’t wearing cornrows. Chris Rock did an excellent documentary called “Good Hair” about black women, girls and the ingrained, internalized racism, passed on from moms to daughters. Rock’s film is funny and analytical, but Willow uses a different tactic. By putting out a video that gets over 7 million YouTube hits in one week, instead of complaining about our culture, she changes it.

Feminsiting.com’s Lori Adelman comments reports on the video:

What many may not know is the meaning behind “Whip My Hair”. In a recent interview with MTV, Willow Smith explained the inspiration behind her lyrics:

” ‘Whip My Hair’ means don’t be afraid to be yourself, and don’t let anybody tell you that that’s wrong. Because the best thing is you.”…Willow has a message for you, too, buried in the chorus between exuberant if repetitive directives to “whip your hair back and forth”: “Don’t let haters keep me off my grind/ keep my head up/ I know I’ll be fine.”

Willow Smith is ReelGirl’s Star of the Week.

Check out her video here.