You are definitely not alone or bonkers! In fact, you are intelligent enough to know that sexism is still present in our society. I am 13 and I share the same experiences with you! I never tried to advocate feminism openly in public because I know how ignorant, oblivious , and stubborn people are that they would not accept the truth, or flatly deny the existence of sexism. I would have had the courage if there was such a thing such as a feminist campaign club in my country. At least my sister and all of you here understand sexism!
It makes me so mad and frustrated that neither of these girls, 30 years younger than me, feels like she has a public voice to tell her story. I am happy that they wrote on this blog, and I hope that they will continue to write and refuse to believe that the sexism they experience in their world is trivial and doesn’t matter.
If this isn’t sexist:
And this isn’t sexist:
And this isn’t sexist:
Is this sexist?
This photo of Obama’s inner circle is from the March issue of Vogue magazine.
When girls go missing in children media, it acclimates a whole new generation to expect and accept sexism. It’s an annihilation of half of the population. So why do parents accept sexism in a fantasy world created for children? When did it become normal to us? And why are teenage girls afraid to talk about what they see?
A man who has spent nearly seven years in prison for a shooting in West Oakland is on the brink of being released after his attorneys argued he was the innocent victim of shoddy police work and lying witnesses who have since recanted.
Alameda County prosecutors, who put 51-year-old Ronald Ross in state prison for attempted murder and assault with a firearm, conceded Friday that his conviction should not stand and said they would ask a Superior Court judge to free him.
“The district attorney doesn’t have confidence the verdict was fully supported given all of the circumstances,” said Assistant District Attorney Micheal O’Connor.
Friday’s developments mean that Ross, who has been serving a sentence of 25 years to life at San Quentin State Prison, is probably days away from the end of an unusual and lengthy legal saga.
Ross, who had no record of violence, was arrested by Oakland police after the shooting victim, Renardo Williams, picked him out of a lineup of six photos, Ross’ attorneys said.
Here is Thelma Ross, mother of Ronald, waiting for the hearing:
Here is Ross’s attorney, my cousin, Jo Golub (named for Jo March of Little Women.)
Jo has been working on this case since 2008.
Here is to hoping our justice system stops putting innocent people behind bars.
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.
Here’s an ad for LEGO for girls, literally, today:
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.
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.
I get a lot of people telling me the issues that I blog about are stupid, irrelevant, or don’t exist at all and how miserable my children must be to have me as a mother. Then, once in a while, I get a comment like this from Jessica. Thank you, Jessica! You rock.
Hello, I’m only 14 but I’m just commenting here to express how so so so grateful and relieved I am to FINALLY find out that I’m not the only one who pays attention to all the sexism that is really all around us, even when everyone else I know thinks I’m over reacting and have gone bonkers. Especially people my age.
Whenever my little sister turns on the TV to watch cartoons, I can’t help but start counting how many female characters there are, yet only to groan in frustration afterwards because there are always more male characters. And the main characters are never females. That is, unless the show’s target audience are girls.
Or whenever I read a book, or watch a movie. It’s always the same. Always.
Even the fact that we’re supposed to use our Dad’s surname as our own, instead of our Mom’s.
I feel truly angry about all this. I wish there were something I could do.
Yet I’ve learned keep it to myself, because whenever I tell someone, anyone, they just roll their eyes like I’m crazy. I’m just a stupid little girl. No one takes it seriously. No one takes ME seriously But they should. Because all this has to change.
It’s really sad how other girls/women don’t even seem to care. I honestly don’t understand. How could anyone think that sexism is “gone”?!
Anyway, I’m so grateful that I have found this blog. Thank you so much. I’m sure you are a very, very good mum.
My daughter’s fourth grade poster and oral report on the first female architect certified in California, Julia Morgan.
“Hello, girls and boys. I am the one and only Julia Morgan. Now, let’s start at the beginning. I was born on January 20, 1872 right here in San Francisco. As a child, I wanted to know how everything worked. I loved mechanical stuff.
I went to high school in 1890. Instead of marrying, I tried to get into the University of California. They made me take the test three times even though I passed every time. Finally, they let me in. The men teased me, pulling all kinds of pranks, because I was the only woman there.
I won my first medal in a fancy palace decorated with characters from Greek mythology. I was so proud of myself.
There was a giant earthquake in San Francisco. I helped rebuild the whole city. I made it even better. I designed the wonderful Mills College
and the Fairmont hotel, but my masterpiece is the amazing Hearst castle.
It has an outdoor pool and an indoor pool, and did I mention I also built the Women’s City Club building? I also helped design the YWCA.
One thing I admit, I was a very big perfectionist. I loved architecture. Now here, I have to say good-bye. Today is a sad day. On February 2, 1957, I died. Still, even in my dreams, I love architecture.”
Ever heard of Marie Corelli? She was a best-selling British novelist whose books sold more copies than the sales of contemporaries Sir Arthur Canon Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling combined.
In a remarkable essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books, U.C. Berkeley Ph. D. candidate Lili Loofbourow gives extensive evidence that J.R.R. Tolkien was heavily influenced by Corelli. Reading her essay, passages of The Hobbit look like plagiarism.
Here Loofbourow compares Corelli’s Thelma to Tolkien’s Gollum:
“Thelma begins with the adventurous Lord Errington, who takes it upon himself to stalk a chaste Scandinavian maiden named Thelma after seeing her emerge mysteriously from a cave. He makes his way to the cave after she leaves. There he finds the dwarf Sigurd, whose entrance is Gollum-like in the extreme:
[W]ith all [Errington’s] bravery, he recoiled a little when he first caught sight of the extraordinary being that emerged from the darkness — a wild, distorted figure that ran towards him with its head downwards, bearing aloft in one skinny hand a smoking pine-torch, from which the sparks flew like so many fireflies. This uncanny personage, wearing the semblance of man, came within two paces of Errington before perceiving him; then, stopping short in his headlong career, the creature flourished his torch and uttered a defiant yell.
Sigurd is described as a scarred, misshapen being, “not quite four feet high, with large, ungainly limbs out of all proportion to his head, which was small and compact […] from under his shaggy brows gleamed a restless pair of large, full, wild blue eyes.” In The Hobbit, Tolkien describes Gollum as
a small black shape […] moving with its thin limbs splayed out […] now and again it lifted its head slowly, turning it right back on its long skinny neck, and the hobbits caught a glimpse of two small pale gleaming lights, its eyes that blinked at the moon for a moment and then were quickly lidded again.
The similarities are not only in the structure of the story, but in Sigurd and Gollum’s language. Here is Sigurd:
“Now follow me! Sigurd knows the way! Sigurd is the friend of all the wild waterfalls! Up the hills, — across the leaping stream, — through the sparkling foam!” And he began chanting to himself a sort of wild mountain song.
Sound like anyone you know? Loofbourow writes that the personalities of Sigurd and Gollum are strikingly similar. Both are excellent hunters and woodsmen. She goes into more detail in her essay of the extensive correlations. So why have we never heard of the startling connection between Tolkien and Corelli? Loofbourow asks the same question:
Given how extensive the parallels are between Sigurd and Gollum, it’s hard to understand how they could have gone unnoticed until now. Much as I’d like to claim credit for being an exquisitely sensitive reader, it’s almost impossible to encounter Sigurd without seeing Gollum. And yet no one, to my knowledge, has made the connection before.
Wow, and all this time, I thought “women can’t write fantasy.”
Here’s another question for you: Have you heard of Loofbourow’s Los Angeles Review of Books essay? This scholar deserves massive media attention.
He bought his daughter boy underwear. A commenter expressed the same frustration: her daughter is fan of Spider-Man and she started a petition to get girl underwear designs integrated with boy underwear. I signed this and I hope you do too, but I want to recognize the deeper issue here and make sure this info isn’t misconstrued into: See, girls like boy characters, so let’s just keep making them and let girls go missing.
All kids want cool characters. They want to see exciting narratives where heroes take risks, make choices, and act.
Why is there no Spider-Girl movie and 5 movies about Spider-Man? Where is Spider-Woman? Why are there 7 Batman movies while Batgirl, like Supergirl, is practically invisible? And why, for God’s sake, are we still waiting for a major release of a Wonder Woman movie in theaters? Not to mention multiple sequels?
I read this on Pigtail Pals Facebook page, Melissa Wardy’s talk with her daughter, the Original Pigtail Pal.
“Mom? Every time I watch that Spider Man movie I can see there are no girls in it. I get really mad! I just don’t get why there can’t be more girls in it.” -7yo Original Pigtail Pal Amelia, girl and Spider Man fan
“I think it is really important that you noticed that. There should be and easily could be more girls in it. How could we change that?” -Me
“Oh. Oh ho ho. We’ll just show them what girl super heroes look like.” -OPP
“Maybe that could help them have more balance with girls.” -Me
“Yeah, they need more bad ass girls.” -OPP
“Uh no, I said ‘balance’.” -Me
“I know. I said ‘bad ass’.” -OPP
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.
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
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.
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.
