15 thoughts on “Reel Girl on “Fox and Friends” about gender stereotyping at Stride Rite

  1. Way to turn the conversation back to “power” after getting kicked off with “girls are more interested in princesses than violence.” Fascinating to see the word “violence” get substituted for “power.” A whole other conversation.

    Thanks for doing that appearance and making such helpful points. Hopefully people will eventually get that helping girls have power isn’t the same as making boys weak.

  2. Pingback: Stride Rite’s gendered marketing persists. | Rebecca Hains

  3. Good for you Margot. The Point about Wonder Woman, Princess Leia and Black Widow is excellent. Why are these firgures not on girls shoes?
    Also you should bring up the point about the decal on the Stride Right princess shoes changes color throughout the day and that is the time that the wearer is supposed to “make a wish. ” This fantasy world of passively wishing and dreaming for girls and power and action and being and ACTOR for boys– in life is expressed in this shoe line advertising and it is nauseating.

  4. Abnoba what happens in the comics doesn’t seem to be a guide for the producers since the Avengers films-first one and the sequel- aren’t really made for people who read the comics on a regular basis.The Hulk films were not hugely successful but the character is well known to the average moviegoer ,iconic and unique.When he is on the screen he doesn’t look like anyone else.Plus they wanted Hulk so as to inject as much testosterone and biceps in the film as they could.I get it that producers see it like this:Hulk is brute force Stark is the genius Rogers is the Duty and Thor the God.But despite all this bombardment of testosterone and male egos we also did get 2 great female characters .I like that in the X Mex films there are many strong female characters but the Avengers films are on another level financially.The first film has a gross of over 1.5 billion dollars and they want to surpass it with the second.Average gross for the X Men is 370 million dollars per film.

  5. I thought it was so funny, how you have allowed your fear of real men to move you toward a fake equality ideal where men and women (boys and girls) are the same. Your damaged emotional state is so obvious. I do not want my daughter acting like a boy. Nor do I wish for my sons to be weak. To put it simply, real men do not marry dykes, and real ladies do not work on oil rigs, mow grass or seek to fill combat billets. Real men want their ladies to be delicate and sweet, keep a clean house, nurture the children and drip with feminine sex appeal. By the way, I saw you on fox, you could use a little make up and please do something with your hair. It just hangs there like an un-kept dog blanket. Not very sexy.

    • As someone who sees a lot of trolling online I can tell you you’re abusing the cliches, I suggest going to reddit or avoiceformen to get some practice. Get back here in a month to check your progress, that should suffice.

  6. Well done Margot & Tucker. You each listened and responded to what the other said – which is not something I take for granted anymore(on TV especially). I doubt anyone changed his/her mind on this issue based on this segment, but it did spread the word about Stride Rite’s egregious advertising. (This advertising campaign makes me very sad as I grew up wearing Stride Rite shoes and loved them.)

  7. When I was a parent of very young girls, I really wondered “why are all the damn Lego’s piink?” because I remembered in the 70’s my younger sister and older brother -would all play Legos together.
    The genderizing of household items is beyond comprehension. “No, that’s for girls/boys.” is often the reply for people who are out of touch with these things.
    I always asked: “Why, does it have genitalia present?”
    Glad to see you on the Sunday morning news roster!
    (Where is Tucker’s trademark bow tie anyway?)

    • The reason there are boy products and girl products is so the companies can increase profits. Two lines of merchandise is more profitable than one.
      Bill

  8. I do think you’re right and he was a bit too dismissive. The males & females are being treated differently, and it isn’t all because of consumer choice on the part of the actual kids due to some pre-birth wiring; there’s something else going on there.

    Also, Wonder Woman IS cool. She’s one of the big-three, and always has been. I noticed in one of the newer Justice League cartoons where Toyman killed Superman, and Wonder Woman said she was going to smash Toyman’s face in, Flash stopped her with the ritual lecturing about “we don’t do that, we’re better than that,” and I suddenly realized…uh, you guys got that backwards. WW is one of the few real adults in SuperFriends and Justice League. Flash is sort of a combination action hero & comedy relief, who’s typically in need of this kind of guidance. At any rate, I suppose it’s much worse now; can’t imagine writing scripts for a superhero group that’s all one sex, and that would hold true if they got rid of all the men & kept all the women.

    RE Black Widow, Mr. Whedon deserves credit for coming up with something in which each character had an important role to fulfill, including her. His work often bores me, but I can appreciate how this is no easy feat and that was quite an accomplishment.

    • I didn’t see The Avengers, and I suppose that the studios are not so thrilled about including female superheros, so it was problably not easy for him. He is going to include at least another female, the Scarlet Witch, in the next film (he has talked about that). But 5 males to 1 female are a really bad ratio. The Avenger’s comics are usually better than that in female representation, although it depends on the writer. There have been more than a few female avengers. Wasp was even one of the founders and was the leader of the team for a while.
      http://www.hitfix.com/news/dear-joss-whedon-add-one-of-these-ladies-to-avengers-2

      • Yes but the film is not a comic.In the film Joss Whedon has to make a movie that is coherent and easy to follow that won’t be more than 2 -2 and a half hours long.So it can’t have too many characters.But it must have the well known 4 of course (Iron Man Captain America Hulk and Thor) plus Fury so we start with 5 male characters.The first Avengers film added BW and Maria Hill and did a good job both ladies were awesome.The second film will add  Scarlet Witch too so i can’t complain.

        • But Hulk left the Avengers after the first two issues. He has been an enemy more often than an ally, probably. As an avenger, he is not so important (Spiderman and Daredevil have been avengers too, mind you, they change members fairly often) I understand than they chose members that were well known for the people that doesn’t read comics, but it was an election, they didn’t have to do it that way. Besides, The Hulk films weren’t so successful, so ¿why not use another, less known character and promote her? The X-men characters were not so famous as Iron Man or Thor when the first film premiered, but now they have lots of films.
          About the footwear for kids, I think that Quechua doesn’t sell their products in the USA, but I thought that you would like to see how they promote one of their unisex models. It’s a good example that it doesn’t have to be gendered at all

          • Oh, and this is their commercial for tracksuits for kids (the voice says “Domyos, the tracksuit for all the children”

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