YAY for us, social media, and kids everywhere:
This from Harrods via Let Toys Be Toys For Girls And Boys
“Good Morning! Please be advised that the children’s books that many of you have tweeted us about have been removed from our shelves…
We would like to apologise for any offence caused and assure you all that these books will no longer be sold at #Harrods.
In case you didn’t see it, here’s the display:
Monopoly is finally getting rid of its sexist iron token. Good news, right?
The Christian Science Monitor reports:
The iron, forced upon young girl Monopoly players everywhere, has been ousted by the Internet generation. Here’s to that new Monopoly token, a cat, clawing away at old gender roles.
Are you thinking: How silly! How outdated. I can’t believe kids of olden times had to deal with that housewife bias.
At first, I was. I never even knew what that iron was for. Isn’t it great that Monopoly has the guts to be progressive while so much of kidworld becomes ever more gender segregated?
Here’s just the latest example of sexist stereotyping from my Twitter feed today: Hasbro’s pink Heartbreaker Bow, part of the new Nerf Rebelle line for girls. Rebelle, seriously? Gag.
The Heartbreaker Bow attempts to mutate the archery craze– incited after girls finally got to see Hollywood images of powerful bow wielding heroines like Merida of “Brave” and Katniss of “The Hunger Games”– into something cuter and more “feminine.”
Yesterday on my Twitter feed? This display of books from Harrod’s in London:
So good for Monopoly, a new leader in saying no to gender segregation. But then something occurred to me. Even I, a 44 year old woman obsessed with the gendering of toys, had no idea that the iron was created for girl players. Do kids today even know what an iron is? No one irons anymore. That’s when I got it: It’s not the sexism that’s outdated, its the iron. Girls don’t know that they’re supposed to pick the iron. Monopoly isn’t abandoning sexism but updating it. The iron is being replaced with…a kitty.
Monopoly’s month-long “Save Your Token” contest ended Feb. 6, 2013 when fans’ least-favorite token was replaced with this newer model. I suppose we should be grateful the diamond ring option wasn’t chosen.
Love this.
From the Huffington post:
Like Miss America, Michele Pred‘s “Miss Conception” also dons a crown and scepter. Yet instead of jewels and gems, the latter’s pageant gear is adorned with birth control pills.
Pred says:
It really started with the growing concern before the election… There are still many states that make it very difficult for women and teenagers to have easy access to birth control.
“Amendment” will show February 7 – March 16, 2013 at Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York. Visit the artist’s website here for information on donating your unwanted birth control pills.
The horrific epidemic in the publishing world of mutating great female writers (like Virgina Woolf and Sylvia Plath) and great heroines (like Anne of Green Gables) into “chick lit” as a desperate attempt to attract female readers is infecting Marvel and DC Comics.
Today, Marvel Entertainment announced a new partnership with Hyperion Books — like Marvel, a Disney subsidiary — to publish The She-Hulk Diaries and Rogue Touch, two novels described as featuring ‘strong, smart heroines seeking happiness and love while battling cosmic evil.’ Yes, it’s time for superhero chick-lit.
Here’s the art Wired used in its post:
When I saw this, I wondered if Wired created the image as a parody. Then I saw the same art on a USA Today post, and the photo is credited to Hyperion/ Marvel. Also, notice any similarity between the She-Hulk art and the new 50th anniversary cover of The Bell Jar?
That’s right, if you want to sell to women, put make-up on the cover. That’s what we girls care about. Looks like a compelling read full of complex characters and exciting drama!
The move could potentially be part of a response to the realization that Marvel had no female-led comics as of this time last year…
Huh? Who “realized” there were no females? How did that great epiphany happen? (I can’t wait for everyone to “realize” that girls have gone missing from children’s movies.) Was it a Marvel insight? They were all in a meeting and one of the artists slapped his hand to his forehead, shouting, “Whoa dudes, we forgot the women!”
Baffled, I went to that link to see if I could find out more. The ComicsAlliance.com report is actually dated Dec 8, 2011:
Both Marvel and DC Comics have been at the center of concerns and controversies recently regarding women in comics, both in terms of the way they are represented on the page and in the offices of the Big Two comics publishers.
While DC Comics has quite a few ongoing titles devoted to female characters (Batgirl, Batwoman, Birds of Prey, Catwoman Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Voodoo), there are very few women actually involved in creating them, an issue that has infused criticism of the company’s relaunch since the beginning, and was recently compounded by the news that writer Gail Simone is leaving Firestorm.
This post made me wonder what it feels like to be a female artist at Marvel or DC and marvel (ha ha) at how challenging it must be for women to get their own narratives out on the page in that kind of environment. It’s already risky for any artist to put her vision out in the world. Can you imagine trying to achieve that there? Talk about the opposite of support.
ComicsAlliance goes on:
Marvel Comics, meanwhile, seems to have the opposite problem; with the recent cancellation of X-23, there are no female-led ongoings in the Marvel Universe (with the possible exception of the 12-issue miniseries The Fearless) but significantly more women working in creative and editorial roles. The two companies illustrate two different but interrelated problems: the lack of women playing major roles in the comics, and the lack of women playing major roles in creating them. While neither situation is ideal, what are the implications of both problems, and which has a bigger impact on the comics that are created or the audience they reach?
Thank you to Cynthia Rodgers, AKA Theamat for the link to the Wired story. I’ll leave you with Theamat’s drawing of Reel Girl.
My daughter was assigned “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me” to memorize for school. Tonight, I got to listen to her recite it over and over.
Thank you, Maya Angelou, for an incredible evening.
Here’s the poem.
Life Doesn’t Frighten Me by Maya Angelou
Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hail
Life doesn’t frighten me at all
Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn’t frighten me at all.
Mean old Mother Goose
Lions on the loose
They don’t frighten me at all
Dragons breathing flame
On my counterpane
That doesn’t frighten me at all.
I go boo
Make them shoo
I make fun
Way they run
I won’t cry
So they fly
I just smile
They go wild
Life doesn’t frighten me at all.
Tough guys in a fight
All alone at night
Life doesn’t frighten me at all.
Panthers in the park
Strangers in the dark
No, they don’t frighten me at all.
That new classroom where
Boys pull all my hair
(Kissy little girls
With their hair in curls)
They don’t frighten me at all.
Don’t show me frogs and snakes
And listen for my scream,
If I’m afraid at all
It’s only in my dreams.
I’ve got a magic charm
That I keep up my sleeve,
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe.
Life doesn’t frighten me at all
Not at all
Not at all
Life doesn’t frighten me at all.
I just read one of the most– if not the most– idiotic justifications for sexism I’ve ever come across. And I’ve read a lot of stupid shit in my time. Kya posted a link on Reel Girl’s Facebook page to Suzanne Venker’s post on Fox news.
Venker argues that women have always had it better than men. Here’s why:
Prior to the 1970s, people viewed gender roles as as equally valuable. Many would argue women had the better end of the deal! It’s hard to claim women were oppressed in a nation in which men were expected to stand up when a lady enters the room or to lay down their lives to spare women life.When the Titanic went down in 1912, its sinking took 1,450 lives. Only 103 were women. One-hundred three.
Compare that with last year’s wrecked cruise line, the Costa Concordia. It resulted in fewer deaths, but there was another significant difference. “There was no ‘women and children first’ policy. There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboats. It was disgusting,” said passenger Sandra Rogers, 62.
Those of us with children know better. We know little girls love their dolls and boys just want to kick that ball.
As a mom of three young daughters, much of the reason I’m passionate about gender equality is because my kids love to kick balls. Most kids do, just like they love to push things on wheels, though toy strollers are marketed to some toddlers while toy cars are marketed to others. The whole reason I started Reel Girl is because I was appalled by the gender stereotypes sold to young children by billion dollar companies, urging boys and girls, even pre-birth, to take radically different life paths.
My daughter has been waking up super cranky in the morning, so last night when we put her to bed, we unclipped her reading light. An hour later, my husband went down to check on her and found her with a flashlight. Back again, he removed 2 more lights. This is what I saw on the kitchen counter this morning. She’d managed to get her younger sister’s clip on light as well. I have no idea how she acquired light #6. Yet another reason to be pissed off at her partner in crime, Rick Riordan…
A new Muppet movie is coming out in 2014. On Disney’s site for the movie, the characters listed are Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Animal, Fozzy the Bear, Gonzo the Great, and Walter. So here we have a typical gender ratio in children’s media of 1:5. Females, half of the kid population, are once again, presented as a minority. Miss Piggy is a Minority Feisty.
Make that 1:6. The human star of the movie is Ricky Gervais.
In case you forgot, here’s the poster your kids got to see for the 2011 movie.
When females are marginalized and sidelined in a fantasy world created for children (not to mention creatures from a world that originated on PBS) how can we expect them to get equality in the real world? If we can’t even imagine it, how can we achieve it?
WTF? I just posted about the offensive chicklit makeover for Plath’s Bell Jar that I saw on Jezebel and didn’t realize, it was only the beginning! They are fucking with the great heroines of YA who we already don’t have enough of. How can they go back and mess up those we love just in time for our children to read about them? Publishers gave Anne of Green Gables a blonde makeover.
Thankfully, here’s my nine year old daughter’s edition, bought last year and waiting for her on the bookshelf:
This is Anne! Looking out of the window, thinking, wondering about the world! Not smiling coyly for some invisible admirer (my daughter?) The edition above is illustrated by the amazing Lauren Child of Charlie and Lola fame. Child also illustrated our edition of Pippi Longstocking.
How could they do this to Anne?
As Jezebel writes, the publisher chooses “to ignore that Anne had red hair—which was such an important part of the book. She had red fucking hair!”
Sadly, we’re not done yet with this retroactive sexism. Now, for Virginia Woolf:
Sorry, even that Rosa Parks stamp can’t make me feel better about this travesty.
I just blogged about the book covers from Rick Riordan’s fantasy series where girls go missing. Today, on Jezebel, believe it or not, I saw an even more distressing book cover: the new 50th anniversary edition of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
Do you think the ghost of Ted Hughes could be haunting Britian’s Faber publishing house? It seems like only he could’ve come up with something so distorted to cover Plath’s work.
For a book all about a woman’s clinical depression that’s exacerbated by the suffocating gender stereotypes… it’s pretty fucking stupid to feature a low-rent retro wannabe pinup applying makeup.
Couldn’t agree more.
Total bummer, but I’m going to leave you feeling slightly better about depictions of women in good old America in 2013. Here’s a very cool new stamp celebrating Rosa Park’s 100th birthday:
