And now for some good news: EW.com reports that in June 2012, when Pixar releases ‘Brave,’ audiences will meet Merida “the very first female lead character in the 25 year history of the acclaimed animated studio.” I know– the exception proves the rule and it’s been a long, long wait for just one girl, brave as she may be, (and we still have a year to go) but I am so excited for this movie. It looks amazing! Check out the preview here.
When I started this blog, ReelGirl, a friend of mine gave me a book she bought at a garage sale that I LOVED called Brave Margaret. It’s about an Irish woman who overcomes enormous obstacles, slaying a beast and saving her love. I couldn’t believe my friend picked up this incredible story that I’d never heard of before at a garage sale. Its illustrations and story are so fabulous. Could this mysterious book be the basis of the story for Pixar’s movie? Check out my review of Brave Margaret here.
There’s one more story I’m thinking of that reminds me of Pixar’s movie, the book Brave Martha. Though Martha is French, this story is about a brave girl who saves a French town from a dragon. This book is written and illustrated by my godmother, the great Susan Roth. Check it out here.
You can order Brave Margaret on Amazon here. Order Brave Marthahere.
(I can’t help but notice all these courageous girls have names that begin with M.)
Cinderella Ate My Daughter author Peggy Orenstein put together her list of best books and products for girls. And boys! She writes, reminding us boys benefit from hearing stories about girls too. Duh! But as a mom of three daughters, sometimes I forget. Great to have this resource, and I for one, am happy PO clarified about Roald Dahl. I, too, LOVE this man as a writer but something in his story-telling doesn’t quite sit right with girl empowerment.
Science show that fertility and movie offers drop off steeply for women after forty. The baby-versus-work life questions keep the writer up at night. She has observed that women, at least in comedy, are labeled “crazy” after a certain age. The writer has the suspicion that the definition of “crazy” in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore. The fastest remedy for this “women are crazy” situation is for more women to become producers and hire diverse women of various ages. That is why the writer feels obligated to stay in the business, and that is why she can’t possibly take time off for a second baby, unless she does, in which case that is nobody’s business. Does the writer want to have another baby? Or does she just want to turn back time and have her daughter be a baby again?
Thank you Tina Fey for being smart, funny, and beautiful. Who knew a woman could be all 3? And did I mention, she’s a mom?
Fey is also right on about producers. I’m really beginning to feel (partly because of this blog) like there’s little significant difference between fiction and non-fiction. Before I felt like non-fiction writing really mattered. But the fantasy world shapes our reality, what we expect, and what we hope for, which in turn shapes our fantasy world again. If women can find ways to get their stories out there– as producers, writers, publishers, whatever– the world will change.
In response to the current national dialogue on media and products for girls, New York Times writer Lisa Belkin generated a list of books with strong female role models.
On her blog, pigtailpals, Melissa Wardy points out that Belkin’s suggestions are dominated by princesses; better strong than weak ones, but what about the radical idea of books about girls with no princesses in them at all? Wardy says, “can we PLEASE not LIMIT femininity to princesses, even the kind that scrape their knees?” Check out Wardy’s book recs here.
I agree with Wardy and have a similar argument about the so-called brave princesses in modern movies. These girls make elaborate shows of independence, refusing to marry the guy they’re supposed to, but marriage is still the basis of entire plotlines– rebellion within the safest possible framework. Yawn! Boys in movies get to go off and have adventures. Why can’t girls do that too? This is a fantasy world, after all. If girls are this limited in dreamland, what does that say about their options in reality?
But here’s the challenge: as I rate books and media, there are many great books, but I often have issues with them, even the best ones! Maybe this is because behavior, once rewarded, is hard to kick. When I wrote critically in school, found and analyzed the ‘flaw,’ I got an A. Or maybe, being cranky and critical is my own personality flaw. Or maybe the problem is just that books are personal. When you start reading one, you enter into a relationship with it. There are few ‘perfect’ books and media for everyone (except maybe Hayao Miyazaki)
For example, I absolutely love C. S. Lewis and the whole Narnia series. I love it so much, I named my first daughter Lucy after the protagonist in the books. But the Jesus stuff in Lewis can be distracting. Also, Susan, the older sister, stops believing in Narnia when she hits puberty, starting to only to care about boys. This transition does not happen to the males in the book.
I named my second daughter Alice after you know who. I love this book, but Lewis Carroll, as we all know, had his issues with girls. As far as I can tell, his pathology doesn’t seep into the book or does it?
I love Harriet the Spy, but Harriet treats her friends so badly that parts of the book were difficult to read to my kid. She’s never experienced that level of negative social interaction; Harriet called her friends names my daughter didn’t even know (and now does) and there are also a bunch of class issues in the book. Harriet is super rich, she has a cook who she treats badly and a nanny who she treats badly, though at least the nanny can stick up herself.
Right after Harriet, we read Danny the Champion of the World who is so poor in contrast to Harriet. He lives in a one room house with his dad. No mom in this book. The author, Roald Dahl is probably my favorite kids writer, his writing is so good, but he has very few girl characters in his books. When he does have them, like The Witches, a funny and brilliant book, the story can be outright misogynistic. Still, I’d rather read Roald Dahl than a badly written fairy series that’s all about girls.
The point is: books are personal and that lists, by nature, are limited. The most important thing is that our kids are reading and to have an open dialogue with them about whatever that book is. Remember, the goal is to teach her to think critically so she can get straight As and then grow up to complain about everything just like her mom.
Peggy Orenstein’s book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, has helped to incite a national dialogue on how kids’ media and products influence girls, which ReelGirl loves because that’s supposed to be the whole purpose of this blog.
I write “supposed to be” because, as any one who reads this blog knows, I’ve strayed far from my initial my mission. But once again (I think my last time was New Year’s) I commit to making ReelGirl a resource where parents can go to look up a toy or a product to get some ideas about how and why it could be good for girls (and boys for that matter because gender stereotyping, ultimately, isn’t so fabulous for anyone. )
Lisa Belkin, a writer for the New York Times suggested these books. I hope to read them and let you know my thoughts. Please let me know yours!
One thing parents can do, then, is add examples of femininity without frills. To that end, following up on our conversation here last week about children’s books in general, here’s the start of a list of books for young girls that turn more than a few stereotypes on their heads while remaining fun reads. Of course, as with any children’s book, read it first, because my idea of what is good for your child might not be the same as yours.
“An Undone Fairy Tale”, by Ian Lendler. A slapstick treat. The princess rescues herself.
“The Enchanted Forest Chronicles”, by Patricia C. Wrede. A four-book series (I have linked to the first one) in which a strong-minded princess saves kind dragons.
“Princess Grace” by Mary Hoffman. A girl who loves princesses learns that real ones in history have done far more than just lie around and look pretty. In the end she chooses to emulate an African princess in a Kente cloth dress.
“Do Princesses Scrape their Knees?” by Carmela LaVigna Coyle. Part of a series (others are “Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots?” and “Do Princesses Kiss Frogs.) The titles tell the story.
“Cindy Ellen: A Wild Western Cinderella” by Susan Lowell. The ball is a rodeo and Cindy earns her prince’s respect after her fairy godmother gives her “gumption” and a set of diamond studded spurs.
“Cinder Edna” by Ellen Jackson. Edna lives next door to Ella, and while Ella depends on her fairy godmother to change her life, Edna earns money mowing lawns. Guess which one gets the Happier Ever After?
“The Very Fairy Princess” by Julie Andrews and her daughter, author Emma Watson Hamilton. Geraldine believes she is a princess, even though her brother says princesses “don’t have scabby knees.”
Kim wins again! The Australian Open! Her first time!
How cool is that?
Kim Clijsters celebrates win with her daughter
After beating Li Na (3-6, 6-3, 6-3) Clijsters wiped tears from her eyes. So this week, we saw her laugh and cry. Just a few days ago, after winning an earlier match, Clijsters was unable to stop smiling when she publicly confronted courtside reporter Todd Woodbridge for sending a nasty text message about her which implied that she was fat. Clijsters is an awesome player and a very, cool woman who skillfully knows how to come out a winner in all kinds of situations.
Just after tennis player Kim Clijsters beat her opponent in the Australian open, she scored a major victory for the women of the world.
www.nydailynews.com
After the game, when Clijsters went on camera with courtside interviewer Todd Woodbridge, she confronted him about a nasty text message he sent about her.
“You thought I was pregnant?” she said in front of 38,000 people, many more watching on TV. “I’m not.” Clijsters turned to the audience. “Let me say what was written in the message– she looks really grumpy and her boobs are bigger.”
Wow! Outside of bad reality TV, I’ve never seen a woman on camera directly confront a man for calling her fat! Not only that, when Clijsters was speaking she seemed happy, victorious, and beautiful. Instead of being humiliated by a guy making fun of her body, Clijsters turned the shame where it belonged, on the one who made the comment instead of the recipient and that is a huge win for women.
Whether you happen to be Hillary Clinton or a high school student, having someone make fun of your appearance, or even just the threat of it, has been an effective way to keep females quiet and in their place. The ‘ugly feminist’ and ‘dumb beauty queen’ are caricatures, flip sides of the same coin, both images relentlessly telling women: you can’t be strong and pretty, so make your choice. And, by the way girls, here’s a hint on which way you should go– women get power in our culture by being attractive to men, so if you risk trying to get powerful some other way, you may lose your power!
Another cool thing about this story– it was another female player who got the text from Woodbridge and exposed it to Clijsters. No catfight here. Most likely, not the reaction Woodbridge was expecting. What would happen if women refused to call each other fat? So often, we are are the ones acting out on our training to keep each other down by judging and rating each others appearances. Our competitive drives get funneled into socially acceptable and non-threatening to men stakes like beauty, boys, and popularity.
By calling out a ‘mean guy’ for his nasty gossip, Clijsters shook up stereotypes about women and men, also teaching us all a lesson: don’t trashtalk! Another cool thing about her– when she was actually pregnant, she ‘retired’ from tennis only to successfully return to competition a year later, showing the world that moms can be tennis stars.
Sometimes a victory speech isn’t just a victory speech. Here’s to hoping more women get the mike and change the world.
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.”
http://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.
www.nydailynews.com
http://www.jeongmeeyoon.com/aw_pinkblue.htm SeoWoo and Her Pink Things by JeongMee Yoon