This week’s People Magazine has a story about Julie Schenecker who shot her two kids in the head for being mouthy:
Not long ago, Calyx Schenecker, 16, returned from a shopping expedition near her home in Tampa with a new pair of shorts. “They were the shortest things ever, like you could see her butt sticking out,” says Cathy Vann, a friend of Calyx’s mom, Julie. “Julie was like ‘I hope you saved your receipt because those are going right back.'” Calyx’s response? “She was stomping around the house screaming, “You’re jealous that you can’t wear these,” says Vann who witnessed the fight at the Schenecker’s 3,300 ft upscale Ashington Reserve gated community. And Julie? She gave as good as she got, saying things like, ‘People are going to call you a slut.’ ” Yet Vann was hardly shocked. “Every mom of a teenage daughter has these fights.”
I’m not saying that this kind of dialogue is so rare and unusual that Vann should’ve suspected that Schenecker was about to murder her children. But arguing over who looks better in short shorts and slut-shaming is normal mother-daughter behavior? I don’t have teenagers yet, but if that’s true, it’s sad.
This argument between Calyx and her mom is not about sex but about power. A power struggle is a totally normal part of adolescent rites of passage. Unfortunately, because males are still mostly the ones with the power, females are allowed to acquire their own power– in an extremely limited way– through their sexuality. If you decipher the code here, Calyx is telling her mom that she is powerful and her mom is telling her that she is not.
Women of all ages would be so much healthier, as would America by the way, if we weren’t all so mired in these twisted perceptions of female sexuality and power. But tragically, we are. So mired, in fact, as feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray argues, we have no clue what female sexuality actually is.
Can you imagine a father angrily warning his son that, if he wears a certain outfit, he’s going to get called a slut? Any neighbor overhearing that would be on the phone with 911 in two seconds, claiming dangerous insanity next door.
Women’s Media Center just posted a great, short video on YouTube called “WMC at Sundance Film festival 2011” that gets across how invisible women and women’s stories are in the media. See the video here
As a potential mirror of our dreams and our realities, the media is seriously warped. Women are 53% of our population. How different would the world be if the media reflected women’s imaginations and points of view with the same attention it does men’s? Can you even picture it? Sometimes I think men have no idea what it’s like to exist in a world created by male fantasy. The problem isn’t that men are bad or that men are sexist; it’s that women need to be able to be the ones to tell their own stories.
Stats from the video:
72% of G-rated film characters are male. I just blogged about this yesterday
4 women have received best director nods, 1 woman has won
77% of film critics are male
86% of films had no female writers
5x more skin shown by women than men from G to R rated films
7% of top films in 2009 were directed by women (same stat as back in 1987)
Driving to school today, my three daughters and I passed a poster for Disney’s new movie “Gnomeo and Juliet” coming to theaters February 11. My kids wanted to know, where’s Juliet?
Can you find her?
If you spot Juliet around town, preferably with eight or so of her girlfriends frolicking behind her, Romeo nowhere in sight, please let me know. Extra points if she’s doing something acrobatic and looking grumpy, instead of standing around beaming at Romeo which, of course, she won’t be because, remember, he’s not in the poster.
Last year, at the same billboard location, around Townsend and Brannan, there was an ad for Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” It featured only the flame-haired Madhatter.
I’m sure Alice found her way out of Disney’s marketing machine rabbit hole onto some poster, somewhere in San Francisco, but my daughters and I never discovered her. Maybe we should’ve checked the backs of milk cartons.
Girls in kids’ movies have gone missing.
Just last month, Disney’s male executives announced they were going to stop making princess movies, practically the only animation vehicle where girls were allowed to be stars. It may be a lame genre, but at least it acknowledged that girls do, in fact, exist.
Movies that feature girls in title roles, star girls, or feature female characters of any kind continue to decline. See statistics here.
Research is also showing that the limited role models for girls in the media along with the increasingly gendered toys sold to them is affecting children’s brain development.
Apparently, imaginary land never got the memo that we’ve all achieved gender equality and are living happily ever after in a post-feminist world.
Today, just after announcing the nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards, Academy president Tom Sherak said that this year’s Oscars will feature a brand new statuette. Sherak said, “Our hope is that the new model will lift the Oscar curse once and for all.”
The Oscar curse– the phenomenon that after actresses get the award, their marriages break up– has been a PR problem for the Academy. Past victims include Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, and Kate Winslet, but the last straw was last year’s winner, Sandra Bullock.
In 2010, just after Bullock won the award, she discovered her scumbag biker husband, Jesse James, was having an affair with tatoo artist Michelle ‘Bombshell’ McGee and probably other women as well. Bullock and James had just adopted a new baby.
Concerned that Natalie Portman, this year’s favorite to win, is not only newly engaged but about to become a mother as well, the Academy decided something had to be done to protect Hollywood marriages and the children involved, along with the Academy’s reputation.
Sherak said,”When women win, men are left in the audience clapping and smiling like First Ladies! Not only that, but their wives are publicly recognized for being successful and beautiful. Hollywood has worked hard to assure men they never have to worry about being sexually attracted to a powerful woman. And if all that humiliation isn’t enough, we award these women a giant, gold phallic symbol. It’s just too much.”
Sherak then unveiled the new model, saying, “Our hope is that this statuette will protect both Hollywood marriages and actresses careers.”
When past winner Reese Witherspoon heard the news, she said, “I wish this statuette had been around when I won! Sure, Ryan and I had problems, but seeing me kiss my new Oscar just pushed him over the edge.”
Although Nicole Kidman’s career soared after her breakup with Tom Cruise, she disagreed that the statue caused jealousy, saying it kept her close to her ex-husband.”Tom used to come over just to hold it,” she said.
How do we know this is happening? The ‘gold standard’ of creativity is measured by a series of tests created in the 50s by psychologist E. Paul Torrance. The tests study ‘divergent thinking’ which means coming up with varied solutions to questions like ‘how many ways can you use a spoon?’
Newsweek reports: “Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers.”
But recently, Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary analyzed almost 300,000 ‘Torrance scores’ of children and adults, discovering that for the first time, creativity in American kids is declining. Kim is quoted in Newsweek: “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant…the scores of younger children in America-from kindergarten through sixth grade-for whom the decline is “most serious.”
Why is this downturn happening?
Newsweek reports it’s too early to tell but that “one likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities.”
Peggy Orenstein supports that theory in her new book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter. Orenstein writes that right at the stage when our kids’ brains should be growing by engaging in fantasy play and having varied experiences, instead children are thrust into a monochromatic world, relentlessly bombarded by images and products from corporations like Disney. In her book, Orenstein interviews neuroscientists and educators, showing how the princess culture could be affecting brain development.
In a Mother Jones interview, Orenstein says she was surprised to discover that one of her biggest jobs as a parent was protecting her daughter’s imagination, trying to make sure it isn’t “colonized by these prescribed scripts.”
Yet another good reason to let your daughters skip the ball.
Orenstein elaborates on this challenge in her book: right around ages 2 -3, kids begin to understand that there’s something called a ‘boy’ and something thing called a ‘girl ‘and that something important differentiates between them. The problem is, they’re not sure what that is. Orenstein writes, “The whole penis-vagina thing does not hold quite the same cachet among the wee ones as it does among us.”
Orenstein recounts a story about a kid, Jeremy, who wore his favorite barrettes to school and was taunted by another kid who said, “You’re a girl!”
Jeremy denied it, arguing that he had a penis and testicles. The classmate replied, “Everyone has a penis, only girls wear barrettes.”
Orenstein asks: “If toting the standard equipment is not what makes you male or female, exactly what does? Well, duh, barrettes.”
Making things evermore complicated, kids at this age also don’t understand that identity is fixed, a girl might grow up to be a dad or a mom. All this ‘slippery stuff’ can make a kid nervous– if she cuts her hair too short, she could turn into a boy!
Orenstein quotes the neuroscientist, Lise Eliot, author ofPink Brain, Blue Brain: “The prefrontal cortex of the brain is what looks to the future, and that’s the slowest part to develop. Another example would be death: young children have a very hard time understanding that a pet or a person who has died is gone forever. They may listen to what you say and seem to get it, but secretly, they believe it can change.”
(Note: I feel the same way about death– eek!)
Orenstein says kids’ solution at this stage is often to “cling rigidly to the rules and hope for the best.” Lucky for them– the Disney Princess marketing machine is here to help! Orenstein writes, “Developmentally speaking, they were genius, dovetailing with the precise moment that girls need to prove they’re girls.”
There’s no simple solution here, but plenty to think about, the main question being, when your child is looking for an identity, do you want the Disney executives to be the ones suggesting it to her?
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.
Feministing.com reports on New Yorker reader Anne Hays who “is demanding her money back after a recent edition of the magazine only included two bylines by women, out of 76 pages of content. She plans to return every edition of the magazine that contains fewer than 5 female writers.”
After reading the eloquent letter to the magazine, a friend of mine laughs, noting that one of the few female bylines Hays references belongs to Patricia Marx, who “writes frenzied reports of NYC shopping.”
Nice to know the magazine famous for jumpstarting the careers of so many well-respected male writers delegates a bit of precious space.
Thank you to all the ReelGirl readers! In ReelGirl’s first year, ReelGirl blog entries are regularly cross-posted on SF Gate, Ms. Magazine, and The Woodhull Institute (the latter, I cofounded and help edit the blog, so no surprise there : )) ReelGirl blogs were also featured on top trafficked sites of the internet including Jezebel (on sexism in Dr. Seuss and childfree women) and in The Week as best opinion (on breasts and Santa.) Please continue to pass on the word about ReelGirl and susbscribe (link at top right corner) if you haven’t already!
http://www.jeongmeeyoon.com/aw_pinkblue.htm SeoWoo and Her Pink Things by JeongMee Yoon
