Having been out at a pool for a little too long yesterday, my daughter asked me to take a pic and post her favorite toy, Sunburn, on Reel Girl. Here are the two of them.
I’m being asked where to get her. To clarify, my daughter named her Sunburn. I bought her in a store in San Francisco. Will find out more about her…
We got this at the Ark.
Professor and blogger Rebacca Hains appeared on “Fox and Friends” today and made excellent points about the ramifications of gender segregated toys and what we’re teaching kids through sexist marketing. The show started with Sabrina Schaeffer of Independent Women’s Forum, justifying gender segregation in toy stores:
It doesn’t mean that girls can’t go on to do anything that little boys can go on to do. It’s just that they like to play differently, and that’s okay.
This is a common argument for gender segregation of little kids. Nothing wrong with marketing make-up and dress up and shopping toys to girls. It’s just play, silly. No big deal.
The show ends with this point from Hains:
some girls want the chemistry set. And they shouldn’t feel like it’s just for boys. If we don’t say, “Hey, these are jobs for men and these are jobs for women,” why would we say, “These are toys for boys and toys for girls,” when toys are really kids’ work?
Don’t we want more female chemists? How is that going to happen?
Check out what my friend’s 6 month old daughter just received from her grandmother. (Can you read “teaches” and “laugh and learn?” below) 6 month old child, from her grandmother.
Watch the video and read the transcript here.
Since my letter to Stride Rite about how its gender stereotyped marketing limits all kids, hundreds of commenters on Jezebel, Daily Mail, Huffington Post, Fox News, and this blog are upset for the same reason: (This one from Daily Mail)
Normal boys will NOT wear pink, girly shoes. It’s just a fact of nature. That is the reason society and marketers accept different preferences for different genders. Get over it! Who wants to live in a world where there are two genders who all look alike, have the same preferences, etc. What a boring world you liberal nuts would desire to live in!
Not wanting to live in a boring world where everyone looks alike is exactly why I wrote my letter to Stride Rite. All children need to be exposed to all colors. Children weren’t even color-coded before the early twentieth century. Before that, babies wore white, because to get clothing clean, it had to be boiled. Take a look at President Roosevelt:
Pink was first a “boy” color, a version of red which symbolized strength. Blue was a “girl” color, associated with the Virgin Mary. That’s why in the early Disney movies, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Alice in Wonderland all wore blue.
But today, because of marketing, we get comments like the one above from adults and from kids. Here it is again:
Normal boys will NOT wear pink…It’s just a fact of nature.
People keep asking me if I want “gender neutral.” I’m not even sure what that means, and the question misses the point. I want options. I want all kids to see many more images of powerful and complex females, to see girls taking risks, saving the world, being brave, smart, and going on adventures in the fantasy world and in the real one.
As it stands, strong female characters have gone missing from kidworld. Part of this overall lack is because there are so few female characters in kids’ movies. I started Reel Girl because in movie after movie for kids, there’s usually a male protagonist while females, who are, in fact, half of the kid population are presented as if they were a minority. The fewer females you have, the easier it is to stereotype them. And still, companies like Stride Rite continue to erase the few female characters that do exist in mainstream culture, removing Wonder Woman, Black Widow, and Leia from their Justice League, Avengers, and Star Wars products and marketing.
Here’s my four year old daughter. I wouldn’t call her a “tomboy,” whatever that means. She likes pants; she likes dresses; she like yellow, she likes pink, she likes black. She likes to race and play soccer and read and make art. She loves superheroes and her mermaid Barbie.
My daughter chose Star Wars shoes because her male cousin had them. So part of her decision was made from just hanging out with a boy, something we don’t see nearly enough of today with all these gender segregated toys and marketing. At school, wearing her new shoes, my daughter was teased by a five year old girl who told her she was wearing “boy shoes.” How long until my daughter stops going to the “boy” side of stores?
My 7 year old daughter told me that at her school, a first grade boy was playing with a castle, and she heard a first grade girl keep telling him: “That’s a girl toy.” The girl wouldn’t let up until the boy stopped playing and moved away. Gender stereotyping leads to bullying and that limits all kids. And gender stereotyping is everywhere. Even if I don’t shop at Stride Rite, my kids will still see this ad in the window. The Stride Rite store is in a San Francisco neighborhood where lots of kids go school. Hundreds of children will see this ad every day.
I agree with the commenters. I wish Stride Rite would recognize that we don’t want want to live in a world where two genders all look alike and have all the same preferences. All kids need to see more female protagonists and strong female characters. Stride Rite, are you listening?
I’ll post the video from my appearance on “Fox and Friends” when I figure out how, but here are a couple pics I snapped from my TV. (Obviously, I’m slightly tech-challenged.) Whatever you want to say about Fox, they covered this story. I’m happy to get the news out into the world about Stride Rite’s sexism and how gender stereotypes hurt kids. If you haven’t seen my letter to Stride Rite, you can read it here.
“Gender stereotyping leads to bullying. It limits all kids and that’s the problem with it.”
My daughter has been searching and searching for Wonder Woman. She’s always on the lookout. We comb bookstores and toy stores. We couldn’t find her on socks at Stride Rite or at T-shirts at Target or on a birthday cakes at Safeway. It’s possible to find her on the internet, but you’ve got to seek her out. Her image doesn’t appear here and there as my daughter and I go about our day, unlike the ubiquitous Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, male Avengers, and other male superheroes. So my daughter was thrilled when today, we were at my sister’s house and she saw a Superfriends lunchbox sitting on a shelf in my nephew’s room. It’s from 1976. Check out Wonder Woman, front and center!
On the back? Batgirl, front and center.
On the side? Catwoman!
Other side? Supergirl!
That makes 4 female superheroes. So I wondered, in 1976 was this awesome lunchbox made “for girls”? It does have a purple border. Was purple strictly a “girl” color in ’76 the way it is today? But even if this Superfriends lunch box was meant only for girls, today in 2013, it’s not likely you’ll find a lunchbox with 4 female superheroes on it. Maybe, if you internet search, you’ll find someone selling it somewhere, but it’s not something your daughters and sons will see as they go about their day. In 2013, female superheroes have gone missing from kidworld.
Last week, it was announced that Ben Affleck will play the new Batman. Plastic heroines reacts:
It’s not just that I think Ben Affleck is all wrong for Batman (I do), it’s that Batman and Superman have already had so many feature films that it’s ridiculous.
- Batman (movies, live action): 1966, 1989, 1992, 1995, 1997, 2005, 2008, 2012
- Superman (movies, live action): 1951, 1978, 1980, 1983, 1987, 2006, 2013
Sixteen in all, if you count the movie Affleck has been tapped for. And we can’t get a single Wonder Woman movie???
I remember there was a Supergirl movie when I was a kid. I LOVED seeing her on the screen. Where has Supergirl gone in 2013? My kids don’t even know who she is. My 4 year old keeps asking about Spider-Girl. Instead of telling her she doesn’t exist, I help her draw her and write down the stories she tells me about her. I wish some major movie company and toy maker would help me out spreading narratives of Spider-Girl to kids, not to mention Spider-Woman.
Melissa Silverstein spotted a book on Wonder Woman when she was out with a kid. She posts about the sighting on her blog Women and Hollywood:
I was with my four year old nephew who is obsessed with The Avengers. He only wears Avengers t-shirts and knows all the characters even though he has never seen any of the movies. But that’s the culture. These male superheroes are everywhere and kids pick up on it. We were in a book store and had lots of time. We made our way to picture books with superheroes on the cover. He immediately pointed at the Batman and Superman books. Right next to those books was a book on Wonder Woman. I said do you know about Wonder Woman? And he said no. He had never heard of her. We sat down and read the story and he was really into it. He thought it was cool that she had a magic lasso and also the book ended with Wonder Woman and Superman rescuing someone together so he got to see that she was a real superhero and could keep up with Superman.I am relaying this story because I am sure there are boys all over the country and the world being exposed to only male superheroes because that is what our mass consumer culture allows us to see. While it would be great for us to have a Wonder Woman film and that would be a great start it will not be enough. That’s the problem with the lack of critical mass we have in our female stories.
Disney execs tell us that they make movie after movie with male protagonists because that’s what kids want to see. Their line is that girls will go see movies about boys but boys won’t go see movies about girls. That’s bullshit. Girls don’t come out of the womb any more open minded or generous than boys. All kids are self-centered, and they all want to see themselves reflected out there. But kids get trained from birth to pay attention to stories about boys, they learn that stories about boys are important and for everyone while stories about girls are just for girls. I wish parents wouldn’t perpetuate this sexism. Read your kids stories and show them movies with strong female protagonists. Get excited about the bravery of the female characters. Don’t ask your kid what movie she wants to see, you choose. Turn on a Miyazaki film. Here’s a list of great movies with female protags. Your kids will get into them when they watch. Let’s all bring back female superheroes and celebrate them much more than before, because even in the seventies, they weren’t around nearly enough.
Dear Stride Rite,
Today, I walked by your store on California Street in San Francisco, and I was saddened by how differently you market shoes to girls and boys. What’s with your gender stereotyping? I don’t get it. Aren’t girls and boys feet pretty similar? Don’t all kids need shoes where they can be active? Please tell me why Stride Rite markets shoes to little kids as if girls and boys are completely different species. As author Rebecca Hains writes, according to Stride Rite, girls are pretty and boys are active. This kind of gender stereotyping limits all kids.
Here’s the huge poster selling shoes to girls in the window of the San Francisco store.
According to Stride Rite, girls like pink, purple, sparkles, and princesses.
Here’s your poster selling shoes to boys.
Boys are powerful. They like orange, blue, red, yellow, and black.
The shoes displayed below the girl poster are also– surprise, surprise– pink, purple and sparkly. The shoes displayed below the boy poster feature Spider-Man and Captain America shoes.
Where are the female superheroes at Stride Rite? Not on the socks you sell. Those are my daughter’s hands in the picture. She was looking for Wonder Woman.
Apparently, Wonder Woman isn’t one of the world’s greatest superheroes. Isn’t she a member of the Justice League? Where’d she go? What about Black Widow? Why has she gone missing from the Avengers Assemble? And while we’re looking for MIA powerful females, where’s Leia with her lightsaber? Why isn’t she part of the Stride Rite Star Wars shoes marketing plan?
Here are my three daughters ages 4, 7, and 10 wearing Stride Rite shoes.
Unfortunately, we will no longer be shopping at Stride Rite.The way you guide girls to one side of your store and boys to the other is manipulative and destructive. My youngest child chose her orange shoes from the “boy” side, but every year, my kids get more influenced by marketing such as yours. Their choices become more limited as they repeatedly see that girls are supposed to be so radically different than boys, only wear certain colors, and behave in a certain “feminine” way. For as long as I can, I hope to protect my kids from learning that boys are valued for what they do, while girls are valued for how they appear. That means not shopping at Stride Rite.
Sincerely,
Margot Magowan
Please go to Stride Rite’s Facebook page to tell them to stop gender stereotyping.
Update: On Reel Girl’s Facebook page, Lizards and Lullabies posted this email just received from Stride Rite. Guess they’re working hard to snag back to school shoppers. Makes sense, that’s why my family went shoe shopping.
I couldn’t click on the commercial link so I went to You Tube. Ugh, it’s really awful. As one commenter Tweets:
wish like a princess? They’ve found a way to make a princess EVEN MORE passive!
Here’s the ad:
Update: This comment, posted on Pigtail Pals Facebook page, makes me so frustrated. Diana got way more than a confused look from the sales associate when her daughter dared to step beyond gender limits at Stride Rite:
“We just went into a Stride Rite store for my 4yo daughter and she was drawn to the “boys” side with the Spider Man shoes. The sales associate actually stopped her and said “Oh honey, those are for boys. Let’s get you something prettier over here.”
I told the sales associate that she was free to pick a shoe from whatever side she wanted and that pretty wasn’t defined by pink, purple and glitter, nor was it the only quality we wanted in a sneaker.
We walked out with Spider Man sneakers that light up and are awesome. I did mention to the woman that while we appreciated her friendliness, we did not appreciate her gender stereotyping and making my daughter feel like she shouldn’t be excited about black, red and blue shoes with eyes that light up.”
And one more thing, while I’m here. All that “pretty,” shiny stuff on girl’s shoes gets scuffed up and falls off pretty fast. When it does, parents are likely to buy kids new shoes, which is great for business and also, creating lifetime consumers. Check out this post: Are girl’s shoes designed to disintegrate?
In the California public school system during first grade, kids learn about U.S. currency. I was bummed to watch my daughters spend hours studying, sorting, organizing, and diagramming endless stacks of male profiles. I still have a four year old to go through the training. It sucks. While this is supposed to be a math lesson, it’s yet another space where children see that males are important while females go missing. Six year olds learn– often with no authority figure like a teacher even mentioning the sexism– that males are leaders and females are invisible.
How different would our world be if our children grew up in a world where they saw female faces on the bills and coins they used every day? Really, what would have to change?
Well guess what? The land of the free and the brave may be remarkably sexist, but the Bank of England made the crazy, brazen, radical step of putting a woman author on money. Do you think they were closer to being courageous because they have a queen already there?
This is the great Jane Austen. Please show this bill to your kids. It’s really important that they see it.
In the United States, there is no shortage of notable women, but bank notes haven’t been updated since 1929, nine years after women gained the right to vote.
All of the paper money in the United States features men — nine presidents, two former treasury secretaries and one Benjamin Franklin.
Don’t let your children go through this sexist history lesson without acknowledging the inequity. A world where females go missing shouldn’t seem normal or okay to kids.
Here are some tips I discovered when my children learned about U.S. currency in first grade that may be helpful to you.
Show your kids other currencies where females are featured on money. This can be fun. Some money is beautiful or cool to look at. It’s all fascinating. You can learn a lot about people and their countries. This new Jane Austen bill is great opportunity. Let your kids know that U.S. bank notes have not been changed since 1929, 10 years after women got the vote. Ask your children who they would put on money if they could honor someone. Help them design a bill. Play store with their currency.
I have no doubt that in good, old Capitalist USA, when women are featured on currency as much as men are, it will be a signpost, maybe more than any other, of gender equality in America.
Reel Girl rates U.S. currency ***SSS*** for major gender stereotyping
Coming to your daughters this August from Hasbro, Equestria Girl. First the Tooth Fairy, now this. Can our kids choices possibly get any more homogenized?
Huffington Post reports on the evolution of My Little Pony:
“Equestria Girls,” dolls that are pony-girl hybrids (think “goth” Barbies with blue or green skin and a colorful ponytail) along with a special DVD to be released in August. Per a press release, the humanized figures are supposed to represent My Little Pony characters as teenage girls in high school.
The release goes on to describe these characters with words like “glamour,” “stylish,” “ultra-chic,” and it is noted that each doll features her own signature “cutie splash,” an individual design that is similar to the “cutie mark” on her pony alter ego.
The new property will get the red-carpet treatment when it premieres as a full-length animated feature at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June. The movie, created by Hasbro Studios, the company’s production division, will then be released in more than 200 theaters nationwide; its trailer will start appearing in theaters on Wednesday.
There will also be a television debut on the Hub network. Do you see how narratives on movies and TV sell products? Are, in fact, created to sell products? Do you see how important it is for girls and boys to see narratives featuring strong, female protagonists?
What really sucks about Equestria Girl is that the “My Little Pony” TV show, while relegated to the Pink Ghetto, features 6 female protags who often get adventurous and exciting storylines. The ultra-skinny, micro-mini clad Equestria Girl above is based on Rainbow Dash. She looks like this.
On the current show, Rainbow Dash is a jock/ athlete and the fastest flyer in Equestria. My Little Pony fan Kya writes on Reel Girl’s Facebook page, “I feel like if the show’s characters were real they’d be just as horrified to see what they’ve been made into as we are!”
Peggy Orenstein’s reaction, emailed to the HuffPo:
It’s up to parents and those who give a hang about girls actual development and well-being to say absolutely neigh. You want a sexualized, self-objectifying girl? Give her sexualized, objectified dolls. You don’t? Have some conversations with the other parents in your community about the potential impact of self-sexualization and self-objectification on girls’ development — including negative body image, eating disorders, depression, low self-esteem, poor sexual choices, etc. — and choose from the many other toy options that are rising up in response to this inappropriate trend.
Seriously, come on parents! Stop buying into this shit. Speak out against the sexualization of kids. It’s dangerous.
Reel Girl rates Equestria Girl toys ***SSS*** for major gender stereotyping.
This from Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood:
Last night, while we were sleeping, six scantily clad censors snuck a copyright claim under YouTube’s pillow and removed our edited version of The Real Tooth Fairies investors pitch. BUT – you can still see what the Real Tooth Fairies has planned for kids in this version. Please watch and share before the censor fairies get this one too!
Here’s another version. Please watch, share, and sign the petition below.
Sign this petition to keep these super-skinny, Barbie-princess clone “Real Tooth Fairies” far away from your child’s developing brain.
It is 9:32AM. What messages have my 3 daughters, ages 4, 6, & 9, gotten about gender today?
First thing early morning, I played Connectagons with my youngest child. I bought this toy, by the way, when LEGO Friends came out. I was so annoyed by LEGO’s gender segregation, I sought out new building toys. I may have even blogged about Connectagons as a possible alternative to LEGO. Check out the front of the box.
The back of the box? The 3 boys play Geometry, Treetop, and Under-the Sea.
The 2 girls? They play butterflies
and hearts.
Then onto Chutes and Ladders. Again, boy in front. Same old ratio, 5 boys, 3 girls counting the tiny one in the way back.
And then, even though it was just 8:30 and foggy, we opened the new Slip n’ Slide. The box cover features 4 boys, complete with quotes from Michael and Randy about how much fun they’re having.
My youngest daughter got cold, came back into the house, and handed me a book Stories for Girls. Look at that, 3 girls. All on the cover.
Think girls are born obsessed with princesses, ballerinas, and mermaids? Or do you think, just maybe, that girls, like all children, are self-centered and want to see themselves front and center, the stars of the show?
Okay, it’s not even noon. Are you kidding me? I’m ready for a nap. This Fourth of July vacation blogging relapse was fun but sadly, over. Back to Fairyland for me. See you all soon.