Go Daddy, we’re through

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If you read Reel Girl, you’ve probably noticed my primitive blog address: http://margotmagowan.wordpress.com

A couple years ago, right when I started blogging, a kind reader got me the name “Reel Girl.” I think he was on Web Hero. My ex brother-in-law had gotten me margotmagowan.com maybe ten years ago, he was on Go Daddy. My New Year’s resolution was to transfer the names, sort it all out, and get a professional address for my blog (www. reelgirl.com). So about two weeks ago, my husband started talking to Go Daddy and getting the process rolling for me– three great men helping me out, which is quite nice, but I wasn’t paying much attention. Being the procrastinator that I am, I hadn’t gotten around to finishing the process, but I started seeing Go Daddy in the news for being against SOPA and then for being sexist. Apparently, Go Daddy has been sexist for a long time. Then I watched the Superbowl yesterday and I saw one of the most offensive ads I’ve seen in my life. It was for Go Daddy.

In the ad, Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels were using a naked model as a billboard (for much of the ad her head is chopped off the screen) writing things on her body like: “Get yours now” and “Get noticed.” They ask: “Who won’t notice a hot model in body paint?” It’s so depressing to see two women objectify a third, especially Danica Patrick who excelled as a Nascar driver, a sport dominated by men. She could be such an inspiring role model for girls and women.

This morning, I went to Go Daddy’s website where there was another horrible ad. Next to a photo of the Pussycat Dolls, the copy reads: “Too hot for TV.” Is this an advertisement for a web hosting company or porn? Two nerdy guys see the Dolls come out at them and wonder if they’re in heaven.Who is this ad for? Obviously, not me. This version of heaven sounds like the Taliban’s.

The Pussycat Doll ad promises that Go Daddy will improve your business with “E-commerce tools and 24/7 customer service” but obviously, Go Daddy couldn’t care less about its female customers. Clearly, to Go Daddy, women are not business owners or bloggers. They’re just objects.

So then I called Go Daddy. I told them I no longer wanted them to host Reel Girl. I told them that their Superbowl ad was offensive and horrible and it treated women not like customers, but like dehumanized them. The woman I spoke with was polite and helpful and said I would get my money back.

I hope all women bloggers and business owners stop using Go Daddy. I hope men do as well. I hope Danica Patrick gets a new job.

Just went to the Go Daddy site to put in the links to this post and the Pussycat Doll ad is no longer on the front page. Could they be listening?

Reel Girl’s to read and watch list

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I’m compiling your suggestions in one post. This is a list of what I have NOT seen or read. I will add to it as you do and remove when I officially rate. If you don’t see your suggestions included here, they are elsewhere on Reel Girl already reviewed. To check those, in “categories” click: Reel Girl recommends, Most girlpower, or GGG. Keep the suggestions coming!

Books

Imogene’s Last Stand

Once Upon A Heroine: 450 Books for Girls to Love

Lets Hear it for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14

Sadie and the Snowman

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Words In The Dust

Millie Gets the Mail

Gwinna

DragonSong and DragonSinger by Anne McCaffrey

Dragon Slippers by Jessica George

Dealing With Dragons

The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan: The Red Pyramid, The Throne of Fire, and Serpent’s Shadow

The Melendy Family: The Saturdays, The 4 Story Mistake, Then There Were Five, and Spiderweb for Two

Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North American and England

The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from Around the World

Sophia and the Heartmender

TV

Adventure Time

My Life As a Teenage Robot

Atomic Betty

Avatar: Legend of Korra

Wordgirl

The Mighty B

Movies

Matilda

Nim’s Island

Fly Away Home

The Secret Garden

Anne of Green Gables

Tinker Bell

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Nancy Drew

National Velvet

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl

Samantha: An American Girl Holiday

The Fox and the Child

Where the Lilies Bloom

Hoodwinked

Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl

Labyrinth

Princess Mononoke

Spy Kids

Howl’s Moving Castle

Anne of Green Gables

Sheryl Sandberg on the ‘ambition gap’

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At the World Economic Conference in Davos, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg spoke on a panel about women in leadership. Did she speak about business strategies, quotas versus merit, politics, reproductive rights? No. Sandberg spoke about female ambition and how girls’ aspirations are blunted at an early age. She spoke about the ‘ambition gap.” She said that “we don’t raise our daughters to be as ambitious as our sons…Little girls are called ‘bossy’… Go find someone and watch them call a little boy bossy.” Sandberg talks about T shirts sold to kids that either read: “I’m smart like my dad” or “I’m pretty like my mom.”

The focus of Sandberg’s speech was the same topics I blog about every day on Reel Girl. Topics that many readers of my blog on SFGate repeatedly call trivial.

Sandberg says that a major obstacle to women’s achievement is that success and likeability are positively correlated for men but negatively correlated for women. I honestly believe this duality/ stereotype is fueled in the fantasy world where kids so rarely see heroines who are powerful and beautiful; smart and kind.

Sandberg says, “From early childhood through marriage we reward men for being leaders, taking risks, being competitive. We teach women as young as four to lay back, be communal. We need our boys to be as ambitious to contribute in the home and we need our girls to be as ambitious to achieve in the workforce.”

Watch Sandberg’s speech here. A great analysis of this speech is also Samatha Ettus’s piece in Forbes.

A problematic rec: The Beautiful Warrior

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Before I go into the issues I have with this story, Beautiful Warrior should be in your collection. It’s the story of Wu Mei who defies expectations to become a fierce Kung Fu warrior. Wu Mei mentors Mingyi who doesn’t want to marry a brute and, with Wu Mei’s training, ends up beating him in a fight and liberating herself.

What is great and rare about this book: It features two female friends, one who mentors the other. Wu Mei doesn’t rescue Mingyi, she teaches her how to save herself.

While this teacher/ student relationship is extremely common in boy fantasy world, it is highly unusual for girl characters to experience it. Strong females often exist in isolation. If there are two strong women, one is usually evil. (And we all know the patterns of dead mother, wicked mothers, and the dreaded step-mother that dominate fairytales and keep positive female relationships at bay.)

This female friendship is so rare, please tell me if you see it in books, movies, or TV shows. I think its super threatening to the male power structure. I’d like to make a media list of examples. Of course this list will include a female protagonist whose best friend is a magical creature (such as BFF males Remy and Ratatouille from “Ratatouille,” Andy and Woody or Buzz and Woody from “Toy Story,” Hiccup and the dragon from “How to Train Your Dragon.” I could go on and on, the male buddy relationship is the most common plot/ theme of kids movies today.)

I also love Beautiful Warrior because, as I’ve written before about violence in kidlit, it’s metaphorical. Violence is as normal for kids to see in a story as it is to occur a dream and just as symbolic. In Beautiful Warrior, the violence is so clearly teaching larger life lessons, so much so that it seems even weird to call it violence.

So why does Beautiful Warrior get an S? I’m reviewing this book in part, because, though it’s clearly about strong females, it also features three stereotype themes/ plot devices that show up so often in feminist kidlit.

(1) Rebellion against marriage: Yes, its better than marrying the one she’s supposed to, but why does marriage have to be such a central issue in the story at all? Personally, I’m sick of it. When I come across this plot device, I sigh.

(2) References to sexism: Both Wu Mei and Mingyi become warriors, even though the story says its surprising for girls to act this way. While I understand, obviously, that sexism exists in the real world, and this kind of story can teach a great lesson in how to deal with it, why do kids have to hear so often about the low or different expectations for girls? Why do female heroes so often have to perform in this context? Why not jut show them doing heroic acts?

(3) The heroine ends up alone: This is another classic outcome in feminist kids stories such as the Paper Bag Princess. The men are obnoxious brutes and the women don’t marry them. But why do the females so often have to make this choice?  Males rarely do. I think its pretty scary for girls to get drilled into them that being strong is oppositional to being in love. It’s the same artificial choice that they can’t me be smart and beautiful, while male heroes usually are, in fact their intelligence and strength makes them attractive. (One reason I was attracted to this story is because it’s title, Beautiful Warrior, defies that duality. At the same time can you imagine a story called Handsome Warrior? It sounds like gay porn.) This pairing of attributes actually seems to be the lesson learned from much of kidlit. It’s so stereotypical and annoying to deny females that wholeness. It’s one reason I absolutely love Brave Margaret (and that story could be the basis for Pixar’s Brave) Margaret gets to be smart, strong, and beautiful and ends up with a cool, hot guy who admires and adores her. Can’t girls have it all, too? We need more stories like that! Tell me if you know of any.

Reel Girl rates Beautiful Warrior ***GGG/S***

The curse of the Minority Feisty in kids movies

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If you see an animated film today, it’s likely to include a token strong female character or two who reviewers will call “feisty.” In “How to Train Your Dragon,” Astrid; in “Toy Story,” Jessie; in “Ratatouille,” Colette. She’s supposed to make us feel like the movie is contemporary and feminist, unlike those sexist films of yesteryear.

The problem is that because Pixar or Disney has so magnanimously thrown in this “feisty” female (who may even have some commentary about sexism or male domination) we’re no longer supposed to care that almost all of the other characters in the film are male, including the star who the movie is often titled for and usually his best buddy as well. The crowd scenes in the film are also made up of mostly males.

“Feisty” isn’t a word that describes someone with real power, but someone who plays at being powerful. Would you ever call Superman “feisty?”  How would he feel if you did?

The Smurfette Principle has evolved into the Minority Feisty. Now instead of a “token” female in a children’s movie, we may see a few females sprinkled around, a “minority” of them. Parents, the next time you watch a children’s movie, try not to let the Minority Feisty population distract you from the limitations female characters are almost always forced into. Ask yourself: Is the female the protagonist in this film? Does the narrative revolve around her quest? Or is she there to (play a crucial role in) helping the male star achieve his goal/ dream?

Imagine if the gender ratio presented in movies for kids was reflected in the real world. Girls would be a minority. Is that a world that you want your kids to live in? Why does the imaginary world have to be sexist at all?

See Peggy Orenstein’s post: “Pixar’s female problem: Please stop asking ‘What about Jessie?,” on the Minority Feisty issue

See Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing From Children’s Movies in 2014 http://reelgirl.com/2014/01/reel-girls-gallery-of-girls-gone-missing-from-childrens-movies-in-2014/

2013 http://reelgirl.com/2013/01/reel-girls-gallery-of-girls-gone-missing-from-childrens-movies-in-2013/

2012 http://reelgirl.com/2012/12/reel-girls-gallery-of-girls-gone-missing-from-childrens-movies-in-2012/

2011 http://reelgirl.com/2011/07/heres-a-visual/

 

 

 

New study reports parental support encourages brain development

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Would you like some more evidence on child brain plasticity and how it’s affected by the child’s experiences?

Web MD is reporting on a new study:

The study followed 92 children from preschool into their grade-school years.

For the study, Luby and her team videotaped each parent and child while they completed an experiment called “the waiting task.”

Children, who were between the ages of 4 and 7, were presented a brightly wrapped gift, but were told they had to wait eight minutes before they could open it.

In the meantime, moms were asked to fill out a stack of forms.

“It really simulates a real-life parenting situation that people often face. You’re cooking dinner and your child is throwing a tantrum, and how do you juggle that?” Luby says.

“The maternal support had to do with how much positive parenting the parent showed: how much they reassured the child, how much they helped regulate the child when the child made bids that they needed that gift,” she says.

Later, trained assistants scored the moms on how well they helped their children through the stress of the task.

Researchers continued to follow the children, and when they were between the ages of 7 and 13, their brains were scanned using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Researchers were particularly interested in the size of a comma-shaped brain region called the hippocampus, which plays a role in memory and how we handle stress. Hippocampus size has been linked to factors such as stressful life events and depression severity.

Support Bolsters Brain’s Learning Memory Centers

Among the 51 kids in the study who had no symptoms of depression as preschoolers, those who got more support from their moms as they completed the waiting task had larger hippocampi seen in later scans.

Read the rest here.

‘Kids learn through play,’ the Wall Street Journal says so

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OK, people, we are making it into mainstream America. How exciting is this?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a new study that only 2 – 3% of preschoolers spend their day playing. The problem with this?

Kids learn through play. When kids play, they’re not wasting their time. They’re learning everything from motor skills to social skills and numbers. Think of all the counting that comes with hopscotch, or with making two even teams. Those activities are a lot more fun than flash cards, but they teach the same thing: math. Kids playing outside also learn things like distance, motion, the changing of the seasons—things we take for granted because we got time outside.

This study is about vigorous play, so not the kind of LEGO play I’ve been blogging about, but the principle is the same: play affects brain development. I also love the emphasis put on active play because I think this is so important for girls, especially to learn healthy risk-taking. Read more about it here.

It’s not your 5 yr old son, it’s you

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Parents, please: enough with the “we’re just giving kids what they want.” Children learn through play. Segregated toys are inhibiting kids’ brain development by severely limiting their experiences. Children’s brains have more plasticity than at any other time in life, that’s why they can learn languages rapidly. Once those synapses make connections or shut down, its harder for brains to grow later. Read more about all that here. And here. And here.

What can you do? Resist marketing. It’s messing with your kid’s brain. You are the parent. You’re the shopper, the one with the wallet. Buy wisely.

How?

Get your daughters out of the monochromatic world of pink. Or any monochromatic world. Your kid may resist. This may be a challenge for her because kids love routine. But, still, challenge your kid with toy choice the way you would with any other learning activity. Help them to branch out and encourage them to try new things. Get excited about the toy. Play with it with them. Most of all, they want your attention.

Schedule play dates with kids of the opposite sex. If your kid’s preschool tends to segregate by gender, or allows them to self-segregate, talk to teachers and the head of school about mixing it up. Kids learn when they move out of their comfort zone.

Read your sons books where the main characters are girls.

Show your sons and daughters animation where the main characters are female (Miyazaki is a great choice.) After we all see “Tintin” or “Lord of the Rings” or “Arthur Christmas” on the screen, the posters all over town, and then the video games that follow and the toys derived from the movies, all practically without females, it seems normal that there are so few girls represented everywhere except for the pink ghetto. The annihilation of girls passes us by unnoticed. Girls are half of the kid population, yet children’s movies today normalize an imaginary reality where females hardly exist at all. Then we all literally buy into it. How do you think that makes girls feel? What does it make kids think? What are kids learning about which gender is more important?

Let stores and toy companies know how you feel about their relentless drive to segment toys by gender in order to sell products. Write to the companies directly. Blog about them. Tell your friends about it on Facebook.

SPARK has just initiated the Toy Aisle Action Project.

We are SPARKing this movement armed with Post-It notes and cameras in the blue and pink aisles. (Seriously, some stores have actually have colored their toy aisles pink and blue! When will it end?) With your Post-Its, make a note using slogans like “Where My Girls At?” in the blue aisle, “Your Girl Needs Joe, too” on a GI Joe, “This Is An Option For Everybody” and “What About Dads?” on the baby dolls.

SPARK advises to use statistics:

women make up only 13% of architects (I wonder why LEGO?), 14% of active US military (Where is G.I. Jane?), and 4% of executive chefs — so, why are all the kitchen gadgets pink when so many chefs are men?

I’ve thought about these kinds of stats a lot, and it comes down to this: if it’s low status, its assigned as “feminine” (cooking), and women dominate; but if its high status, all of a sudden it becomes “masculine” (being a chef) and men dominate. This bait and switch applies to the whole stereotype that boys like action while girls are more literary, good with words, and artsy. Unless we’re talking about the Pulitzer Prize or the latest exhibition at the MOMA, in which case, all of a sudden men rule the roost.

A department store in London, Hamley’s, decided to break out of the current trend and organize its toys by toy type instead of by the gender of the kid: arts and crafts, building toys, outdoor toys etc. Congrats to Hamley’s. Let’s hope the land of the free and the brave and its Targets and Walmarts learn something. In the meantime, parents need to shop carefully.