Also, what’s with the flowers? I don’t think it’s about the bridal thing like some have said, but I really don’t get the point. If she is at a wedding (bridesmaid, flower girl…) how does that tie to being “easy”?

Anyway, I guess I phrased that wrong. She is NOT passive because she is wearing a dress. The fact that they are making her out to be the passive, “easy to handle” one and she is ALSO wearing a dress is what is sexist.

who, exactly, is the media?

Yes, because non-parents never interact with young children and certainly don’t have the insight to be able to comment on the way young girls are represented in the media. What if I were to tell you that I am a parent? Just wanted to let you know your privilege is showing.

“See, the thing is you ASSUME that girls are oversexualized in the media, and therefore you ASSUME that every image of a girl is sexual, regardless of whether or not this has any basis in reality.”

Okay, so I’m just ASSUMING that girls are oversexualized in the media. Not because they ARE. Perhaps you phrased that wrong. Anyway, taking issue with the way females are represented in one ad is certainly NOT the same as assuming that EVERY image of a female in the media is sexualized.

“There’s nothing passive about the girl, for example. Again, I’m not even sure what “passive” means in this context. Maybe you can enlighten me.”

You only need the vaguest understanding of body language to see that the little girl, in this context (next to the girl on the left), is clearly passive. She is quiescent, she is docile, and she is wearing a dress.

The real issue is the fact that she is wearing a dress and looking very traditionally feminine, while the girl on the left is not. The girl on the left is aggressive, due to her standoffish pose and irate face. Because they decided to dress her up in “business-casual” attire, her outfit, too, is equated as bad.

AKA, if you are NOT traditionally feminine, you are “hard to handle.”
If you ARE traditionally feminine- Yay! You are “easy to handle.”

The ad is not seeking to CREATE and ENFORCE socio-cultural stereotypes. It’s seeking to work with the ones that are already there.”

I realize you now see what’s wrong with the ad and the clearly anti-feminist tactic they are employing, but in your first post, you defend the company because you say it’s merely doing business and trying to make profits. All’s well because they are just doing their best to make money. That doesn’t make it right, and you acknowledge that, which I appreciate.

BUT, socio-cultural stereotypes in the media/advertising and in society are cyclical, so they, too, are at fault. It’s not a one way street. By “working with the [socio-cultural stereotypes] that are there,” as you say, they ARE enforcing those stereotypes. You can’t say that they’re off the hook just because they are trying to make some money.

“Those of us that seek to combat the true cultural implications of this, had best do it with our own children, through education, volunteering with or donating to womensheart.com or gotrsd.org.”

This is basically saying that we’ve no reason to be critical of the media, or to be having a discussion like this, which is wrong.

this is how this ad came to be:

1. Parents buy an awful lot of orange juice, so our ad should speak to them.

2. What is the angle on our new orange product about? It’s easier to handle.

3. What do parents relate to in terms of ease or difficulty to handle? Kids!

4. Great! Let’s make and ad that shows two kids, one hard to handle and one easy to handle, and then imply that the product is similar to the easy to handle one.

5. Problem. How do we show a kid that is hard to handle? Especially in a visual ad that will be viewed for an average of 1.8 seconds per reader? Kids, god bless ‘em, are not capable of performances of that nuance. We can’t cast two different kids, cuz how can a kid’s face just look hard to handle?.

6. We also know that the art direction has to be simple and complete, preferably on white, so as to continue associations with the colorway of the product.

7. We’ll have to do it with wardrobe.

8. OK, let’s take a step back. What magazine is this in? Adbusters? No. Mother Jones? No. Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens, Oprah, and Reader’s Digest? Yes. OK. Let’s see how do those readers identify a hard to handle child by wardrobe?

9. What’s that? We have a library of images searchable by keywords that have all been tested with our intended demographic? Oh, it appears that our intended demographic still largely believes that black clothes worn by pre-teens is a reliable predictor of difficulty?

10. What’s that again? Our library of market research shows that parents as a whole find pre-teen girls the most difficult age of child-rearing?

11. Great. That’s what we’ll do. One pre-teen girl, two opposite outfits, one black and scowling, one opposite.

we show the client, the client likes. We get paid, we keep our jobs.

The ad is not seeking to CREATE and ENFORCE socio-cultural stereotypes. It’s seeking to work with the ones that are already there. Business pure and simple. Fucked up, sure, but not really where the battle lies.

They should have cast a boy, not because it’s better, but only because it avoids all the psuedo intellectual brain beating on this page.

Those of us that seek to combat the true cultural implications of this, had best do it with our own children, through education, volunteering with or donating to womensheart.com or gotrsd.org.

Not by piling on the blind work a bunch of ad people who are just trying to keep there own pre teen girls from ending up homeless.

Here’s my point of view: you need to be a non-parent to look at a six year old girl with the cation “east to handle” and think this has anything to do with sex. You need to be a non-parent to think that boys are “treated like there is something wrong with them when they don’t” show anger. For crying out loud, Ghostwax, go a daycare centre and see how boys who show anger are treated.

The problem with many of the posts in this blog is that first if shoots the arrow, and then it draws the target around it. First it assumes the stereotypes are there, and then it looks for reasons to say there’s a stereotype in the picture. See, the thing is you ASSUME that girls are oversexualized in the media, and therefore you ASSUME that every image of a girl is sexual, regardless of whether or not this has any basis in reality. If you ASSUME that every image of a girl in the media is sexualized, then there’s hardly any point in trying to prove to you otherwise, since you’re not basing your interpretation on the actual image, you’re basing it on your assumption.

There’s nothing passive about the girl, for example. Again, I’m not even sure what “passive” means in this context. Maybe you can enlighten me.
Here’s how I interpret the pose of the girl: she’s sharing a secret with the viewer. She’s obviously hiding the flowers behind her back (ready to give them to a parent, maybe?), and she’s looking back at us, smiling, because she knows we can see them. So it’s playful, not passive. (whoops! playful can also mean sexually. Guess I must sexually desire this girl).

And Benjamin’s critique is NOT valid. It’s idiotic. It’s ridiculous. It’s about as valid as me saying that flowers cause allergies, and therefore the girl holding them is actually abusive and irritating. It is based on nothing but his own idiosyncratic associative thought process. If I say the girl on the left reminds me of a girl I once dated who was the hottest sex I ever had, does that make my critique that it’s an oversexualized representation of a little girl valid? No.

Sociology doesn’t mean you can say any damn thing that crosses your mind just because it occurred to you, and then assert that it’s a valid point. Sociology is a social SCIENCE. It requires actual thought, processes, mechanisms, and every once in a while, actual proof that what you’re saying has any relation to real life.
If sociology was anything like what some people here say it is, I’d vote to close our sociology department down and send the people studying it to write op-eds for niche newspapers.
(These two paragraphs are not aimed at Lisa and Wendy, who I might disagree with often, but who, I believe, hold sociology in somewhat higher regard that some of its so-called defenders in the comments).