Comments on: The Smurfette Principle

By: The Stakes of Skinnybashing: Thin Privilege in Body Image Advocacy | Miss Mary Max

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:04:33 +0000

[…] at SI are lifted directly from mass culture and include everything from military brochures to cartoons. But SI is a space where terms like “heteronormative” and “kyriarchy” are […]

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:07:13 +0000

Think that’s weird? How about the latest movie, where hordes of teenage (human!) girls fall in love with the Chipmunks. Surreal.

By: LexieDi

LexieDi — Fri, 28 May 2010 07:52:15 +0000

The Nostalgia Chick is so awesome. I watch her a lot. She’s very insightful and funny. Most people on the site where her videos are posted (thatguywiththeglasses.com) are male and she still had the ovaries to post such a video. I pumping my fist in the air through the whole thing. Then, of course, I posted a comment and was bashed something crazy. Hahaha!

ThatGuyWithTheGlasses (TGWTG) has a (somewhat hidden) chat room that you can only access if you know a member who already is in the chat. I’m the only regular female in that chat. Honestly, though the site is filled with younger men from their teens to their 30’s, I’m treated rather well. There is the occasional jerk who wants to drop offensive pick-up lines (I know, pick-up lines in a chat room?), but because of how small the community is in the chat room, and because I have a friendship with the 3 most active moderators, they’re usually booted quickly. Of course, they all know I’m a feminist and like to snicker and say “oh, you’re in for it now” and “you don’t know who you’re messing with” when a guy says something stupid or sexist.

By: Rosepixie

Rosepixie — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:29:49 +0000

I am sure that there are a lot of studies on this topic.
This article discusses some of them:
http://www.intellinate.com/science/social-sciences/psychology/childrens-gender-beliefs.html
A researcher by the name of B. I. Fagot did a great number of studies about young children and gender roles, some involving their parents or peers and some focusing on just the children alone.
There are quite a few more, but unfortunately my personal library at home doesn’t really have all the resources I’d need to give you a very good bibliography on the topic (it’s not actually my specialty, just something I’ve read a good deal about as background).
I’m not entirely sure what you are objecting to from your comments, T, other than the lack of sources given. The studies I’m listing all talk about gender roles as socialization, which I have seen far more studies supporting than the gender roles as hormonal instinct theory (although there was an interesting study I’d love to know more about involving monkeys and gendered toys that is often cited as evidence for gender as hormonal – I have to wonder how they conducted it, but it sounds intriguing). Given what I’ve encountered in terms of actual science, I’d have to say that I lean more in the socialization camp, although I doubt it’s purely cut-and-dry like that, since few things are. Regardless, I said nothing about these generalizations applying to every individual out there. If nothing else, not every individual even has a clear sex, so it can’t always be clear what gender role to do. But it’s not even that simple – people are complicated. Not all girls are girly, despite the pressures to be so and aisles of pink boxes at toy stores, and not all boys are boy-like, despite the pressures to be so and to *not* be anything like *girly*. People are unique. But that doesn’t mean we can’t see patterns sometimes. Still, it’s not generally easy for individuals that fall outside the accepted “norms”.

By: Body-fascism in Avatar and homophobia everywhere « Pussy Goes Grrr

Body-fascism in Avatar and homophobia everywhere « Pussy Goes Grrr — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 17:45:20 +0000

[…] a lot about how straight is seen as the incontrovertible default or norm. (Kind of like, oh, how women are women and men are people, or how black is an alternate option.) Even now, homosexuality is identified as, […]

By: T

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:20:09 +0000

Rosepixie- are you sure about your below claims? ‘There’s a large body of studies on it.’ That’s a very ambiguous, unsourced claim. Many studies say that gender is determined by prenatal hormone factors. Gender is heavily socialized- we are taught the ‘correct’ way we should be acting- but it is in no way representational of the individual.

‘Actually, even small children understand gender roles. Infants show no preference for specific colors or toys, but even very young toddlers (before pre-school) display an understanding of proper “doing gender” behavior and items – boys will tell you that pink is for girls, girls show a preference for cooking toys and dolls while boys play with trucks and blocks, etc. It’s shockingly early that they understand these concepts. And it’s really no wonder, considering we gender small children almost more than we gender older children. We dress baby girls in frilly pink froth and put footballs in the hands of infant boys too young to even know what they’re holding. There’s a large body of studies on it.’

By: T

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:07:24 +0000

I think what many of these commentaries are missing is that many females enjoy their femininity. Because women are bashing their feminine side, many men take the position of being turned off by masculine women because of socialization- much of it propogated by women. If femininity weren’t put down as weak and instead embraced as a power and choice or expression of its own, maybe more males would adopt it and embrace it. And female masculinity wouldn’t be so shamed.

By: The Smurfette Principle « Hyperbole Machine

The Smurfette Principle « Hyperbole Machine — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:49:22 +0000

[…] sociological images via […]

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:22:10 +0000

When I was a child in the ’80s and ’90s, I totally picked up on the fact that there were so few female characters on the cartoons I watched. On the playground, we’d play “Superfriends,” and all my guy friends would get a choice of who to play. I always got stuck with Wonderwoman (I guess I could’ve played Hawkgirl too! lol). On GI Joe, there were three female characters to the dozens of males, but you hardly ever saw them. Robotech had lots of decent female characters (barring Minmei, ugh) and that was one of my favorite shows. As a child, I really longed for more strong female characters that I could identify with. Also, female action figures were always so hard to find, I think the companies made less of them.

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:28:18 +0000

Very good, except she got one thing wrong. Elmira was a spin off of Elmer Fudd.

By: Ames

Ames — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:11:51 +0000

Good point. When I’ve watched the movies I’ve chalked that up to the compressed nature of the medium, but now that you say it, you’re right, in the books we get the whole thought process and see where that came from. And it matters, because when we watch the movie (and many, many people do so without reading the books), we assume the clever look on Harry’s face (or his gee whiz explication) is the idea forming, where we know from reading the book that it wasn’t his at all. And I think that colored my “reading” the movies as well – I already knew that it was Hermione behind the whole plan. But the vast majority of people probably don’t.

I hadn’t thought about the romance in the movies. I suppose there is more flirtation, being the medium that it is, but I guess I refused to see it (as much as I could) and saw the book character primarily and not the movie character.

By: Rosepixie

Rosepixie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:20:10 +0000

I was more using her as an example because in the books Hermione is frequently the one who figures things out and directs what they do next, since the boys are often clueless, if ready to jump into action. In the movies, they gave most of the “figuring things out” moments to Harry because he’s the hero and we couldn’t let a girl steal his thunder. And they also injected a lot more romance into Hermione in the movies, while she’s fairly romance-free until the end of the series in the books. There was a big difference.

Although I agree about being disappointed at Hermione’s future.

By: Ames

Ames — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:49:33 +0000

I wouldn’t give Rowling too much credit for the Hermione character’s status in the books. Hermione’s participation in the books is on about the same scale as in the movies and benefits from girls/women being able to inject their own imagination during the reading. Tellingly, it was Rowling who decided to make a point to highlight what her wonderfully smart, talented, and brave character would be doing after graduating at the top of her class: marrying Ron Weasley (not exactly her intellectual equal) and having babies. Oh, and she might have a job, too! I’ve never felt so betrayed by an author in my life and sick at heart for the message that choice sent to millions of girls: Do incredible things and you too can get married to a nice guy and have his children!!

By: За четене: « It Looks Like A Feminist Blog

За четене: « It Looks Like A Feminist Blog — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:23:57 +0000

[…] Лиса от любимите ми Socimages репоства видеото на Линдзи относно „Принципът на Смърфиета…. […]

By: Kelly

Kelly — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:25:22 +0000

This was just great. Ellis nailed it right on.