Sociological Images

I’ve posted in the past about differences I’ve noticed in the language used in signs in the girls’ and boys’ clothing sections at Target, which seemed to reinforce the idea that boys are rough and rowdy while girls are sweet. Eric B. sent in another example that he recently saw in Target’s infants’ department. The store he went to had five aisles; each aisle had a set of large signs along the top. Three of the five were focused on boys, and they all emphasize activities:

So boys actively do things (they play, they learn to feed themselves, they discover) that merit adult attention and admiration. What about girls?

Oh, they sleep:

For other examples of how we reinforce the boys are active/girls are passive binary, see our posts on the binary in Lego City, in kids’ meal toys, and in magazines.

Twenty-three of you (a record I think) have sent in this clip of a little girl in a toy store critiquing the way the store is divided into pink princesses for girls and superheros for boys.  It’s heartwarming and inspiring to see a child offer a critical analysis of the world she lives in, something that most commentators have observed.

What I, and some of you, noticed was that her own analysis and that of the adult taking the video (presumably her Dad) differ.  And, believe it or not, her analysis is more correct than his.

Rightfully identifying what sociologists call “androcentrism,” she notes that girls like both girl and boy toys, but boys only like boy toys.  She says:

…because girls want superheros and the boys want superheros and the girls want pink stuff and the girls… and the boys want… and the boys don’t want pink stuff… (gently shaking her head back and forth)

Her Dad corrects her, saying “Boys, well, boys want both…”

But her Dad is wrong.  Boys in the U.S. are taught from a very early age to avoid everything associated with girls.  Being called a “girl” is, in itself, an insult to boys.  And the slurs “sissy” and “fag” are reserved for men who act feminine.  So, no, boys (who have learned the rules of how to be a boy) generally reject anything girly.  (Indeed, this was one of the themes of Jimmy Kimmel “bad present” prank played by parents on their kids.)

The girl’s Dad, however, articulates a symmetrical analysis. The idea is that there are gender stereotypes — ones that apply to boys and ones that apply to girls — and that both are inaccurate, unfair, and constraining.  His mistake is in missing the asymmetrical value placed on masculinity and femininity.  Boys and girls are simply not positioned equally in relationship to stereotypes of femininity and masculinity.

I have to admit, it’s pretty neat that she has picked up on this nuance so early. I wish most adults had her insight… and her passion:

Thanks to James, Julie G., Carly M., Brooklin N., BogganStoryTeller, Denise, Allie H., Yvonne R., Mark L., Karim S., Ann K., Lenny M., Isabeau P.-S., Daniel K., Marsha, Jay L., Shayna A.-S., Josh W., Kimberly L., Melissa, Colleen W., Simon G., and Brad for sending in the link!

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Cross-posted at Ms.

A few years back we published this fantastic ad for Legos as an example of gender-neutral advertising. It appeared in 1981; during my childhood, I’m happy to say.

The ad offers nice context for the new effort by Lego to capture The Girl Market.  Their new line of Legos, Lego Friends, has gotten a lot of attention already. In the circles I run in, it’s being roundly criticized for reproducing stereotypes of girls and women: domesticity, vanity, materialism, and an obsession with everything being pastel.  Kits include a house, cafe, animal hospital, tree house, beauty salon, and an inventor’s lab.  Choice examples:

The new line also includes a new Lego figurine that is taller, thinner, and more feminine, with boobs.  There is no innovation here; it is the exact same makeover that we’ve seen in recent years with Dora the Explorer, Strawberry Shortcake, Holly Hobbie, Lisa Frank, Trolls, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite, and Candy Land (or visit our Pinterest collection of Sexy Toy Make-Overs).

Examples of the old “mini-fig” and the new “mini-doll”:

(source)

The company is framing their new line for girls with “science.” Executives are going to great lengths to explain that the line is based on research, using anthropologists who spent time with girls in their homes. The frame gives the company an excuse for reproducing the same old gender stereotypes that we see throughout our culture.  They can shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, what are we to do? This is what girls want.”  In this way they are trying to make it clear that they shouldn’t be held accountable for the messages their products send.

But it’s no accident that girls feel alienated from Lego.

According to Business Week, Lego has spent most of the last decade focusing their products on boys.  They have deliberately designed products that they expect will appeal to boys and included boys almost exclusively in their marketing material. Today Legos are shelved in the boy aisle is most toy stores.

So, basically, what Lego has done over the last few decades is take a truly wonderful gender-neutral toy, infuse it with boyness, and tell every kid who’ll listen that the toy is not-for-girls.  Now, stuck with only 50% of the kid market, they’re going after girls by overcompensating.  And, to top it all off, they’re shaking their heads and doing “science” to try to figure out girls, as if they’re some strange variant of human that regular humans just can’t get their head around.

In fact, girls don’t feel like the toy is for them because Lego has done everything in its power to ensure that they will not.

The market research manager sums up Legos’ impression of what girls want this way: “The greatest concern for girls really was beauty.”  How ironic, because the true beauty of Lego is its ability to inspire creativity, not enable conformity.  They somehow knew that back in 1981.

(An ad that deserves being looked at over and over.)

Thanks to Anjan G., Sangyoub P., Rachel W., Dolores R., Erin B., Christie W., and Paul K. for suggesting that we write about this!

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Samantha Moore sent in a screenshot of the front page of the website for Aerie, a brand of lingerie marketed to 15-21 year-olds.  I thought it was quite the stunning example of the impossible bodies that young people are offered as the ideal.

Adding more perspective, Samantha writes:

I shopped at American Eagle before I turned 15, and I would say that’s part of the draw — girls like to shop where the older kids do. Though aerie may be officially targeting older teenagers, this bra campaign wipes away the transition from puberty to sex; you know, that time when you bra shop out of necessity and dreadfully weird body change, not sexual enticement.

Time for another round-up of gendered kids’ items!

Will L. noticed something interesting recently at Old Navy. The boys’ section offered two styles of jeans, Skinny and Regular:

But when he looked at the corresponding section in the girls’ clothing, he found not Skinny and Regular, but Skinny and…Super Skinny:

Caro Reusch sent us an example of kids;’ t-shirts with messages about what we value for men and women. She saw the following at a mall in Berlin:

The blue one says “My daddy is stronger than yours,” while the pink announces, “My mommy is prettier than yours.”

Similarly, Lindsey B. saw two themed bibs for sale at Target. The blue bib is a doctor and the pink one is a ballerina:

Shantal Marshall, a postdoc student at UCLA with a Ph.D. in social psych and blogger at Smartie Pops, noticed that Crayola has a new product out, the Crayola Story Studio.  It lets you upload a photo of yourself, have it turned into a cartoon, and then it’s inserted into one of 3 themed templates: Disney Princess, Spiderman, or Cars. You can then print off various versions of coloring books based on those templates. The commercial for the Spiderman version shows a boy excitedly becoming a superhero:

For the Disney Princess version, we see a girl excited to become a princess, then dancing in the background with her very own Prince Charming:

As Shantal said, it’s a bit dispiriting that Crayola’s slogan for these items is “give everything imaginable,” but the pre-existing templates, and their marketing, don’t seem to include an imaginable alternative to the “boys = superheroes” and “girls = princesses” division we see so often in kids’ toys.

Madelyn C. saw a store in Warsaw, Poland, that just goes ahead and makes the gendered division of the toy industry explicit:

Finally, Jessica M. sent in a link to a GOOD post by Christopher Mims about the Toy Industry Association’s 2011 Toy of the Year Awards. There are general categories of toys, such as educational, innovative, and action, but of course also girl and boy categories (also, I personally can’t think of “boy toy of the year” without thinking of Madonna’s outfit in her “Like a Virgin” performance at the first MTV Video Music Awards, but maybe the ’80s are sufficiently behind us that the phrase resonates differently for most people). Anyway, Mims discusses the gendered messages in the commercials for the nominees in the two categories. Among other things, the categorization is rather confusing. Hexbugs are nominated in the boy category, even though commercials for them show girls as well:

Also, Mims points out that the boys’ category “includes a strong undercurrent of Beyond Thunderdome via WWE.” Exhibit A: The commercial for Beyblade Metal Masters, “performance tops” to be used in “strategic battles”:

Playing with tops has gotten super hardcore, I guess. Probably they should look into a sponsorship from an energy drink.

Late Night TV host Jimmy Kimmel encouraged his viewers to film their children getting early Christmas presents that they would surely hate.  The result is a collection of children acting badly: bursting into tears, saying they hate their parents, lecturing them on proper gift giving protocol, etc.  It’s funny and also a great illustration of the gift-giving rules that Theodore Caplow meticulously lists in his article, Rule Enforcement Without Visible Means: Christmas Gift Giving in Middletown (pdf) (btw: this is the very first article I assign in Soc101).

(UPDATE: I was quoted briefly on this phenomenon in a New York Times story on the prank.)

In a number of cases, the gift is considered bad because the recipient is a boy and the gift is for a girl.  One boy, for example, gets a Hello Kitty gift, another gets a pop star-themed coloring book.  The boys’ reaction at being presented with a girls’ gift reveals their internalization of androcentrism, the idea that masculinity is superior to femininity.   They express both disgust and, in some cases I think, fear at being poisoned by contact — especially such personal contact as “I got this for you” — with girlness.

More posts on androcentrism: “woman” as an insult, being a girl is degrading, making it manly: how to sell a car, good god don’t let men have long hair, don’t forget to hug like a dude, saving men from their (feminine) selves, men must eschew femininity, not impressed with Buzz Lightyear commercial, dinosaurs can’t be for girls, and sissy men are so uncool.

Two additional cases of a boy being subject to schools rules that don’t apply to girls prompts a re-post. I’ve added the new instances to the end.

Tara C. sent us a link to a story about a 4-year-old boy who has been given in-school suspension (and was threatened with expulsion) for having hair that breaks the dress code for the Dallas, TX, school system:

Dmitriy T.M. sent in another story, this one featuring a 6-year-old named Gareth who was being placed into in-school suspension (i.e., spending all day each day in the principal’s office) because of his long hair and earring.

So, this still you see of him below… that’s what counts as long hair. And, can you spot the earring in his left ear? It’s there.

In another case, 16-year-old Kasey Landrum was suspended for wearing eye-liner on school grounds (after classes were out):

Of course, these aren’t just about enforcing a dress code. It’s a gendered code; girls aren’t required to have short hair cuts, because on girls, longer hair isn’t “distracting,” it’s “normal.”  As is make-up and earrings.  Implicit in the idea of what counts as an appropriate appearance, then, is the gender of the person wearing it.  These cases reveal, further, that girls are allowed more choices than boys because we are more accepting of girls acting boyish than boys acting girlish (in what sociologists call “androcentrism“).

The final case also reveals the importance of intersectionality, or the way that different identities come together in complicated ways. Landrum claims that an ostensibly heterosexual boy was allowed to wear punk-style make-up to school on the same day.  So breaking gender rules is apparently okay if you affirm that you’re heterosexual, and maybe being gay is okay if you don’t break any gender rules, but doing both is going too far.