girls

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I had the pleasure of spending last weekend in the presence of Isla, a four-year-old who LOVES Toy Story Two and LOVES Jessie even more. When the scene highlighting Jessie’s back story came on, she jumped off the couch and ran towards the television with a look of rapture on her face. Once the song finished and the main narrative resumed, she chanted “More Jessie, more Jessie!!!”

Sadly, if her parents bring home Toy Story 3 for her to enjoy (released on DVD November 2^nd), she will find there is not more Jessie. Rather, the male toys are still front and center. Meanwhile, the female toys have gone missing (Bo), fallen in love with Ken (Barbie) or gone soft for Latino Buzz (Jessie).

Though Toy Story 3 opens on a female-empowerment high, with Mrs. Potato-Head displaying mad train-robbing skills and Jessie skillfully steering Bullseye in the ensuing chase, from there, the bottom drops out of the film’s female quotient. Out of seven new toy characters, only one is female – the purple octopus. This is far worse than the one female to every three males ratio documented in children’s media by The Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media.

When I first viewed the 3^rd film, I was almost giddy as Mrs. Potato-Head and Jessie chased a train in the opening scene. Alas, after this first scene, the movie went back to its male focus, throwing in rather sexist and homophobic banter along the way. For example, Mr. Potato Head says at one point “No one touches my wife, except for me!” while another character suggests she needs her mouth taken off. As for Ken, he is depicted as a closeted gay fashionista with a fondness for writing in sparkly purple ink. Played for adult in-jokes, Ken huffily insists “I am not a girl toy, I am not!” when an uber-masculine robot toy suggests as much during a heated poker match. In the typical way homophobia is paired with misogyny, the jokes about Ken suggest how funny and scary it is for a man to be either feminine or queer. Admittedly, Barbie ultimately rejects Ken and is instrumental in Woody and Co’s escape, but her hyper-feminine presentation coupled with Ken’s not-yet-out-of-the-toy-cupboard homophobia make this yet another family movie that perpetuates damaging gender and sexuality norms.

Though the film ends with young Bonnie as the happy new owner of the toys, Woody would have to become Wanda and Buzz become Betty in order for the series to break Pixar’s male-only protagonist tradition. Finally a female-helmed film is on the horizon though – Brave – too bad the protagonist is a princess (how original!) and Pixar recently fired the female director (it’s first ever).

This is not to say that Pixar’s films are not funny and clever. And I would agree that in many regards Pixar films are an improvement on Disney. But need we settle for “better than Disney”? Can’t we ask they also make films with female protagonists, with racial and class diversity, without homophobic jokes, and, ahem, with FEMALE DIRECTORS?

Some 43 years after Mowgli’s love interest in The Jungle Book sings of her future daughter, “I’ll send her to fetch the water, I’ll be cooking in the home” her metaphorical daughters populate not only Disney films, but also those of Dream Works and Pixar. Alas, not only do these animated daughters still accord to gender norms for the most part, so too do their creators – most animators, screenwriters, directors, and producers are still men, completing Mowgli type adventures in the Hollywood jungle, adventures that still place boys front and center while keeping their female counterparts as figurative water fetchers.

Brenda Chapman, the female director who seemingly broke away from the sticky Cinderella floor to slipper through the glass ceiling into what is reportedly the Pixar boys club was sadly turned back into a non-directing pumpkin– no fairy tale ending for her as the director heroine of Brave, a film she wrote and has been developing for several years. Instead, Mark Andrews has reportedly taken over director duties. The title of his Pixar Short, One Man Band, is a fitting way to describe what seems to have become Pixar’s one-note ode to male helmed and focused films.

While changes in directors are common in the film world, Chapman’s firing caused quite the stir as she was Pixar’s first woman director – all eleven previous films were directed by (and featured) men. Pixar is not unique in this regard: As Sharon Waxman & Jeff Sneider write, “The animation industry is not known as a warm and fuzzy place for women.”

And, it was only this year that a woman finally won Best Director at the Academy Awards, despite the fact women have been involved in filmmaking since its beginnings in 1896.

Tracy L., a former film development executive with 12 years experience in the industry, responded to Chapman’s dismissal as follows:

“The bigger issue here is not the firing but why Pixar has never had a female director to begin with. The bigger story to my way of thinking is the utter lack of female input behind the scenes and the lack of female protagonists on screen.”

In films, this lack of women behind the scenes seems to translate to a certain type of woman character on screen–one who is less heroic, adventuresome, independent and important than the male robots, toys, cars and humans that surround her.

With Disney figuratively cutting Rapunzel’s powerful locks by making Tangled more boy-focused, and now Pixar taking away Chapman’s directorial wand, what’s next–a film about a female warrior who suddenly becomes a gooey-eyed animal lover? Oh, that’s already been done (Pocahontas). How about taking a you-go-girl patriarchy-defier and stealing her voice? Oh, that one is taken too (Little Mermaid).Wait, I know: a movie about a matriarchal society filled with female power-players that have to be saved by a tremulous boy. (Oops, that’s Bug’s Life).

So, I want to add my virtual voice and echo four-year-old Isla “I want more Jessie!” Come on, Pixar, get with the Bigelow effect already: encourage more women directors and more female friendly story-lines! Really, now, let some women lead your (or at least play in) your one-man band, would you?

My twins turned one last week. She Writes, the start-up I’ve been nurturing, turned 1.25. Needless to say, this is the year Halloween nearly blew me by.

I bah-humbugged it all the way to Tuesday. While shopping for diaper wipes online on Wednesday, a neon orange tagline from the crypt—“Last minute deals on Halloween costumes!”—caught my eye. Who in their right mind could resist images of cuddly babies in bear suits? I landed on a bee costume for Baby Girl (just $12!) and a dragon suit for Baby Boy ($18). The joy of these purchases? Priceless. And that’s how it hit me: At one year old, my babies were people. People who wouldn’t remember what they wore for their first real Halloween, but people who would newly experience the magic of disguise.

So what do the disguises I chose for these here babies say to them, to you, to me? Bees are busier and daintier than dragons, and they make honey, though let’s not forget: they sting. Dragons lope, and breathe fire. I thought about a ladybug for my son, to match my daughter’s bee, then vetoed it. He’s really more a dragon-y type of guy. And so it goes. Gendering—imposed by even the feminist among us—begins.

“Babies are born to parents who have a host of assumptions and expectations about gender, whether or not they consciously endorse those expectations. Studies have shown that parents have a tendency to see boys as more boyish and girls as more girlish than they actually are,” says Cordelia Fine, author of the new book Delusions of Gender, in a recent interview at Salon. Until they reach age two, my babies apparently won’t know which side of the gender divide they’re on. Gender, at this early stage, is what we heap on.

So why all this fuss around costumes and kids? Because eventually, it matters (and stay tuned, Penners, for Peggy Orenstein’s Cinderella Ate My Daughter, coming soon!). Though my babies are only one, in an era when pre-packaged girl costumes are sluttier-than-thou and boy costumes are more violent than ever and make Freddy Krueger look quaint, masquerade is rarely the innocent thing it seemed in the days when my friends and I dressed as a bunch of grapes.

Dressing up—whether it unleashes a hidden identity or helps us try on a role—makes us feel, deepens our sense of play, enlargens our sense of who and what we are. And dressing up the way a sexist culture tells us to makes us small, current articles in defense of Slutoween aside.

To be sure, at this stage in my children’s life, this whole debate is a lot less about them and a lot more about me.  But here’s my question: at what age do new parents like me need to start to care?  At my babies’ pre-linguistic stage, can’t Halloween be just what it’s supposed to be…light and silly and fun?  Or are costumes–like gender, perhaps, itself–always already predetermined scripts, coded so heavily with trickery that we can’t enjoy the treat?

Can a dragon and a bee ever just be…a dragon and a bee?

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(For a fellow traveler’s internal dilemma on it all, see Lynn Harris’ “Raising Girls in Princess Culture: Does it really affect girls’ gender roles?” over at Babble last week.)

I posted a partial version of this post on Friday at www.SheWrites.com, and used the photo of my twins to kick off a caption contest. Got a caption for it?  Do share by posting it there!

Yes, I’m still here!  The twins turned 1 last week and it’s time for me to re-enter.

A quick list of what’s been catching my attention of late:

Rita Aren’s blog, Surrender Dorothy (I’m way hooked)

Stephanie Coontz’s commentary, “Why Mad Men is TV’s Most Feminist Show”, in the Washington Post

The SPARK Summit and social media extravaganza, where I signed books sitting next to Jean Kilbourne, author most recently of So Sexy So Soon and one of my all-time feminist heroines, met her daughter the fabulous Claudia Lux (hire her, people!), and got to catch up with organizer Deb Tolman, who is a one-woman powerhouse herself

Robyn Silverman’s Good Girls Don’t Get Fat: How Weight Obsession is Messing Up Our Girls and How We can Help Them Thrive Despite It

Girls Write Now.  Always.

Responses to She Writes’ Domestic Violence Awareness Month writing prompt

What’s been catching yours?

The things that become viral are unpredictable. Earlier this month a few friends on Facebook posted a link to a Fermilab webpage that showcased 31 seventh graders drawings of scientists before and after a visit with actual scientists. I re-posted it and then a few others did as well. I saw others on Twitter tweeting it. It wasn’t the double rainbow guy viral, but it certainly seemed to be spreading.

All the children learned something about who a scientist is. Sometimes their drawings didn’t change much, but their description did. The biggest difference I noticed was that the myth of a lab coat died that day. All the scientists the kids met that day seemed to wear jeans and sweaters or button down shirts. Which is pretty much what most of the scientists I know do wear.

A few of the drawings really touched me, especially Sandra‘s. Not only did she start off already picturing a woman as a scientist, but after meeting some scientists she tossed the lab coat and commented about all the fun things that scientists do in their lives. Plus her drew a woman and a man holding hands. Awww…

But wait…I started to notice that some of the girls (I tallied 4) started off with a white male scientist and then evolved to a woman scientist. One girl might have gone from woman to man. So what about the boys? All of them stayed with a male scientist drawing. Eric seems to be the only student to change from a white scientist to a non-white scientist. That is a bit unclear as crayon skin tones are hard to decipher in some of the drawings.

Does this mean that boys only met male scientists? Or did they simply draw scientists who they connected with? Did the boys leave Fermilab that day with the idea that girls can be scientists too? Will they support their girlfriends who want to take AP Computer Science? Support their wives who need to embark for three-weeks in the field? Yes, I know I’m being totally heteronormative, but this is where some tension develops.

My job is to ensure that the women majoring in science and engineering on my campus have a supportive community. But you know what, we have a few awesome men who attend our events and request mentors. I like to think it’s because our office is delivering a great service and some men could care less that the program they are attending is run by women, for women and featuring women because in the end, it’s still all science and engineering. And for me, that’s progress.

So while I’m all “Go Girl!” I also know that if we ignore our boys, the revolution will never be complete.

By the way…this drawing experiment? It’s ten years old.

Sexy geek. Sexy nerd. Tina Fey.

Lately it’s been just fine that women are smart…as long as we’re also smoking hot.

In a recent article at WomeneNews, Danica McKeller revealed the name of her upcoming and third in a series of math books for girls – “Hot X: Algebra Exposed.” Oh my.

At the 2010 Chicago Women in Science symposium a speaker’s talk was about how women can use our womanly skills to get ahead in science. It wasn’t a talk about wearing short skirts, but rather embracing ones femininity and the apparent skills that go along with that like multi-tasking. One of my former students told me she was offended by part of that presentation. Another student told me she felt that if she emphasized her girlishness, she would be kicked out of her lab for not being serious or at least not taken seriously. Both agreed that there were some excellent points in the presentation as well.

On one hand, there is still a strong stereotype of who does science and math: a nerd. There are some people who believe that this stereotype is one reason why we don’t have more women in science, technology, engineering and math. Even if this is 10% of the reason, is the answer calendars of nude students? What about model engineers?

Back to McKeller’s book title. She’s making a career out of pinkifying math and making, like, math all girly with questions about text messages and shopping. So what does it mean that she’s making a sexual innuendo in the title of a book aimed at the algebra set? Nowadays, high schools expect kids to be taking algebra freshmen year, if not sooner. So that’s what, 14-15 years in age? Grown women with PhDs modeling is one thing, hell even college students stripping down for a calendar (which will haunt their Senate campaign one day) is a different discussion. They are adults. But should a math book for teens be sexualized? Aren’t their lives sexualized enough?

We have a lot of issues to tackle on this road to fairness and equity. Do we really need to add sex into the mix?

Recently, the Barbie.com website became a polling place where participants could vote on what the legendary doll’s next career move should be. Toymakers at Mattel offered five choices for its new “I Can Be” Barbie: architect, anchorwoman, computer engineer, environmentalist, and surgeon. Girls overwhelmingly favored the “News Anchor Barbie”—whose glamorous get-up (tulip skirt, pink velvet jacket, black camisole, high heels, and cordless microphone) draws more inspiration from American Idol than it does from Katie Couric’s nightly wardrobe. I didn’t see Surgeon Barbie’s proposed garb, but I’d bet that her lab coat lacked a certain glitz factor. Of the five career options, anchorwoman fits most snugly within the media-and-entertainment realm that saturates kids’ fantasy lives. Newscaster Barbie’s popularity among girls is hardly a shocker.

In a surprising twist, however, the computer engineer beat the anchorwoman in the popular vote. But it wasn’t because girls vouched for her. Rather, a vocal group of adult female computer engineers launched an online campaign to lure voters—parents included—to elect the leggy lady with the pink laptop. “Please help us in getting Barbie to get her Geek on!” they appealed. Their campaign worked.

Mattel did its best to glam-up Engineer Barbie’s attire, which includes “geek-chic glasses,” black leggings, a Bluetooth headset, and sporty yet sensible pink shoes. But while real-life girls love electronic gadgets, most don’t seem to aspire to high-tech careers themselves. Or, at least, they don’t take a shine to a doll that does.

In the end, Mattel decided to play to both constituencies, and announced plans to manufacture the top two winners in the coming months. But let’s take a step back for a minute. Does it really matter what career path Barbie takes? Do toys really influence girls’ future aspirations? Clearly, women engineering professionals think they can.  According to Ann Zimmerman of the Wall Street Journal (who reported in the April 9, 2010 issue): “Why grown women felt so strongly about having themselves represented by a doll—especially onethat feminists have always loathed—speaks volumes both about the power of the iconic Barbie doll and the current state of women who work in computer and information sciences. Their ranks have declined in the past two decades. In 2008, women received only 18% of computer science degrees, down from 37% in 1985, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology.”

In the early 1970s, when role models for girls in male-dominated professions were sorely lacking, proponents of gender equality successfully lobbied toy makers and educational publishers to design products depicting diverse career options for girls. They strongly believed that early play experiences would make a difference in kids’ future aspirations.  So they worked actively to shape the material culture of childhood.

Back then, Barbie was so anathema to feminists that it would never have occurred to them to collaborate with Mattel. But times have changed. Over the past three decades, commercial toymakers have perfected their absorption and co-optation of liberal feminist ideals; Barbie’s latest career makeover is just one recent example. So today, many women’s groups are apt to adopt the strategy: “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” We can interpret these Barbie dolls as “compromise formations” (to use an old grad-school phrase) because they represent an uneasy combination of traditionally feminine beauty standards with forward-thinking advocacy to enhance women’s economic and professional status.

With these Barbie dolls in our daughters’ playrooms, are we on solid footing, or shaky ground? Will the new Computer Engineer Barbie help reverse the decline of women in high-tech careers? We don’t know. But real surgeons—and I’d bet most computer programmers—don’t wear stilettos to the workplace. It’s too bad that Barbie dolls still have to.

Most readers know Eve Ensler best as the anti-violence activist and star of the feminist world-traveling production, The Vagina Monologues. She has followed this seminal play with other popular works, highlighting the difficulties of women surviving war (Necessary Targets), women’s endless scrutiny of physical imperfections (The Good Body), and even her own experiences of finding self-protection as a survivor of abuse (Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security Obsessed World).  In her latest book I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, Ensler sets out to portray the thoughts, issues, and desires of adolescent girls today. 

With varying degrees of success, Ensler offers a broad spectrum of experiences that keep the reader engaged with the work, even as much of the language suggests an adult perspective of a teenager’s world.  This is not to say that Ensler portrays her subjects with insensitivity or condescension; as a reader, I believed in Ensler’s earnest hopes that the book is “a call to listen to the voice inside you that might want something different, that hears, that knows, the way only you can hear and know.  It’s a call to your original girl self, to your emotional creature self, to move at your speed, to walk with your step, to wear your color.”  But there’s something very trivializing about the voice of certain girls within the book, particularly Ensler’s uninspired perspective on the American suburban teen.  In “Let Me In,” the speaker obsesses over purple UGGs and whether there’s room for her at the popular kid’s table in the cafeteria.  The speaker comes off false, shrill, self-absorbed and petty.  Contrast that monologue with the girls of Bulgaria (“I Have 35 Minutes Before He Comes Looking for Me”) or Palestine (“Sky Sky Sky”), young women who engage with their environment, politics, families, and communities.  They are also poor, suffering, in desperate need of aid. This dichotomy establishes the class and race privilege of the white Western girl, sure, but it’s hardly empowering for the girl of color whose only shown in a victimized, one-dimensional point of view.

This is really the heart of my issue with Ensler.  As a famous, successful and established playwright, Ensler was in the perfect position to work with young women in writing and publishing THEIR monologues.  Yet Ensler only credits a V-Girls Advisory Circle.  Wouldn’t it have been better to let these young women from Palestine, China, Israel, Iran, France, and the U.S. write their own stories in their own authentic voices?  Much of this work feels like a co-optation of experience, a wasted opportunity to give voice to young women’s lives, despite the protestations of the author.

If readers are hoping to expand their ideas of what it means to be a teen girl in different parts of the world, this book won’t do much to expand the story.  Ensler’s intentions are noble, but like the voices of the young women portrayed in I Am An Emotional Creature, they are slightly off-the-mark.

One of my  favorite new websites is www.sweetonbooks.com.  Founded, written, and edited by two book-loving moms who live in my hometown of Larchmont, New York, Sweet On Books offers children’s book recommendations for kids at all literacy levels, from picture books and short chapter readers to novels for middle-schoolers and beyond.  This appealing, user-friendly website is ideal for anyone on the lookout for top-notch children’s lit:  parents and kids obviously, but also teachers, librarians, grandparents, relatives, and friends.

As described by co-founders Melissa Young and Melissa Gaynor, the website guides visitors through an annotated “virtual bookstore” showcasing books that might not be on a reader’s immediate radar or that they might not pick up on their own. The editors write all of the entries themselves, and they add new content every week.  While it’s hardly a comprehensive database, their lively reviews embody the principle of quality over quantity.  Beyond plot summary, each review offers an overall sense of the book’s quality and tone, and points out issues that could potentially arouse fear or anxiety in young readers. On a lighter note, each book is ranked on a “laugh meter” ranging from “not a comedy” to “giggles” to “can’t stop laughing.”

The site is especially remarkable because it refuses to trade in the all-too-prevalent gender stereotypes that dominate children’s book publishing today.  When designing the site, Ms. Young and Ms. Gaynor chose a palette of light blue, chocolate brown, and burnt orange—and selected “gender-neutral” icons and images that would appeal to readers of both sexes. “We definitely wanted to avoid being perceived as a ‘girly site’ or a site that only boys or only girls would want to visit,” explains Ms. Young.  Occasionally, a review might mention a book’s potential appeal to “reluctant boy readers,” but in its basic structure, the site does not presume that readers for particular books will divide neatly along male-female lines.  (Ms. Young’s own kids, perhaps, have encouraged her to disregard conventional marketing wisdom.  In her household, 8-year-old Hannah has devoured all the books in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, while 4-year-old Sam can’t get enough of Fancy Nancy.)

In conversations with fellow parents and teachers, they discovered that many elementary-school kids seldom discriminate between “boy books” and “girl books,” and are “equally happy to read from both ends of the spectrum.”  As Ms. Gaynor elaborated, “We try to recommend books that don’t follow typical stereotypes often found in children’s literature:  for example, books that have strong, positive relationships between boys and girls (Melonhead); non-traditional roles for boys and girls (Falling for Rapunzel, Keeping Score); and books with a main character that will appeal to both sexes (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing).”

Of course, one website alone can’t change the gendered face of children’s publishing, but for now I’m pleased to report on a cultural space in which sex distinctions aren’t being mined, magnified, and marketed to sell things to kids.  On my own parenting “smile meter,” that scores a big grin indeed.

Here’s what I had to say in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

I confess: I dread this time of year. It might sound strange coming from the executive director of the National Women’s Studies Association, but Women’s History Month reminds me of our education system’s failures.

I hope you’ll read the full op-ed, and especially my ideas for solutions, and let me know your hopes for this time next year.

Happy Women’s History Month Girl w/Pen Family!!

The best and worst part of being a science grrl is that most people in my life know that I’m all “Women can do math and science!” I’m such a big cheerleader for math and science that some people are fearful to admit to me that they think science is boring or they hate math. When I go into mini-lectures diagnosing why someone thinks they are bad at math or is in fact bad at math, I usually discover that there was a bad teacher who specifically told my friend that they couldn’t do math, sometimes because my friend was a girl. There are times when we chat and realize that science and engineering was never fully explained or explored.

That’s why I love science documentaries! How else is a kid in the middle of Kansas going to know the amazement of marine biology? How else was math going to reel me in if it weren’t for Donald Duck and his magic billiard shots in Mathmagic Land? We, grown-ups/parents/mentors/awesome aunties, need to find ways to show how awesome science, math, technology and engineering can be for the young people in our lives.

In that spirit, the Smithsonian Channel launched a new series of shows on Sunday focused on women in science with “A Woman Among Wolves.” The show is exciting, highlights women and did I mention exciting? Toss out the old image of scientists stuck inside with shiny white lab coats! They are outside with wolves and bats.

So what if these shows don’t spark an interest in science? Use it as a springboard to talk about other fields. Are the bats too gross? What other animals would the kid in your life want to follow around and watch? Maybe animals aren’t their thing? Plants? Stars? Their MP3 player?

Science is everywhere and with the proper prompt a great conversation can help you introduce a kid to science or engineering. Need some help? Catch the 6th Annual 24 hour Global Marathon For, By and About Women in Engineering. Find a website like SciGirls.

Most of us were raised to think of math and science as intimidating. Something for the chosen few. As a chemistry professor I work with likes to say, “If I can do it, so can you.”

And to start you off in the wonderful world of science and fun, I am giving away a gift pack from the Smithsonian! Leave a comment with your email address and that’s your entry. That’s it.

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Do you live in the Cleveland area? Come meet me at the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women at Case Western Reserve University on Thursday, March 18th at 7 pm for “Translating the F-Word: Defining Feminism in a Multicultural Society” with Siobhan Brooks and Courtney Martin.