While your point is completely valid, I do want to point out that in the Disney fairy franchise, Tinkerbell is, essentially, an engineer—she designs mechanisms to help her friends and community. In addition, there are male fairies (who are often othered as "sparrowmen"), but they're rarely seen. This doesn't change the fact that out of context, this cover links women to nature, but the franchise as a whole is less cut and dried.

…I know a little too much about Disney sometimes.

"Often played the role of temptress to male gods"

No no. no no no no no. Temptresses to mortal warriors, perhaps, but not the gods. Nope. They were the metaphorical (or literal) children of the gods and though incest was pretty cool with the deities, they're not all about to go nymph fucking.

Also, explain to me why teaching environmentalism "should" be gender-neutral.

"when in fact being Green should be gender-neutral"

Who decides these sort of things? It was my impression that green was a more masculine color.

I'm a little confused about how this book links nature to femininity. Is it just that the fairies are female, or is there something in the text that underscores the point?

If there isn't, I'm fairly sure the thought process on the part of whoever developed this idea was something like, "Hm, the Disney Fairies range hasn't quite taken off the way Princesses did. Maybe we can get parents to encourage it by making it seem socially responsible."

That said, it is sociologically interesting that Fairies = Environmentalism seems like such a natural leap. I wonder if there's a Cars tie-in book or product where all of the cars decide they had better figure out ways to reduce their emissions and improve fuel efficiency? I kind of bet not, but once you think of it, it makes even more sense than the nature fairies thing.

The association of femininity and women with nature (and, one the other side of this binary social construct, masculinity and men with culture) is deeply ingrained in Western culture. These two dichotomies (nature/culture and women/men) have been linked and conflated and mapped onto each other in various ways for hundreds of years. See Sherry Ortner's article on this, and any number of anthropological and historical writings on this phenomenon, and sociological studies and historical accounts of Western environmentalism in general. The association of women with nurture and nature has itself become naturalized in Western culture, and books such as this one are artifacts that demonstrate this deeply entrenched association.

I'm not saying that this association is a good one--in fact, I think it's rather harmful that it has become so reified. But it makes a lot of sense that this book exists.

While I certainly agree that caring for nature should be something that both men and women (and boys and girls) participate in, I think we could look at this book another way. If we think that it is a book marketed to girls, and that it is trying to interest girls in caring for the planet, then having female characters (even exclusively female characters) isn't as problematic to me. If it was a book marketed to all kids and it only showed girls caring for nature (while boys did something else, for example) that would be troubling. Or if there were not comparable products for boys, that would be problemmatic- but I know of several books with "boy" characters (like cars, Toy Story characters, etc.) that emphasize environmentalism. Perhaps we could argue that books, toys, etc shouldn't be marketed to just boys or girls, but that is a different argument. If a book is going to be marketed to girls, it has to talk about something and environmental stewardship seems like a pretty positive message to me.

I hate leaving comments that aren't about the point of the article, but every fiber of my being is making me say this. FARIES ARE IN NO WAY NYMPHS!!! Those are two completely different things, there is no comparison. Nymphs are water based and were ussualy daughters of Posieden. If you are looking for the land based version of Nymph, they are called Dryads. Plus, I wouldn't really call them temptresses. They mostly just got raped a lot. Which is another disscussion whithin itself.

This seems like a bit of a stretch- there are plenty of problems to address with the Disney Fairies and Princess franchises, but I don't think Tinkerbell and her fellows are primarily associated with being earth mothers. They're fairies, they live in nature, and Disney seems to have used that as a jumping off point for the above book.

Disney has tons of other so-called "green" books that are aimed at boys or gender-neutral- if anything I'd say it's worth addressing the deeper problems of DIsney's genderification of its properties, and not this one-off example where they happen to be feeding a rabbit.

Why aren't there any male fairies, though? That's what I want to know.

In all fairness, in this universe, that is what fairies do. They are caretakers of nature, they bring the seasons from Neverland to the Mainland. The male fairies, all three of them, don't get out much. In fact, Tinker Bell is the only tinker fairy who even gets to go to the mainland. I realize that is it problematic to suggest that only girls/women should concern themselves with the environment, but I'm not sure I think it's as simple as that in this case.

In our current media environment where finding kids' media that passes the Bechdel test is getting harder and harder, it is a waste of time to attempt a "call-out" on a girl-marketed, all-female cast engaging in active, cooperative outside work to better the community.

I like introducing the girls in my life to all-female cast cartoons where the characters aren't mooning at their crushes all day or being rescued by men or otherwise standing around being reactive and passive to the males in their environment.

Take off the wings, put on uniforms. Now you're looking at a story about a girl scout troop doing an environmental awareness unit. This is pretty low on my list of patriarchal oppressions.

"And without the work of fairies, we wouldn't experience the beautiful changing seasons. Girls will love this environmentally friendly book, made with 100% recycled paper and vegetable inks!

Totally marketed to girls - yes, caring for the environment is "girly" - boys shouldn't care. And the environment is depicted as something pretend (magical) that needs constant care to exist in stark contrast to reality which is the environment can take care of itself and us if we just try to exercise moderation and care for ourselves as part of it.

Hope this goes nowhere. Good catch.

Where's the analysis? This article is a big "duh"..

The post says 25 comments were made, but for some reason I can't see them, so I apologize if I'm being redundant, but the fairies in the Tinkerbell movies are both male and female, and the jobs are not divided along gender lines. Tinkerbell for example, is a "tinker fairy;" pretty much the mechanic/inventory of the fairy world.

Then tend to show other female fairies in these ads I think because they are Tinkerbell's friends in the movie.

You might want to pick up Carolyn Merchant's book, The Death of Nature

The message that women inherently are closer to nature amounts to of saying that they're more like animals, or plants, or dirt, or something else that isn't human.

At the same time, women can be socially positioned closer to nature -- e.g. given gardening and small-scale agricultural tasks.

I sketched out some thoughts about these questions in this post -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobanblack/3558109206/
It's not substantial enough, but it does have more points.

Something else I'll add is that women presently are more vulnerable to ecological impacts, in various respects. For instance, given current societal conditions, a disaster is more of a threat to women (given reduced mobility, given potential assault at refugee camps, etc). With climate change, there also are difficulties with agricultural and water-gathering responsibilities that currently are assigned to women, in some countries. And since women are assigned more child-raising responsibilities, they'll be more likely to have to address the impacts to children who are more vulnerable to disasters, toxins, etc.

I think saying "linking fairies to environmentalism, and fairies = girly, so environmentalism = girly" is an incredibly superficial assessment of the Disney Fairies franchise. Yes, that may be one result, but pointing out the result and condemning it is pointless if you don't go any further. A better question that I have is, why CAN'T such a book be targeted at young boys, or why do we, as adults, assume that children of either gender are so inherently incompatible with each other than they can't even be expected to look at a picture book depicting fictional cartoon characters of another gender? The author likely didn't have the intention of writing a book alienating boys from environmentalism. But the Disney Fairies franchise is ALREADY coded as female. More, it is coded as so inherently female that it wouldn't even occur to the author to consider young boys a potential audience, and it wouldn't occur to many parents to buy this book for their sons. And I wasn't aware that there WERE any male characters in the franchise. Which brings up another question: why do they assume GIRLS (the obvious target audience) will be turned off of the book if a male fairy appears as a recurring character. It seems that when I was a kid most media wasn't so aggressively gendered for this age group (probably like pre-k or kindergarten age), and it didn't start until grade school age. And that INCLUDES the Disney princess movies. As a kid, watching Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, or Mulan was something children did. Not boys or girls, but children. I don't remember boys being disgusted that women were main characters, or girls being disgusted that men were present. It isn't the franchises themselves which are harmful, it's the attitude surrounding them.

I agree with Syd.  What makes this book gendered other than the fact that the main characters are fairies?  Now, I'll admit I'm kinda weirded out by the idea of Disney fairies needing to help nature do the things it already does, but that may be another discussion.  Would the book still be considered gendered if the main characters were male?  Or would it just be "normal"?