Anita Sarkeesian, at Feminist Frequency, starts from the beginning.  How is contemporary advertising to children gendered today?  And why does it matter?  With a special discussion of girls and technology.  Enjoy:

(Transcript after the jump.)

Transcript

Song: “I’m a Barbie girl in a fab world”

I recently spent some time watching afternoon cartoons on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon network, and look what I found.

“Nerf’s N-Strike arsenal has a specialized blaster for any mission”
“4 Ever Kidz pets. It’s snap on fashion play”
“Dirt, mud, we don’t care. These trucks go almost anywhere”
“…Barbie girls and we’re making the scene. Our jammin’ jeep wrangler is one glam machine”

Holy crap! What is going on here!?

Clearly it’s been a while since I’ve raced home after school to watch cartoons but I was amazed how highly gendered these commercials were. Have they changed or did I just not notice them before?

The messages being promoted in these commercials are deeply restricting and severely limit the development of boys and girls in different ways. The ads are actively demonstrating that boys and girls have different social roles and skills that are highly stereotyped and just outright sexist. So let’s take a closer look at ads targeted directly at boys.

“Battleground. Prepare to attack. Fire”
“Whose gonna win? Whose gonna win? YA”
“Arc light powered up. 3 in 1 repulser. Ready for action.”
“Close combat pistol. Rapid fire blaster”
“Always ready for action, G.I. Joe. Are you in?”
“Defend the castle! Imaginx Adventure”

Boys have power and get to be active and destroy things, YA!  These commercials directed at boys value competition, being in control, having power, and conquering and commanding. Those values restrict the acceptable options for what boys are allowed to express emotionally, I’ve yet to see a commercial where see boys being nurturing or caring.  They are limited in examples of how to react to problems and how to solve conflicts. They are taught to fight, to be competitive and to be aggressive.

I noticed that there are also a few other reoccuring messages embedded in ads targeted at boys.

“Bat cave building power. Trio building system lets you build the ultimate Trio bat cave. YA!”
“You can build the massive Neptune sub.”
“You can build up and customize your heavy duty truck with tons of parts”
“You decide how much firepower to arm your ships with then build your fleet and battle your way to victory.”

These ads encourage boys to build new worlds, use their imaginations and be creative. They are actively making and constructing.  These are the training blocks for creative and fulfilling adult lives.  The confidence that is fostered through the act of making and building and doing is something that is almost entirely lacking in girl’s toys commercials.

“The Liv girls have a flair for hair”
“I can make my own magic snow”
“Change the colour, change the style, ad the gel and look at the glitter”
“The easy way to make designer cakes. Bake your cake in the microwave in 30 seconds.”
“… beauty of the bride, share the gown and light up ring, handsome groom and everything”
“Go Go with me we’re walking round, Go Go with me we’ve hit the town.”
“Baby alive is so real, you can feed her. ‘I made a stinky.’ And then she leaves an uh-oh in her diaper.”

So girls get to play with sparkly glitter and bake cakes and changing stinky diapers, how fun! Commercials targeted at girls heavily focus on teaching child rearing, homemaking, domestic work, popularity, self image and an obsession with beauty. This restricts their imagination of what women are capable of and prioritizes appearance over intelligence.  They are not encouraged to be creative, to build and construct and really take control of there environments.  Girl’s toys are generally unimaginative and lack the creative element of play that is critical in the development of young people.

We can see this even in the way the same basic product is marketed differently to boys and girls.

“Moon Sand is the amazing moldable, squishable, buildable, demolishable sand that never dries out.”
“Moon Sand is the amazing moldable, holdable, decoratable sand that never dries out.”

Clearly this isn’t a coincidence since advertisers spend $17 BILLION dollars a year marketing to youth. That’s billion, with a ‘B’.  Young people are seeing more than 25,000 advertisements a year on television alone, and that doesn’t even include product placement which is so common on popular television shows. The enormous amount of money advertisers are spending isn’t just on producing and airing ads, it’s also spent on the latest neuroscience research to find out EXACTLY what images, feelings and representations will appealing the most to developing minds.

Although many factors influence our socialization such as family, peer groups, churches and schools, the media plays a highly critical role.  Advertising aimed at youth is especially dangerous because young children are unable to differentiate between television programming and commercials, they are still developing the necessary critical skills.

Youth may have a hard time recognizing that these commercials are teaching them what is expected, what is desired and what is possible for their genders, for their careers, for love, relationships and creative endeavors in the future.  These messages are so manipulative, deeply embedded and carefully crafted that it’s even hard for us as adults to recognize them.

As someone whose really interested in promoting and encouraging the use of technology in young women, I found a stark difference in the way technology is marketed to boys and girls.  Girls get a fun little purple computer that’s “hot” or a program that can help them cook and look pretty.

“It’s the Bratz laptop with over 100 games, you can have fun learning.  It’s fun, smart and hot.”
“In my fashion mall, make pizzas, do makeovers and more, and throw the ultimate pajama party.”

Whereas boys get to go online and play adventure games.

“Become a pirate and join thousands online. Captain your ship and command the sea.”
“Now you can be the hero and join your friends in an epic online adventure.”

One of the reasons that the gender specific marketing of technology is so concerning is when we look at the statistics of adult women in technology fields. Only 3% of open source programmers are women and only 11.5% of video game developers are women.

Although as I stated, there are many factors that affect the jobs and careers people enter, it is not hard to connect gendered advertising at such a young age to the socialization of women who don’t feel confident or supported within heavily male dominated and male identified tech fields.

I was originally going to say that “We need to hold the media accountable for what they are teaching our young people” but no, really, advertising directed specifically at young people needs to STOP altogether, no exceptions.  A precedent has already been set to implement these types of restrictions. Quebec has banned print and broadcast advertisements for youth under the age of 13 and Sweden has banned advertisements for youth under the age of 12.

In the mean time we need to encourage critical media literacy skills in people of all ages. I’ll leave you with an amazing remix created by some female youth at Reel Grrls during a workshop with Jonathan McIntosh. They were able to actively resist these harmful media messages and really begin to talk back to the media by simply swapping the audio and video of gendered commercial.  The results are hilarious and very illuminating.

“Nerf’s N-Strike arsenal has a specialized blaster for any mission.  You can improve your blasting speed with the maverick rapid fire blaster.  While the night fighters night beam targeting system allows for pin point accuracy.  And you can nail targets from long distance with Nerf’s long shot blaster.  Two blasters in one, quick fire clips and detachable scope, everything you need to blast your skills to the next level.  N-Strike, blaster sold separately, batteries not included. Nerf.”

In 2010, as a matter of free speech, the United States Supreme Court decided that there can be no limits on corporate spending on advertisements in favor of a political candidate (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission).  Open Secrets produced two figures revealing the rise in “outside spending” (i.e., non-party spending) showing the rise.

Total outside spending:

Outside spending for liberals and conservatives:

Open Secrets explains:

…the 2004 election marked a watershed moment in the use of independent expenditures to try to sway voters, with most of that new spending coming from the national party committees.  The 2010 election marks the rise of a new political committee, dubbed “super PACs,” and officially known as “independent-expenditure only committees,” which can raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions and other groups, as well as wealthy individuals.

Hermes’ Journeys editorializes:

You can see that liberals slightly outspent conservatives every election since 1996. Except for this year, when quite suddenly a mysterious flood of funding caused conservative campaign coffers to skyrocket, DOUBLING what liberals could muster. Was this the result of concerned right-leaning citizens becoming active in politics and making individual donations?  Of course not, it was profit-minded corporations…

…enabled, if I may finished HJ’s sentence, by the recent court decision.

In this seven-minute video, Economist Jeffrey Sachs explains why economic development in Africa remains elusive. He summarizes the geographical, technological, social, and political conditions that held Africa back but propelled parts of Asia forward (he compares to India). Development, he notes, is not simply a matter of wishful thinking and hard work on the part of Africans (as many like to claim), nor is it a matter of just doing what worked elsewhere (as others like to say), but instead requires institutional commitments, economic resources, and global political will.

Rich sent in a fascinating example of an attempt to redefine masculinity.  At Rightly Concerned, Brian Fischer argues that the fact that all of the recipients of the Medal of Honor awarded during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have received the award for saving lives, not taking them.  He calls this trend “the feminization of the Medal of Honor.”

Let’s not get into a conversation about whether the Medal should be awarded for saving lives, taking lives, or both.  Instead, let’s consider what, exactly, Fischer is saying about men and masculinity.  Fischer is suggesting that saving lives is something that women (should) do.  He has arranged saving lives and taking them in a binary layered onto gender.  Women save; men kill.  When men save, they are doing something feminine.

This is in dramatic contrast to the vision of the heroic man who protects others that has long been part of the American imagination (think firemen, policemen, body guards, big brothers, dads, boyfriends, and husbands) and a very interesting example of an attempt to redefine what “real men” do.

The “Republican Wave” in 23 seconds, courtesy of Stephen Colbert:

Via Don Waisanen at Thick Culture.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

In an effort to disrupt the dominant images about what women’s hair should look like, Lauren Boyle and Marco Roso created an alternative aspirational beauty salon poster that offers women a set of hairstyles usually associated with lesbians.  The collection of these creative and varied haircuts bring into stark relief the hyperfeminized options most women encounter at the salon.

At DIS magazine; thanks to Marco for the submission.

Last month we posted a clip of a group of Yankee fans taunting two teenage Red Sox fans by yelling a homophobic version of YMCA.  In the comment thread, Amadi linked to another instance in which men mocked other men with reference to homosexuality in a sports context.  At a football game between Eastlake North and Willoughby South High Schools (outside of Cleveland, Ohio), fans were recorded chanting “powder blue faggots!” across the field.  The summary on youtube reports that the other side was chanting, in reply “Halloween homos!”

Video by Heather Ike; graphics, editing, captions, pictures, and screenshots added by Sean Chapin at Joe.My.God.

Thanks to Myaisha for the tip!

A recent New York Times article on cheese, brought to my attention by Jordan G., beautifully illustrates the fact that the U.S. government is not a coherent bloc, but a collection of competing interests.

Last month Domino’s Pizza released a new pizza named “The Wisconsin.”   Named after a superbly cheesy state (one close to our hearts here at SocImages), the pizza has six cheeses on top and two in the crust.  The New York Times reports that one quarter of a pie (an amount I could certainly put away without effort), had more than 3/4ths of the recommended maximum in a day and double the calories of some of its other pizzas.

The Wisconsin:

Cheese, it turns out, is the main source of saturated fats in American diets and saturated fats contribute to significant morbidity and mortality in the U.S.  The government, accordingly, recommends that we eat less of it.

Document from the Department of Agriculture:

And here’s where the story gets interesting.  The Department of Agriculture is not only responsible for the health of Americans, it’s responsible for the health of the American food industry.  As consumption of cheese and non-low-fat milks declines in the U.S., the dairy industry suffers.  According to the New York Times:

Every day, the nation’s cows produce an average of about 60 million gallons of raw milk, yet less than a third goes toward making milk that people drink. And the majority of that milk has fat removed to make the low-fat or nonfat milk that Americans prefer. A vast amount of leftover whole milk and extracted milk fat results.

The government used to buy cheese and butter from its dairy farmers, leading to a vast collection of dairy products stored in underground caves in Missouri (totally not kidding). It’s switched strategies — after all, how much cheese and butter can one country hoard? — and while one arm of the Department of Agriculture tells us to eat less cheese, another is telling us to eat more.

In fact, the government spent $12 million American tax dollars marketing The Wisconsin pictured above.  Dairy Management is the dairy marketing arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  It has a budget of nearly $140 million per year… and it is in cahoots with pizza chains.

“This is one way that we can support dairy farms across the country: by selling a pizza featuring an abundance of their products,” a Domino’s spokesman said in a news release. “We think that’s a good thing.”

…

“Let’s sell more pizza and more cheese!” said two officials with Pizza Hut, which began putting cheese inside its crust after holding development meetings with Dairy Management, according to a memorandum released by the Agriculture Department.

Random suspicious documents:

Dairy Management’s Pizza Hut promotion in 2002 (the “Summer of Cheese”) reportedly pushed an additional 102 million pounds of cheese into American bellies.  And consumers are eating up Domino’s new pie.  The Times reports that sales have “soared by double digits.”

It is a deeply, deeply divided government entity, with the “let’s sell more!” side almost always better funded… [than] the “but it kills people!” side.