gender: children/youth

Eric Stoller sent us a photo he took at Borders recently of two doodle books, one targeting boys and one targeting girls:

In Eric’s post about the books at his blog, he says,

The Boys’ Doodle Book features the following images on its cover: triceratops, ogre, tiger, superman, rocket, skull & crossbones, octopus, boy w/slingshot, mouse, train, kite, dragon, knight, shark, excavator, dog and a cowboy.

The Girls’ Doodle Book in comparison has a different cover color and a variety of differing images than the Boys cover including: crown, pony, castle, sun, microphone, ice cream cone, frog/prince, purse/bag, rabbit, cupcake, starfish, unicorn, fish, cat, toothpaste, dragon, ballerina and a mermaid.

I’m surprised that the Girls’ Doodle Book didn’t have a pink colored cover given the overall stereotypical and gendered nature of the doodles on the cover. Boys like fire, machines, spikes and death, while Girls like food, animals typically associated with non-violence, dancing/arts and hygiene. I’m not saying that there is anything inherently wrong with any of the doodles. What I am saying is that gender-based stereotypes are being perpetuated in overt contrast with these two books.

Thanks for sending the image along, Eric!

NEW! Laurel O. found another example, the Girls’ and Boys’ versions of How to Be the Best at Everything:

Laurel’s kids’ school sent home an order form for books. The descriptions of these two:

The boys’ book description says “Learn how to lasso like a cowboy, juggle one-handed and more” whereas the girls’ book says “Design your own clothes, host the best sleepover, and lots more.”

NEW! (July ’10): Gaby K sent in an example of British coloring books aimed at boys and girls. We see a lot of the typical gendered stuff: girls like cupcakes and perfume and butterflies, while boys like trucks and bugs and rockets. Gaby also points out that the girls’ version has a passive Russian nested doll while the boys’ has a robot with apparently movable joints:

Jason S. sent in this clip of a convention for (parents of) infants, toddlers, and tweens called Baby and Tweens Celebration L.A. It’s an example of the hyper-consumerist mentality that now surrounds child-raising, at least for the upper-middle classes and higher. It’s also an example of the way that young children, especially young girls, are encouraged by some forces to think of themselves as “princesses.” Many parents (literally) buy into this idea of what a (girl) child should be like. It has not been this way throughout history and is not this way across cultures.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR6DpbDoyuc[/youtube]

Related posts: baby couture magazine, babies are born 2 shop, future trophy wife and milf t-shirts, boob job piggy bank, Strawberry Shortcake in the City, bangs for baby, beauty spending over a lifetime,  modernizing the fairy tale, and girl culture.

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

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Abby J. sent in some photos she took at Toys ‘R’ Us of a bunch of classic board games that are now marketed specifically to girls. We know they’re for girls because they’re all pink:

Of course the girls’ version of Scrabble would spell “fashion.” I assume the boys’ version spells “motorcycle” or something of the sort…though probably with fewer letters, I guess.

The Monopoly game (called the Boutique Edition) looks like a jewelry box:

I don’t know what Mystery Date is all about–I mean, I can guess, but I’m not familiar with the game, and not actually sure I’d want to encourage kids to go on mystery dates, but whatever. Both Abby and I found the pink Ouija board odd. I didn’t know they really still sold them. My grandma came across an old one when they were cleaning out my great-grandma’s stuff a couple of years back and she took it and gave it to my teen-aged cousin. My aunt took great offense and sent it back. My grandma, who is a devout Christian, took offense at my aunt taking offense (and implying that Grandma was giving her grandchildren satanic toys) and now keeps it around and lets kids play with it at her house. She also declared my aunt “no fun” and “too churchy.” If you knew my grandma, or had ever sat there and watched her call out to Jesus to help her find her missing spatula (he complied and made it appear in the drawer where she always keeps the spatulas), you would understand why I nearly choked on my food when she referred to someone else as “too churchy.” Now she’s decided that the Harry Potter movies are not, as so many people she knows had told her, satanic but are instead quite funny.

Anyway, that’s a long rambling unimportant point for a post that just illustrates how much we identify girlhood today with pink and feel the need to make gender-specific version of games where a single version seemed to work perfectly well in the past.

Reader Rachel sent in this photo she took of Legos being clearly marked as “boys’ toys”:

NEW! Sara P.-S., Liz, and Danielle F. sent us links to the new “girlz” version of the PSP (Playstation Portable) because, as Sarah says, it is apparently so “skewed towards boys that they have to specifically advertise the fact that girls [can] play with it”:

NEW (Apr. ’10)! Sunlight Snow sent in a version of Jenga aimed at girls called “Girl Talk” Jenga. Not stopping at the pinkification of the game, the producers decided to add sharing and gossip to it. Each plank now offers a question that girls are supposed to discuss. Apparently precipitous balancing and impending collapse is not fun enough, girls must add desperate crushes and dreams of becoming a veterinarian!

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

An  interactive graphic at Newsweek allows us to explore the amount of money women spend on beauty by their tweens, teens, 30s/40s, 50s, and, then, over the course of their lifetimes.  Below is a screenshots of the summary, click here to visit the graphic, and visit here for details on the numbers.

Below are screenshots of the Degree Men, Degree Women, and Degree Girl websites.

Degree genders their deodorant with color (turquoise and lavender versus blue and yellow), pattern (bold lines versus curving spirals), language (women are “emotional” and men “take risks”).  Really, Degree? We’re still going there? 

Even the scents are gendered and, further, they reveal how we place men and women in a hierarchy (e.g., “Extreme Blast” versus “Summer Rain”).  Men even get a scent called “Power.”

Degree also markets their product differently towards adult and t(w)een girls.  Women are “emotional,” girls are “OMG!” let’s dance!!! 

OMG!  Let’s take a look!

“DEGREE MEN. PROTECTS MEN WHO TAKE RISKS.”

“Absolute Protection.”
“Responds to increases in adrenaline.”
“Proven at the hottest temperature on earth.”
“Unbeaten in competitive dryness testing.”

Scents include “Cool Rush,” “Extreme Blast,” “Arctic Edge,” “Intense Sport,” “Clean Reaction,” and “Power.”

“DEGREE WOMEN. DARE TO FEEL.”

“Emotional sweat can cause body odor more than perspiration from physical activity… you need extra odor protection to kick in when you’re stressed or emotional.”

Scents include “Classic Romance,” “Spring Fusion,” and “Fresh Oxygen,” “Pure Satin,” “Delicious Bliss,” and “Sexy Intrigue.”

“DEGREE GIRL. PROTECTION FOR EVERY OMG! MOMENT.”

“Crazy, exciting or embarrassing, OMG! moments happen to everyone.”

“Sign up 4 Cool Stuff! OMG SIGN UP.”

Scents include “Fun Spirit,” “Tropical Power,” and “Just Dance.”  See also “Pink Crush.”

Also in dumb gendered marketing:  Redken for men, make up for men, Frito Lay targets the ladies, nature versus the beast, it may be pink, but it’s not girly, gendered vitamins, and RISK (for men only).

Also in marketing towards tweens: “My Life” involves getting a boyfriend, teenager+colonialism = weird, and Nair for tweens.

Katie M. sent in a link to a post at Vast Public Indifference about gender in Pixar films, specifically how they tend to focus on male characters, with female characters in smaller or supporting roles. As Caitlin says in the original post,

The Pixar M.O. is (somewhat) subtler than the old your-stepmom-is-a-witch tropes of Disney past. Instead, Pixar’s continued failure to posit female characters as the central protagonists in their stories contributes to the idea that male is neutral and female is particular. This is not to say that Pixar does not write female characters. What I am taking issue with is the ad-nauseam repetition of female characters as helpers, love interests, and moral compasses to the male characters whose problems, feelings, and desires drive the narratives.

Here are some images showing main characters from a number of Pixar films. Clearly there are a lot I left out; I chose these both because they were mentioned in the original post by Caitlin, because I’ve seen them, and because they illustrate the general trend.

From “Cars,” a movie in which almost all the characters are male and female characters are mostly car-groupies who swoon over the main character (though there is a female attorney car who doesn’t fall into that category):

“Monsters, Inc.,” where the two central characters are male:

“Toy Story,” same as above:

“A Bug’s Life,” in which not only is the main character male, the actual behaviors of male and female ants have been switched to fit in with our ideas of appropriate gender roles (for another example of changing the behavior of animals to fit human gender norms, see this post on “Bee Movie”):

We do see a Pixar film with a female main character, however: the upcoming”The Bear and the Bow”:

According to Wikipedia, this is Pixar’s “first fairy tale.” So apparently though we get a female lead here, she’s of the spunky-princess type often found in fairy tales.

I have read, in discussions of gender in children’s films, that there is a general belief in the industry that everyone will watch a movie with a male lead character, but boys will be turned off by movies with a female lead. So we see the pattern Caitlin points out: males are the neutral category that are used when the movie is meant to appeal to a broad audience, while females get the lead mostly when the movie is specifically geared toward girls. The assumption here is that girls learn to look at the world through the male gaze (identifying with and liking the male lead, even though he’s male), while boys aren’t socialized to identify with female characters (or actual girls/women) in a similar manner.

I’m torn as to whether I think boys would avoid movies that had female leads. On the one hand, a big part of masculinity is rejecting all things feminine, so I can imagine boys deciding they hated any movie that seemed to be for or about girls. On the other hand, I wonder what would happen if we had more films aimed at kids that had female leads but didn’t fall into the traditional “girl’s movie” categories (such as fairy tales). If “A Bug’s Life” had a female lead but was otherwise the same type of movie–one aimed at a general audience, not specifically girls–would boys reject it? Most of the animated movies I can think of that had females as the main character were focused around romance and other topics deemed feminine (except maybe “Mulan,” where that’s not the main focus), which obscures the issue of whether boys would watch a movie with a female character if it was treated as a general-audience movie. [Note: See the comments for some other examples of movies with female leads that weren’t necessarily romantic-centered, such as “Lilo & Stitch” and “Alice in Wonderland,” as well as some non-animated ones.]

I dunno. Thoughts?

UPDATE: In the comments, Benjamin L. makes a great point:

Something to consider is that most of the people working on Pixar films are men. It’s possible that they might feel unable to successfully create and write dialog for compelling female characters. Take a look at this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pixar_films Out of the all the writers and directors of Pixar’s films, one is female–Rita Hsiao. Significantly, the films she has worked on, Mulan and Toy Story 2,  are unique in that they both have prominent female characters.

Franklin suggested that we post about some points people are making about Dora the Explorer’s makeover.  Originally drawn like this…

…Dora has been re-envisioned and now looks like this:

Wicked Anomie writes:

The producers insist that the new tween Dora will still be like the old one in personality and interests. Just more fashionable, with ballet flats, long hair, jewelry, and makeup. And she wears a dress. Not the choicest attire for galavanting in the woods going on adventures, but hey…

I asked my six-year old daughter what she thought of the new Dora. She likes her better. Why?

“Well, I like that her hair is longer, and she’s wearing a dress. And a necklace. And I like her shoes. And that other one, she’s fat in her belly and her clothes don’t fit right. I don’t like her shoes, either. And her hair’s all short and she doesn’t have a necklace.”

Gwen and I, however, are not surprised at this new feminized Dora.  About a year ago we were in Toys ‘R Us in Henderson, NV, and were so struck by the Dora the Explorer toys that we took pictures of every single one of them.  Almost all of them feature feminized activities such as cooking, taking care of babies, and fashion and accessories.  There are 15 images so I’ve put them after the jump:

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A great example of how humor can be used to reveal the absurdity of certain social patterns that we take-for-granted:

“I can’t explain it,” said Nakajima, dressed in a pleated miniskirt and pure white knee socks. “There’s just something about American men who are at least twice my age and nearly three times my body weight that totally drives me wild.”

Added Nakajima, “They’re so hot.”

…

“I like it when they dress up like middle managers,” said Nakajima, twirling her girlish pigtails with one alabaster finger.

…

Drawn by her curiosity, Nakajima has scheduled a vacation to St. Louis for early March.

More at The Onion.

For a very real example of the flip side  of this fetish, see this post on sex tourism in Thailand.