{"id":38498,"date":"2011-08-10T11:00:11","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T16:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/familyinequality.wordpress.com\/?p=3041"},"modified":"2011-11-08T22:55:13","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T03:55:13","slug":"smurfette-and-the-decline-of-sexism-in-the-english-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/08\/10\/smurfette-and-the-decline-of-sexism-in-the-english-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Smurfette and the Decline of “Sexism” in the English Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Family Inequality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Buy a McDonald\u2019s Happy Meal and get a toy<\/a>: OK, I didn\u2019t expect it to be enlightening.<\/p>\n

But to hear\u00a0Kevin Newell, the company\u2019s executive vice president and global chief brand officer, tell it<\/a>, that\u2019s exactly what it should be:<\/p>\n

McDonald\u2019s is committed to playing a positive role in children\u2019s well-being. The Smurfs Happy Meal program delivers great quality food choices, fun toys and engaging digital content that reinforces important environmental messages.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Awesome. Granted, the last time I saw a Smurf, it was about 1978, and he looked like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t recall being overly concerned with gendered toy representations at the time. Anyway, now I\u2019m told by the Happy Meal box that, \u201cSmurfs are named after their individual talents: there\u2019s Farmer, Painter and Baker\u2026 Know your talent and find your Smurf name!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The girls both got male Smurf characters, which struck me as interesting, because the counter person had asked us if the Meals were for boys or girls. Then I looked at the characters on the box. Then I looked at the complete list of them on the website (see the poster version here<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Then I wondered what Smurfette\u2019s \u201cindividual talent\u201d was that got her \u2014 the only female Smurf<\/em> \u2013\u00a0named \u201cSmurfette.\u201d And at that point, if it hadn\u2019t been for all the fat and salt and sugar in my meal, I might have stopped enjoying it.<\/p>\n

In context<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve commented before<\/a> on the gender segregation in film making. The gist of it is apparent in this graph from the Celluloid Ceiling report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film<\/a>. Not many women in charge:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But isn\u2019t it improbable that a blockbuster kids\u2019 movie, which grossed more than $75 million<\/a> in its first two weeks, could be so blatantly sexist? There are a few women in the cast<\/a> of the movie version of The Smurfs<\/em>, but all the Smurfs are still male except Smurfette.\u00a0Next thing you know they\u2019re going to turn the only female character in this promotion \u2014 which, remember, plays a \u201cpositive role in children\u2019s well-being\u201d \u2014 into an adult sex symbol played by Katy Perry. You\u2019re kidding.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Is sexist<\/em> even a word anymore?<\/p>\n

In fact, sexism used to be a very common word. According to the Google Ngrams database of millions of terms from their vast collection of digitized books in American English, \u201csexism\u201d was even more common than \u201cbacon\u201d during the 1990s (you can play with this yourself here<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Unfortunately, in my opinion, sexism has retreated from the language, and kids\u2019 stuff seems to be more shamelessly gendered<\/a> than ever. I think this sad state of affairs is at least partly the result of what you see in that green line above \u2014 the backlash<\/a> against feminism (and anti-racism) that made it seem more unpleasant or unwarranted to make a \u201cbig deal\u201d out of sexism than to treat girls like this.<\/p>\n

P.S. I haven\u2019t seen the movie. Please tell me it has a hidden feminist message I haven\u2019t heard about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is “sexism” even a word anymore?\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,55,129,343],"class_list":["post-38498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-gender","tag-media","tag-tvmovies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38498"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41601,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38498\/revisions\/41601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}