{"id":48394,"date":"2012-06-15T11:59:42","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T16:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=48394"},"modified":"2012-06-15T13:18:05","modified_gmt":"2012-06-15T18:18:05","slug":"gendered-survival-guides-for-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/06\/15\/gendered-survival-guides-for-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Gendered Survival Guides for Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annie C. and another reader sent us a link to a post by Ryan North at what are the haps<\/a> about a set of gendered “survival guides” for kids published by Scholastic (and which the publisher now says it won’t continue printing<\/a>). Boys and girls apparently need very different survival skills, which the other sex shouldn’t know anything about:<\/p>\n

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

In his post, Ryan provides the table of contents for each. What do boys and girls need to be able to survive? For boys, no big surprises — forest fire, earthquake, quicksand, your average zombie or vampire attack, that type of thing, many including, according to teen librarian Jackie Parker<\/a>, practical and useful tips:<\/p>\n

How to Survive a shark attack
\nHow to Survive in a Forest
\nHow to Survive Frostbite
\nHow to Survive a Plane Crash
\nHow to Survive in the Desert
\nHow to Survive a Polar Bear Attack
\nHow to Survive a Flash Flood
\nHow to Survive a Broken Leg
\nHow to Survive an Earthquake
\nHow to Survive a Forest Fire
\nHow to Survive in a Whiteout
\nHow to Survive a Zombie Invasion
\nHow to Survive a Snakebite
\nHow to Survive if Your Parachute Fails
\nHow to Survive a Croc Attack
\nHow to Survive a Lightning Strike
\nHow to Survive a T-Rex
\nHow to Survive Whitewater Rapids
\nHow to Survive a Sinking Ship
\nHow to Survive a Vampire Attack
\nHow to Survive an Avalanche
\nHow to Survive a Tornado
\nHow to Survive Quicksand
\nHow to Survive a Fall
\nHow to Survive a Swarm of Bees
\nHow to Survive in Space<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Girls seem to require a very different set of survival skills. Like how to survive a breakout — a skill boys don’t apparently need, though they also get acne. Other handy tips are how to deal with becoming rich or a superstar, how to ensure you get the “perfect school photo,” surviving a crush, whatever turning “a no into a yes” is (persuasiveness, I suppose), picking good sunglasses, dealing with a bad fashion day, and of course “how to spot a frenemy”:<\/p>\n

How to survive a BFF Fight
\nHow to Survive Soccer Tryouts
\nHow to Survive a Breakout
\nHow to Show You\u2019re Sorry
\n<\/em>How to Have the Best Sleepover Ever
\nHow to Take the Perfect School Photo
\nHow to Survive Brothers
\nScary Survival Dos and Don\u2019ts
\n<\/em>How to Handle Becoming Rich
\nHow to Keep Stuff Secret
\nHow to Survive Tests
\nHow to Survive Shyness
\nHow to Handle Sudden Stardom
\nMore Stardom Survival Tips
\nHow to Survive a Camping Trip
\n<\/em>How to Survive a Fashion Disaster
\nHow to Teach Your Cat to Sit
\n<\/em>How to Turn a No Into a Yes
\nTop Tips for Speechmaking
\nHow to Survive Embarrassment
\nHow to Be a Mind Reader
\nHow to Survive a Crush
\nSeaside Survival
\n<\/em>How to Soothe Sunburn
\nHow to Pick Perfect Sunglasses
\nSurviving a Zombie Attack
\nHow to Spot a Frenemy
\nBrilliant Boredom Busters
\nHow to Survive Truth or Dare
\nHow to Beat Bullies
\nHow to be an Amazing Babysitter<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aside from the multiple items clearly focused on appearances, Ryan points out that several others emphasize looks. Camping is “excellent for the skin,” while the seaside survival chapter provides a lot of fashion tips.<\/p>\n

Many of the girls’ tips are about surviving social situations or dealing with emotions — embarrassment, keeping a secret, dealing with bullies. These are all probably more useful to kids than knowing how to survive quicksand, and tips for handling stardom are statistically more likely to be useful at some point than dealing with a T-Rex. So the issue here isn’t that the boys’ guide is inherently more useful or smarter or better; probably all kids should be issued a guide to surviving Truth or Dare (also, dodgeball). But the clear gendering of the guides, with only girls getting tips about dealing with social interactions, emotions, and looks, while outdoorsy injury\/natural disaster survival tips are sufficient for boys, illustrates broader assumptions about gender and how we construct femininity and masculinity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Annie C. and another reader sent us a link to a post by Ryan North at what are the haps about a set of gendered “survival guides” for kids published by Scholastic (and which the publisher now says it won’t continue printing). Boys and girls apparently need very different survival skills, which the other sex […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,55,2099,2096,2087],"class_list":["post-48394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrenyouth","tag-gender","tag-gender-childrenyouth","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-masculinity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48394","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\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48394"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48399,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48394\/revisions\/48399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}