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A gender rant, slightly derailed.
Oct. 16th, 2010 12:20 pmTeaching little girls to be good domestic servants since... oh, last year or so.
I have a problem with gendered toys. The toys themselves aren't the problem, but the gender-specific marketing is. This ad? Gives the impression that it's only for girls, only girls will like it, and that girls will like it. Not for boys, nope. And a real girl, a properly-raised girl will like it because it's good training for her future life.
"I love when my laundry gets so clean/ Taking care of my house is a dream, dream, dream."
'Cause nothing says "fun child's toy" like a make-believe washer and dryer to help your little princess to learn her place in life.
Where's the problem with letting a boy play in a life-sized dollhouse and learning to cook and do the laundry, anyway?
The majority of children fit into the gender roles that society ordains to be correct for their genitals. Two problems with this, though, when you apply it to the whole. 1) A majority only needs to be a hair over half, leaving a hair under half of the population feeling like misfits for being different and under-represented. And 2) gender roles are fluid and depend largely on the time and place in which people live. A female has a different role to play in America, for example, than in Pakistan, and it's different again in Ghana. There's some overlap, sure, but it's not a fixed constant.
And that commercial seems to be advertising gender roles that around about 30 years out of date...
Which isn't to say that I have a problem with females who enjoy cooking and cleaning and sitting quietly while they embroider. If it's their choice, and they enjoy what they do, then I have no problem with it, and I resent the implication that no woman should do that as much as I resent the implication that all women should do that.
No balance is offered here. No other options are offered. Your little female child is going to grow up to being a pretty little woman who enjoys doing housework and taking care of her... offscreen man, I guess. No boys are going to want to learn to cook and clean, and no girl is ever going to seriously consider doing something other than this.
When I rant like this, I feel like I'm overracting. That isn't likely to be the message that was put into the making of the commercial, or the toy. That thought likely didn't cross any minds. But it's that lack of thought that makes for a lot of problems. It creates unconcerned images of what people are supposed to be without a care for the fact that a sizable number of people don't want to be that.
It's the same thoughtlessness behind sizism and ageism. It's the passive assumption that the norm applies to all, when it may not even apply to a majority anymore. Despite over 50% of North Americans being overweight, plus-size clothing stores are hard to come by and expensive, and the any really fashionable clothes come out only in "average" sizes which aren't so average anymore.
Now, Rei is a skinny so-and-so who is well within a healthy weight range. Shirts that fit him are often deemed "large", when I'd actually say he's more of a medium. Every time Rei comes home with a tiny "large" shirt, I want to write angry letters to the company asking them if they know what the word actually means.
I once received, as a gift, an extra-large shirt that ended up being a little tight on Rei, for crying out loud. Though I suppose I can't expect much for a clothing manufacturer called "SkinnyCorp." Your basic "large" men's shirt tends to fit comfortably on me, even if it emphasizes my chest a little more than I'd like. I'm a large person. Nobody can deny that. But sometimes it really feels like 99% of clothing manufacturers want to pretend that people like me don't exist. Might get a little fat on their fashion, and we can't have that.
Ageism is something I've ranted about before. I often feel like I'm being lumped in with people who get wasted every weekend, just because I'm in the age group in which that stereotypically happens. The assumption is that I'm irresponsible because I'm young.
Nobody stops to think that there might actually be offense in these mindless oversights. They push what they want to push, not because there's a demand for it but because they want to create demand while at the same time sticking to the tried-and-true. But things change, people change, and yet the media stays remarkably static. Any time a positive change is made, such as TV shows that have a black main character or a kick-ass disabled person, they're hailed as positively ground-breaking, unheard of and unseen. They are ground-breaking, but that doesn't mean that a potential audience wasn't waiting for years to see somebody just like them for once, instead of being bombarded with images of what everyone else wanted them to be.
Or what everybody else assumes them to be just because they're something commonly associated with that... in the media eye.
I'll give an example of this. I started watching Glee the other day, and have heard a lot of positive things about the show's treatment of minorities. Even the different are people just like everybody else. That message comes across pretty loud, and I can applaud that, but what I can't applaud are the way they fall victim to the very stereotyping they're trying to say isn't a great idea.
The gay kid who dresses all snazzy and likes shopping and associates more with girls than guys. The fat sassy black girl. The kid in the wheelchair with the thick nerdy glasses. I'm sorry, but were these supposed to be... anti-stereotypes of some kind? Because they come across as being very stereotyped to me. Can't have a gay kid who's not overtly gay. Can't have a black character without them being overweight and sassy and into R&B and other forms of "black" music. Sure, the characters aren't as stereotyped as they would have been even half a decade ago, but the thereotypes are still there.
Maybe they're trying to make a point, in that streotyped people can exist (they certainly can) and are deserving of as much respect as any cheerleader or football player because they have awesome talents too (and they do). Nobody denies that. But it's about media exposure. It's like somewhere in the back of the producer's minds, they're saying to themselves, "The only way a gay kid would be an outcast is if they're openly gay, so we have to have this guy be openly gay so that people will get that being gay is why he's outcast."
So even if it wasn't intentional, it seems like that kind of thoughtless assumption is there. There's a set way that gay people act. There's a set way that black women act. There's a set way that women in general act. This is how it is, and this is what people understand when they see it, and the image that's reinforced.
And it bugs me.
I have a problem with gendered toys. The toys themselves aren't the problem, but the gender-specific marketing is. This ad? Gives the impression that it's only for girls, only girls will like it, and that girls will like it. Not for boys, nope. And a real girl, a properly-raised girl will like it because it's good training for her future life.
"I love when my laundry gets so clean/ Taking care of my house is a dream, dream, dream."
'Cause nothing says "fun child's toy" like a make-believe washer and dryer to help your little princess to learn her place in life.
Where's the problem with letting a boy play in a life-sized dollhouse and learning to cook and do the laundry, anyway?
The majority of children fit into the gender roles that society ordains to be correct for their genitals. Two problems with this, though, when you apply it to the whole. 1) A majority only needs to be a hair over half, leaving a hair under half of the population feeling like misfits for being different and under-represented. And 2) gender roles are fluid and depend largely on the time and place in which people live. A female has a different role to play in America, for example, than in Pakistan, and it's different again in Ghana. There's some overlap, sure, but it's not a fixed constant.
And that commercial seems to be advertising gender roles that around about 30 years out of date...
Which isn't to say that I have a problem with females who enjoy cooking and cleaning and sitting quietly while they embroider. If it's their choice, and they enjoy what they do, then I have no problem with it, and I resent the implication that no woman should do that as much as I resent the implication that all women should do that.
No balance is offered here. No other options are offered. Your little female child is going to grow up to being a pretty little woman who enjoys doing housework and taking care of her... offscreen man, I guess. No boys are going to want to learn to cook and clean, and no girl is ever going to seriously consider doing something other than this.
When I rant like this, I feel like I'm overracting. That isn't likely to be the message that was put into the making of the commercial, or the toy. That thought likely didn't cross any minds. But it's that lack of thought that makes for a lot of problems. It creates unconcerned images of what people are supposed to be without a care for the fact that a sizable number of people don't want to be that.
It's the same thoughtlessness behind sizism and ageism. It's the passive assumption that the norm applies to all, when it may not even apply to a majority anymore. Despite over 50% of North Americans being overweight, plus-size clothing stores are hard to come by and expensive, and the any really fashionable clothes come out only in "average" sizes which aren't so average anymore.
Now, Rei is a skinny so-and-so who is well within a healthy weight range. Shirts that fit him are often deemed "large", when I'd actually say he's more of a medium. Every time Rei comes home with a tiny "large" shirt, I want to write angry letters to the company asking them if they know what the word actually means.
I once received, as a gift, an extra-large shirt that ended up being a little tight on Rei, for crying out loud. Though I suppose I can't expect much for a clothing manufacturer called "SkinnyCorp." Your basic "large" men's shirt tends to fit comfortably on me, even if it emphasizes my chest a little more than I'd like. I'm a large person. Nobody can deny that. But sometimes it really feels like 99% of clothing manufacturers want to pretend that people like me don't exist. Might get a little fat on their fashion, and we can't have that.
Ageism is something I've ranted about before. I often feel like I'm being lumped in with people who get wasted every weekend, just because I'm in the age group in which that stereotypically happens. The assumption is that I'm irresponsible because I'm young.
Nobody stops to think that there might actually be offense in these mindless oversights. They push what they want to push, not because there's a demand for it but because they want to create demand while at the same time sticking to the tried-and-true. But things change, people change, and yet the media stays remarkably static. Any time a positive change is made, such as TV shows that have a black main character or a kick-ass disabled person, they're hailed as positively ground-breaking, unheard of and unseen. They are ground-breaking, but that doesn't mean that a potential audience wasn't waiting for years to see somebody just like them for once, instead of being bombarded with images of what everyone else wanted them to be.
Or what everybody else assumes them to be just because they're something commonly associated with that... in the media eye.
I'll give an example of this. I started watching Glee the other day, and have heard a lot of positive things about the show's treatment of minorities. Even the different are people just like everybody else. That message comes across pretty loud, and I can applaud that, but what I can't applaud are the way they fall victim to the very stereotyping they're trying to say isn't a great idea.
The gay kid who dresses all snazzy and likes shopping and associates more with girls than guys. The fat sassy black girl. The kid in the wheelchair with the thick nerdy glasses. I'm sorry, but were these supposed to be... anti-stereotypes of some kind? Because they come across as being very stereotyped to me. Can't have a gay kid who's not overtly gay. Can't have a black character without them being overweight and sassy and into R&B and other forms of "black" music. Sure, the characters aren't as stereotyped as they would have been even half a decade ago, but the thereotypes are still there.
Maybe they're trying to make a point, in that streotyped people can exist (they certainly can) and are deserving of as much respect as any cheerleader or football player because they have awesome talents too (and they do). Nobody denies that. But it's about media exposure. It's like somewhere in the back of the producer's minds, they're saying to themselves, "The only way a gay kid would be an outcast is if they're openly gay, so we have to have this guy be openly gay so that people will get that being gay is why he's outcast."
So even if it wasn't intentional, it seems like that kind of thoughtless assumption is there. There's a set way that gay people act. There's a set way that black women act. There's a set way that women in general act. This is how it is, and this is what people understand when they see it, and the image that's reinforced.
And it bugs me.
