53 Shopping Days Left Until Xmas

[seraphcelene]

The gender coding time of year has started off with a bang. Every time I turn on the TV I am assaulted by commercials featuring little girls playing with plastic stoves and oh, how cool it is and they talk! Apparently, when she wasn't off having adventures featuring sharks, shipwrecks and the rescuing of handsome princes, Ariel was busy filleting fish. I was unaware.

So, sorry. Pardon my sarcasm.

Did you SEE how much junk she had in that cavern? Do you know how much TIME it takes to accumulate that much stuff? How much searching and exploring has to be done? I guess the marketing peeps over at Disney don't really think so.

What really got me, however, was the Dora the Explorer stove.



I am incensed!!! Dora the freaking Explorer has a plastic pink stove!! When does Dora have time to cook???? She's EXPLORING!! What the fuck?! And the worst part?! The very best of the worst part? The stove includes a little phone that rings and when you answer it Dora's friend Diego asks what's for dinner.

*facepalm*

OMG! Are you kidding me right now?

Two of the more proactive female characters for young girls have been chained to the stove.

I mean seriously. Seriously.

And of course that got me to thinking about Buffy and the way that Joss rewrote the blonde cheerleader stereotype. Even Heroes is getting involved with Clare, although with a different purpose and, perhaps, to a lesser degree. I love, and everyone has talked the subject to death, I am sure, how Buffy moves throughout the series from passive to active. As she grows, the movement from WTTH to Graduation, we see her evolve from the hand to the mind. She moves beyond just action (Giles does most of the thinking and deciding) to a planner (the definitive moment in that arc, of course, coming in LMPTM). Even Cordelia, the other obvious female stereotype in the Jossverse, recasts herself over the seasons in very surprising and aggressive ways. Perhaps, even more startling than Buffy's evolution since she begins the series having already begun her evolution. Cordelia we watch from beginning to end.

I find it vastly disconcerting to see marketing that implies, what I see, as a regression, a movement away from action and back into passive gender models. Not that there's anything wrong with home and hearth. Not at all. My mom stayed home until I was maybe eight or nine years old. But, seeing characters that function outside of traditional gender codes of behavior recast into a traditional model is just wrong and disturbing. If they were going to do this, couldn't they have picked a character that already functioned as part of that (gods, I am completely losing my words) behavioral model?

Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? Am I being overly sensitive? Maybe it's just a pink plastic stove and who cares? Would YOU buy one for your daughter? What if your son wanted one?

I'm curious.



Oh and a note to glossing: THANK YOU!! I will email you later. But everything made perfect sense and thank you thank you thank you!!!

Comments

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

i am very much not a girly-girl in any way, but i get a great deal of satisfaction out of cooking, cleaning, sewing, knitting, etc. i don't see anything wrong with someone deciding to take a break from saving the world to make knishes. when my daughter was two, she rode around on a pink plastic 'motorcycle' in her jeans, plaid shirt, workboots (yes, i found WORKBOOTS in her size!) and yellow hardhat... with a baby doll tucked under each arm. that's a well-rounded child. and, yeah, i had people tell me half-joking that i was raising a lesbian because her clothing for the first few years was all plaid flannel and denim. *sigh* i was dirt poor, all my friends had boys, and the stuff lasted. morons.

i have a huge problem with the inherent assumption that girls are the only ones who can and should enjoy domestic tasks. the dynamic that you speak of chaps my ass. it's like 'they're really girls because of...' or 'no matter how far you go, you best take your stove with you, bitch'. drives me nuts. when Fisher Price makes a garage with a stove on the back, well, we'll talk. is it a regression, though? i don't think so. i've been a child, been teaching children, been a nanny, and a parent for thirty years that i can remember and toys haven't really changed that much at all.

let's not jump on the toy manufacturers alone. they make these things because they sell. parents buy them because their children identify with them. the fault goes way deeper than just the toy makers. what it says is that shows like Dora are great and maybe today's four year olds won't be buying pink plastic stoves for their daughters but today's parents sure are. the kids are still being programmed. and that is a huge concern. Buffy's great, but she's an exception to the rule.

it's not just their daughters suffering for it; their sons are growing up half-human, too. are half the cooking shows on TV not about men? it's ridiculous. PEOPLE need to smarten up. /we/ need to be more demanding about what kids are exposed to. when i taught nursery school, you'd find as many boys as girls in the kitchen. all little children love to care for and nurture others. it's everyone's loss when only one gender gets to do it, and when only one sex gets to participate in those gender activities.

who the hell owns a pink stove when they're grown up, anyway? mine's shiny and black and goes ZOOM. (i swear i don't cook at less than 450.)

[seraphcelene]

I am very much not a girly-girl in any way, but I get a great deal of satisfaction out of cooking, cleaning, sewing, knitting, etc. I don't see anything wrong with someone deciding to take a break from saving the world to make knishes.

Word! I've never considered myself a girly-girl either. I have five brothers and I grew up doing what they did and wearing their hand-me-downs. I am in complete agreement with you. I also grew up with Barbie dolls and baby dolls between playing with my brothers trucks and Transformers. I LOVE cooking (not so much dishes but that's neither here nor there), I find cleaning incredibly therapeutic and I LOVE to crochet!! I also adore video games in which I get to beat the pulp out of people (my brothers are always commenting on my bloodlust) and power tools. But I LOVE make-up, too. And shoes. God, shoes!! So there's absolutely no reason why you can't be both. Your daughter sounds incredibly well-rounded and I love that.

But, as you say, it's a problem of either or. Girls like this and boys like that and for no other reason than the equipment packed between their legs. And you're right it's very obviously a deeper problem than toy manufactures. They sell what people want. But, I don't know, I see it as negligence to make a commercial or feature an ad where the sexes are separated by tasks assumed to be the domain of one or the other. Why not mix it up and include both? Why not have the guy over to help make the meal? Why not let the girls into the garage to help repair the scooter? It's just so pervasive that I think where do we start with fixing this?

Buffy's great, but she's an exception to the rule.

LOL. I am so about watching and tracking strong, alternative, non-traditional female characters that I forget sometimes that she is indeed an exception and that the masses don't get her. It shocks me to come out of my feminist bubble and realize that not everyone is seeing what I'm seeing and the sudden inundation of commercials in preparation for Christmas was like someone snapping their fingers under my nose. I saw it!!

it's not just their daughters suffering for it; their sons are growing up half-human, too. are half the cooking shows on TV not about men? it's ridiculous. PEOPLE need to smarten up. /we/ need to be more demanding about what kids are exposed to. when I taught nursery school, you'd find as many boys as girls in the kitchen. all little children love to care for and nurture others. it's everyone's loss when only one gender gets to do it, and when only one sex gets to participate in those gender activities.

Hell Yeah!! Can I just say how very glad I am that you came by to comment because ... exactly. I've lost all ability to be articulate about the subject, so thank you!!