#NoGenderDecember is an Australian campaign to end the gendered marketing of toys to children. Its goal is to desegregate the toy aisles, organizing them by interest instead of by stereotype-laden “boys” and “girls” sections.
The campaign went viral earlier this week, after The Guardian reported that Australian prime minister Tony Abbott criticized the campaign. “Let boys be boys, let girls be girls,” he said—“that’s always been my philosophy.”
When I read Abbott’s quote, I thought: What an odd remark! Rearranging toy aisles according to children’s interests won’t magically turn boys into girls and girls into boys, or all children into eerily androgynous unisex beings. Abbott’s remarks seemed ignorant of the campaign’s goals and uninformed on how gender stereotyping limits young children.
The fact is that toy stores’ gender-based arrangement of toys shames children who want products that have been arbitrarily assigned to the opposite sex—like boys who want kitchen sets that are found in the girls’ aisle, and girls who want dinosaurs placed in the boys’ aisle.
Gender-stereotyped toy marketing has real implications for young children. As Maria Montessori famously remarked, play is the work of the child, and open-ended, unrestricted play is crucial to children’s development. Therefore, just as we don’t assign careers to adults based on their sex, we should never tell a child what they should or shouldn’t play with on the basis of sex. Every child should have a full range of choices available to him or her, so that the toys might broaden children’s horizons and imaginations—not box them in.
After all, whom would it hurt for, say, all the LEGO sets to be grouped together in an aisle marked “building toys,” instead of segregated in to “boys'” and “girls'” aisles?
No one. No one at all.
Yet when FOX & Friends touched on the #NoGenderDecember campaign immediately after The Guardian piece debuted, they presented the campaign in a negative light. “New movement calls for a ban on toy favorites like GI Joe for boys and Barbie for girls,” FOX & Friends reported—sending their twitter followers into a frenzy:
FOX & Friends got so much viewer attention for this short and erroneous mention of #NoGenderDecember that they decided to program a full segment on it, and asked me if I’d like to join them for another debate on the matter—a follow-up to our discussion last year of the similar “Let Toys Be Toys” campaign in the UK.
In my email accepting the invitation, I noted: “Their point seems to be not that we should get rid of any particular type of toy, but rather the gender-based marketing of toys. I agree with this perspective. When toys are categorized according to marketers’ stereotypical ideas about the gender of the child that will play with them, it limits children’s imaginations, aspirations, and identities”—adding on twitter:
Finally, Penny Nance of the Concerned Women for America and I appeared live on FOX & Friends to discuss the matter. Below, please find a video of the segment, followed by a full transcript.
What do you think? Is desegregating our children’s gendered toy aisles and advertisements a good thing? Would you like to see the toy stores in your area reorganize in this way?
In recent days, the nation has been riveted and repulsed by the grand juries’ decisions to indict neither Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown, nor New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner. In the ensuing national conversation, many white people are staring down the stark reality of ongoing systemic racism in the United States for the first time. The inequities exposed by Wilson and Pantaleo’s impunity in Brown and Pantaleo’s respective deaths have served as a rude awakening for countless white people, whose experiences with the U.S. justice system have been nothing like their African-American peers’.
As a result, concerned white parents are now asking: “How can we raise our children to be allies to people of color, to help put an end to racism in the United States?”
This is a crucial goal, and it’s a goal that’s within reach—but families can only achieve it by being intentional in their parenting. For decades, white families have been hesitant to discuss race with their children, fearful that they might misspeak or be misunderstood and inadvertently foster prejudice in their own children.
In fact, according to a 2007 study at Vanderbilt University of 18,950 families with kindergarteners, 75 percent of white families never or almost never discuss race with their children. This is a major problem. When white parents don’t discuss race with their children, studies show, peer and media influences fill in the gaps—often with terrible consequences. Children are not colorblind; they begin noticing race at as young as six months of age. Even though they lack racial vocabulary, they quickly begin to categorize people by color—drawing upon the most obvious of stereotypes.
This means it’s important for white parents who wish to raise anti-racist children to begin talking with their kids about race from an early age.
Here are a few suggestions, backed by the research in this area, on how white parents can raise children who are allies to people of color and who can think critically about race relations, race representations, and racism. Read More
The Meredith Vieira Show recently asked: What is the “princess problem,” and how can we fight it? I joined Meredith Vieira and a panel of three parents for a double segment dedicated to the topic. Together, we explored how princess culture creates problems in young girls’ lives, and I shared advice on how parents can help their girls progress past these princess problems.
The Meredith Vieira Show segments and a transcript are below.
Transcript: Read More
When little girls become princess-obsessed, parents react with a mix of “aww” and shock. Seeing a toddler in a princess gown is enough to make even the most cynical adult swoon and praise her for her adorable beauty.
But when that same little princess refuses to get dressed for preschool in mid-winter because, she tantrums in a heap of tears, “Princesses don’t wear sleeeeeeeeves!”—well, some parents wish their girls would have a feminist awakening, and fast.
Sadly, Gloria Steinem is too busy to serve as fairy godmother to our nation’s 10 million preschool girls—so what’s a concerned parent to do? The situation often seems hopeless, as Devorah Blachor’s satirical-prescription-gone-viral for creating a feminist toddler—“Turn Your Princess-Obsessed Toddler Into a Feminist in Eight Easy Steps“—suggests.
So many parents are so frustrated by the grip that princess culture has on their daughters that, as a professor and researcher of girls’ media culture, I decided to research what could be done. I spent two years immersed in the literature and in fieldwork, interviewing more than 40 parents about what worked for their families. I even went undercover à la Ms. Steinem’s “Playboy Bunny” days, getting a job as a birthday party princess and partying with little girls while dressed as Cinderella and The Little Mermaid on weekends. It was incredibly fun and also yielded a lot of insights (despite having to fend of off the occasional drunken uncle leering down my clamshells, eww). Read More
Counting down the days to Christmas is a fun activity for many families. Marking the Advent season with traditions like Advent calendars, Advent wreaths, and Advent rings offer an opportunity to reflect on the true meaning of the season and to build anticipation for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Advent begins on November 30, 25 days before Christmas. The Christmas season then runs from December 25 to January 5—the twelve days sung about in the carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” and alluded to in the title of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”
In modern U.S. society, however, many people consider the day after Thanksgiving—a.k.a. “Black Friday”—to mark the start of the Christmas season. Many people put up their Christmas trees and other decorations that weekend, and begin their Christmas shopping in earnest the day after Thanksgiving, when retailers run heavily publicized discount sales on Christmas gifts.
But Black Friday is losing its dominance as the start of the Christmas season in the retail landscape from a retail and merchandising perspective. As such, many people who find joy in Advent and the Christmas season have been lamenting the rise of “Christmas Creep”—the practice of retailers running Christmas promotions on ever-earlier dates in an attempt to compete with one another for customers’ Christmas season purchases.
Studies show that consumers find Christmas Creep obnoxious. According to the Chicago Times, a recent survey found that 71 percent of respondents were “annoyed” or “very annoyed” to find holiday items in stores before Halloween, and 42 percent said they were less likely to buy from those retailers as a result.
Despite consumers’ annoyance, retailers and merchandizers have no desire to put an end to Christmas Creep. In fact, Wharton marketing professor Stephen Hoch characterizes it as a “mini arms race” that aren’t going anywhere—even though it really doesn’t benefit retailers.
“Once one of these sales happens, it will happen forever,” Hoch explained in an article on Knowledge@Wharton. “If you had a sale last year, you pretty much have to have the same sale again this year to see if you exceeded what you sold last year. This may be why retailers are putting up Christmas decorations and displays earlier and earlier. They’re looking not just at the quarter or month but every week and every day.”
Meanwhile, Amazon has appropriated the countdown to Christmas—a cherished Advent tradition—and is running a “Countdown to Black Friday Deals Week,” as I recently discovered on their home page:
There’s something sad and offensive about this co-optation of the Advent countdown. Why would anyone count down to Black Friday instead of Christmas? Doing so is crassly commercial. This kind of advertisement simply reminds us that what retailers love most about the season isn’t Christmas. Rather, it’s the fact that Christmas shopping accounts for 20% to 30% their annual sales.
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Rebecca Hains is a media studies professor at Salem State University. Her book, The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years, is now available from retailers including Amazon.
Rebecca is on Facebook and Twitter. If you enjoyed this post, you may follow Rebecca’s blog by hitting the “follow blog” button at rebeccahains.com.
For years, families struck a balance between store-bought and homemade Halloween costumes. But these days, DIY Halloween costumes are out. Store-bought costumes are an $2.87 billion business.
What does this mean for consumers? Well, for one thing, we’re seeing a lot of costumes that reproduce tired gender stereotypes. Sex sells, and in an $8 billion seasonal industry, it seems designers and retailers are maximizing profits by creating more and more “sexy” costumes for women and girls. In fact, at this point, if you’re female, “sexy” is hardly an option anymore. It’s practically a requirement.
In today’s relatively new, hypercommercial Halloween, it’s become an expectation for females to dress in sexually provocative ways–even when costumed as, say, a children’s cartoon character, like Nemo from Finding Nemo.
The same applies to mundanely macabre items like body bags. Are you a man? Your body bag Halloween costume will resemble an actual body bag. Are you a woman? The ladies’ version of a body bag costume will be (drum roll…) a skimpy dress with a hood that zips over your head. Ugh.
Adding insult to injury, the definition of “sexy” applied to the majority of women’s Halloween costumes is appallingly narrow. Tiny dresses with a lot of revealed skin available in a very limited range of sizes make it clear: Mainstream, readily-available “sexy” costumes aren’t being made for the full-figured, despite the fact that a size 14 is the average American woman’s size.
The typical sexy Halloween costumes divide women and shortchange young girls by conveying the same old message: if you don’t fit our society’s narrow beauty ideal, this culture doesn’t want to think of you as being sexually desirable. So you’d better focus on your appearance above all else. Note that even the “sexy” costume for Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid is scaled down, available in tiny sizes, even though the original character from the film is a confident, full-figured woman–which seems really incongruous.
Unfortunately, as parents of young girls know, today’s girls’ Halloween costumes are highly sexualized, too. This reinforces the same unhealthy messages about what female bodies are considered desirable and undesirable in our culture.
For example, compare the “Little Leopard” costume for young girls to the adult “Sexy Leopard” costumes.
Yesterday, for-profit T-shirt company FCKH8.com released a video called “F-Bombs for Feminism: Potty-Mouthed Princesses Use Bad Word for Good Cause.” The video features five angry girls, ages 6 to 13, who express outrage at society’s sexist treatment of girls and women while decked out in princess attire.
The video opens with the girls sweetly cooing, “Pretty!” while posing in their gowns and tiaras. But three seconds later, they switch gears and shout: “What the fuck? I’m not some pretty fuckin’ helpless princess in distress. I’m pretty fuckin’ powerful and ready for success. So what is more offensive? A little girl saying ‘fuck,’ or the fucking unequal and sexist way society treats girls and women?”
As the video progresses, the girls review the ongoing issues of inequality, systematic discrimination, and sexual violence faced by women in the U.S. They pepper these facts with more f-bombs, of course.
This combination of pretty pink princesses and relentless use of the f-word is potent and clearly calculated to provoke. And provoke it has: For the shock value alone, everybody’s talking about this video.
But in all the conversation about whether the video is offensive, we need to also consider the ad from a media literate perspective and consider FCKH8’s corporate interests.Was it right for FCKH8 to script a slew of swear words into an advertisement featuring young children? Read More
On Monday, I had a great conversation with Shiri Spear of FOX 25 News about my new book, The Princess Problem. I was glad to answer her questions about my book and to share a few tips on raising empowered girls, as well.
A link to the FOX News video and a transcript are below. Enjoy!
VIDEO: Guiding Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years| FOX 25 Boston
Guiding Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years
SHIRI: From the movies they love to the fairy tales they read, a little girl’s love affair with princesses has been going on since, well—since once upon a time, a very long time ago, in a land far, far away. But some wonder if we are creating a little bit of a princess problem, so we’ve got Rebecca Hains here. She’s a professor at Salem State and also author of the new book The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years. Read More
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