Dr. Rebecca Hains
Author, professor and speaker | Children's media culture, media literacy, and media criticism
Does the “War on Pink” need to stop for boys’ sakes? No, and here’s why.
In a recent blog post on Girl w/Pen, professors CJ Pascoe and Tristan Bridges—sociologists whose work focuses on masculinity—make a strange request of their fellow feminist scholars and activists. “Stop the war on pink,” their headline pleads; “let’s take a look at toys for boys.”
Pascoe and Bridges claim that boys’ toys’ problems have been overlooked too long. Boy culture is too violent, too “gunnified.” Now, they say, we need “at least a pause” in critiquing girls’ toys and their “pinkification,” so that we can give boys’ toys our full attention.
As the mother of two little boys, I fully agree with their concerns about boys’ toys. Countless boys’ toys function to socialize our sons into stereotypical masculinity, and that is unfair. Boys deserve expanded play offerings every bit as much as our girls do—which is why I already support the Let Toys Be Toys campaign they mention. It’s why my gift-buying guide for children is gender-neutral. It’s why I’ve even read the book My Princess Boy to groups of preschool children: ALL toys, whether pink or blue, princess or superhero, should be socially acceptable for both girls and boys to play with. Full stop.
Unfortunately, Pascoe and Bridges’ ultimate assertion perplexes me. “Stop,” they say–“stop the war on pink.” This makes no sense.
Why? Why must we stop critiquing girl culture to address boy culture’s problems? After all, both problems coexist. Addressing them is not an either/or proposition. The dichotomy Pascoe and Bridges suggest—that we need to stop the war on pink to focus on boys’ toys—is as false as the dichotomy the toy industry presents to boys and girls. It’s not right. Read More
Why Representations of Women and Girls Can’t Be Slut-Shamed
Is it slut-shaming to dub Polly Pocket “Polly Prostitute“?
No, it isn’t. But many commenters on the internet think otherwise.
I’m here to tell you why they’re wrong.
About Slut-Shaming
In recent months, the term “slut-shaming” has gone mainstream. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, it is used to describe the condemnation of a woman for her choices regarding her attire and appearance, and/or for acting with sexual agency.
Examples of slut-shaming include, but are not limited to, the following:
- The idea that a woman is wrong to choose dress in a sexually provocative way. E.g., “I can’t believe Morgan is wearing a skirt so short. She’s really asking for it.”
- The idea that a woman who is on birth control is inherently sexually promiscuous. Key example: Rush Limbaugh’s commentary about Sandra Fluke.
- The idea that a woman engaged in sexual behavior is wrong for doing so and should be stigmatized.
In other words, when we slut-shame women, we are policing their sexuality—and that’s wrong.
Furthermore, because it’s essentially impossible to shame men for these same behaviors, slut-shaming props up our society’s double standard for men and women. In so doing, it also perpetuates rape culture, in which victim-blaming is the norm. So, all in all, having the vocabulary to identify and call people out when they are policing women’s sexuality is a good thing.
Slut-Shaming and Pop Culture
As a media critic, though, I want to make something clear: Criticizing the media’s representation of women and girls is not the same as slut-shaming. Lately, I’ve been perplexed that so many people seem to think it is. Read More
Review and giveaway: Go! Go! Sports Girls dolls are healthy, fun, and inspiring
As the holidays approach, I’m doing a series of reviews and giveaways for brands I believe in—all from indie companies that have girls’ best interests at heart. Today, I’d like to share Go! Go! Sports Girls with you.
Go! Go! Sports Girls is an award-winning line of plush dolls created by my colleague Jodi Norgaard (a member of the Brave Girls Alliance) for girls ages 3 to 12. Like the Lottie Dolls I reviewed previously, Go! Go! Sports girls dolls are age appropriate. They are not sexualized. They wear apparel that is appropriate for the sport they play, and their body type is that of a child—not an adult.
Norgaard explains that this is the result of her conscious choices. “After shopping for a doll for my 9 year old daughter and finding only those with belly baring clothing, high heels and make up,” she says, “I fueled my frustration into creating Go! Go! Sports Girls, to encourage healthy and active play over fashion and body image.” Read More
What if Woody Wore Pink?
What would you think of Woody from Toy Story if he wore pink?
Would you think the color choice was incongruous—that it didn’t seem masculine enough for a 1950s-era cowboy toy?
Well, you’d be wrong. Check out these images from the 1955 Sears Christmas Book catalog that Elizabeth Sweet, a newly minted Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis, sent me. Here’s Roy Rogers Apparel, featuring Roy Rogers and his son, Dusty–who is wearing a cowboy outfit with red, yellow, and pink accents:
To modern eyes, this is surprising. “Pink is a girls’ color,” we think. This association has become so firmly entrenched in our cultural imagination that people are flabbergasted to learn that until the 1950s, pink was often considered a strong color and, therefore, was associated with boys. Read More
Should clothing prices vary by size?
Have you ever wondered why clothing is priced the way it is? Sometimes, people wonder if it’s fair for companies to price clothing of various sizes uniformly. After all, the materials costs vary from size to size, so those differences should be passed on to consumers—right?
For example, someone recently asked me this question:
“As a male who wears a size 50-52 suit, I am offended I ‘subsidize’ those wearing a size 58 suit… all that extra fabric for the same price. My wife wears a size 4-6. Shouldn’t she be offended she has to ‘subsidize’ a size 10-12?” —Commenter responding to our Lululemon petition
His question seems to be a rhetorical one, but as I’ve heard others ask earnestly about how sizing and pricing work, I’d like to address it anyway.
The most basic answer to his question is: No. The cost of fabric is only a small portion of the cost of manufacturing clothing. Expenses incurred in manufacturing, shipping, and marketing clothing are substantial. So, there’s no need for people to be offended. There’s far less “subsidization” going on than this fellow thinks.
It’s also worth mentioning that this commenter is comparing apples to oranges re: his clothing vs. his wife’s clothing. Men’s clothing items above a size 44″ are generally considered to be plus sizes. In contrast, in women’s clothing, “plus sizes” in the US generally begin with size 14 to 16.
Plus sizes usually do cost more than the “regular” sizes do. So, too, do clothing for “petites” and for the “big and tall”: in most stores, anything that isn’t “regular” costs more.
So, bearing those points in mind, let’s consider the question of how much manufacturers’ costs vary when they produce clothing of different sizes. Jenna Lourenco is a performing arts instructor at Emmanuel College who was previously a professional costume designer. So I asked her for an explanation: what are the cost factors in the clothing manufacturing process? Read More
Review: Lottie Dolls are a Win For Kids
This holiday season, I will be doing a series of giveaways—all of brands I believe in—brands that seek to empower or support girls in some way.
First up is “Lottie,” which I am happy to introduce to you today. Lottie is a recent arrival in the girls’ fashion doll scene, produced by an indie company in the UK to give girls a healthy doll to play with. I really like what they’re doing.
The dolls’ bodies are modeled after the typical proportions of a 9-year-old girl, and though they’re fashionable, they are not sexualized. The Lottie line launched in 2012 and has since won 12 awards in the USA and UK. Press and blog coverage has been generally positive, though some reviewers of Lottie’s debut offerings wished the line had gone further in defying stereotypes.
Well, good news: The newest dolls introduced a lot of variety to the brand. As co-founder Lucie Follett explained to me, “When we launched Lottie, we wanted to get our product on the shelf, and buyers are reluctant to stock anything without TV advertising, especially from a new brand with no track record or sales. Read More
Modern Beauty Standards Imposed on Classic Art Show Narrowness of Today’s Ideal
Several years ago, I was admiring the Venus de Milo at the Louvre when a group of American teens approached. Eyeing the statue, one girl blurted out: “She’s so fat.”Her friends laughed and agreed, but her comment just made me sad. The girls were surveilling the Venus de Milo in the same way that our culture has trained girls to surveil themselves and one another: to always be attuned to whether females are living up to our culture’s beauty ideal—and to judge and condemn those who do not.
Besides, the Venus de Milo is most certainly not “fat.” She just differs from the body type that has become the hard-and-fast ideal over the past century. But because these teens were so accustomed to the Photoshopped norm, they couldn’t see the beauty in this classic work of art.This series of retouched masterpieces reminded me of that experience. No doubt some viewers will find the new versions an improvement. As for me, I favor the originals—simply because I appreciate that classic art proves that our culture’s take on “beauty” has been drastically redefined and unreasonably narrowed in recent decades.
So, I decided to retouch the Venus de Milo myself using Photoshop. Here she is, in her original form and again by today’s beauty standards–in a form that modern teens might find beautiful, rather than laughable:
Anti-princess marketing and girls’ education: Mercy Academy vs. GoldieBlox
Water, water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.
Princesses: They’re everywhere. Over the past decade, marketers have made “princess” a synonym for “girls. They use princesses as shorthand—a way of saying, “Hey, girl: Buy this!”
But ever since Peggy Orenstein spelled out the problems with princess culture in Cinderella Ate My Daughter, parents have come down with a serious case of princess fatigue. Sure, princesses are still popular—but in many corners, parents are so over it.
The girl culture industry is savvy, though. Aware of the pushback, they’re changing tactics. They’ve been working hard to rebrand “princess” as the equvalent of “empowerment” — as today’s girls’ version of girl power. (See this Disney ad, for example.)
The problem is that despite the branding, princess culture is very limiting. Marketers can claim “princess” has the capacity to empower girls all they want; but at the end of the day, in the marketplace, princess culture always reduces girls’ interests to being pretty and finding romance—as the Disney Consumer Products Division redesign of Merida from Brave proved.
As a result, the ubiquity of princesses actually limits young girls’ imaginations. They aren’t seeing many other versions of girlhood promoted to them. Although there are many ways to be a girl, pop culture is showing girls too many minor variations on the princess theme and calling these similar items “choices”—selling girls short in the process.
The upshot is that today’s girls are like the sailors in Coleridge’s famous, poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” They’re adrift in a sea of princesses, and their imaginations are parched. Being sold on princesses everywhere they go—from toy stores to grocery stores to hardware stores—makes our girls’ worlds shrink.
Nor any drop to drink.
So with this in mind, I’ve been intrigued to see two anti-princess ad campaigns go viral in recent days. Let’s take a look at them. Read More
Dr. Rebecca Hains 
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