Dr. Rebecca Hains
Author, professor and speaker | Children's media culture, media literacy, and media criticism
Category: television
Sofia the Not-So-Latina-After-All
Months ago, Disney announced that a new Disney Channel cartoon, Sofia the First, would be released this year, targeting girls ages 2 to 7. With the title character a little girl, rather than a teenager, Disney promised that Sofia the First…
Read MoreTurn off your television! Screen-Free Week starts Monday.
Have you heard of “screen time”? It’s a term describing the time we spend in front of screens, large and small, consuming media on a daily basis. Television. Computers. Video games. iPhones. iPads. Many screens compete for our attention, and…
Read MoreKatniss Everdeen: The First Post-Girl Power Hero
When I saw The Hunger Games on its opening weekend, I was really struck by something: Although the sexualization of girls and women is rampant in the media, Katniss Everdeen is not sexualized. Not at all. Take a look at these…
Read More“Chess for Girls,” or how Saturday Night Live predicted the future.
Saturday Night Live’s fake commercial, “Chess for Girls” [transcript], was hilarious in 1997–but today, it strikes awfully close to home. An ultra-pink chess set that’s “not too hard, just pretty and fun”–with prancing ponies and a long-haired queen in a…
Read MorePretty Princess Problems: The Case of Princess Celestia
My family and I were shopping for a child’s birthday present this weekend when we came upon the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic section at a local Target store. As I’ve discussed previously, MLP:FIM is an unusually good children’s…
Read MoreMy Little Pony: Even better than The Powerpuff Girls
A children’s television cartoon that appeals to boys and girls, men and women, is a rarity. The Powerpuff Girls exemplified this. In 1998, it stunned the television industry by crossing demographic barriers. The combination of extreme cuteness and extreme strength…
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