Dr. Rebecca Hains
Author, professor and speaker | Children's media culture, media literacy, and media criticism
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LEGO Friends Comic Goes Viral
When Patrinos saw the men in a LEGO documentary talk about how to connect with girls, it sounded like they were trying to decipher how to make contact with an alien species. So she made a cartoon about it.
Read MoreAnti-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,…
Read MoreTalking about toys: Taking child’s play seriously
On occasion, people ask me why I bother taking children’s toys so seriously. “They’re just toys, after all!” Yes, toys are just toys–but they’re so much more than that, too. Toys are a central part of children’s play, and to…
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…
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Dr. Rebecca Hains 
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