Monthly Archives: August 2013

“But girls want to be superheroes too!”

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Watch this video of a 4 years old girl in a toy store in New York talking about the unfair separation of “pink princesses and blue superheroes” in the children world created by marketers.

No doubt she’s referring to her parent’s discussion on the topic, but this shows in itself the power of parental mediation: girls may be surrounded but a whole system pushing them towards beauty and appearance, but the words, discussion, even casual comments they get from their family will always form their frame of reference to evaluate whatever they see around: this aspect -the power of parental mediation – has also emerged very clearly from my empirical research on young girls’ response to adverts (www.TheGirlsProject.co.uk), and it’s indeed a positive thing which should make parents feel optimistic about their role, especially at this earlier stage of the development (before the adolescence phase, where rebellion towards parents becomes normative, representing for children a way to assert their independence)

This second video is uncut while the first is her video announced by ABCNews

So what do you think? Isn’t this video showing the remarkable power of parental mediation? 😉

What children really think about gender stereotypes in their TV programs?

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This is a huge scale content analysis of gender stereotypes in children TV programmes around the world and one of a few study investigating children’ own preferences regarding gender  stereotypes.

Gotz. M. (2008), Girls and Boys and Television The Role of Gender.

Gotz and her research team tracked gender representation in almost twenty thousand children’ TV shows from 24 countries and found that gender stereotypes are still extremely prevalent within kids’ television. The same study reveals that these stereotypes are far from what kids actually prefer: most girls in the study actually identified with “assertive and resourceful female leads that are in control of their lives and find their own solutions to problems” (Gotz, 2008).

Click the link below to access the file and read more 😉

http://bit.ly/1c4ihme

The Blue and Pink World of Marketing to Kids

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Griffiths, Merris: ‘Blue worlds and pink worlds – A portrait of intimate polarity’. In: Buckingham, David (Ed.) (2002): Small Screens. Leicester: Leicester University Press, pp. 159-184

This an interesting content analysis study detailing the strict division between pink and blue world existing today in children marketing.

Content analysis represent important studies in terms of evidencing the characteristics of adverts content, although it is only part of the puzzle: the author points out how further research is needed to investigate children actual response to advertising, especially at younger age, when their gender identity is still a shaping process (and this was precisely the aim of my PhD exploration into girls advertising experiences).

The aim of Griffiths’ paper is formulated as:

“to analyse the ways in which gender stereotyping operates on the most subtle and unobtrusive levels within toy advertisement texts, and thereby to describe and explain how the ‘gendering’ of both product and purchaser operates. An analysis of this kind demands that one look below the more obvious surface meanings of texts to the underlying structure of their ‘hidden’ (or unconscious) appeals. I intend to clarify how toy ads create a gender-polarised world for children, whilst demonstrating that the  situation is a little more complex than simple divisions between ‘blue’ and ‘pink’”.

“Of course, it should also be noted at the outset that textual analysis only identifies the parameters within which audience readings occur. How these readings occur is a matter for further research. The social worlds of boys and girls may in fact be much less polarised than the famously constructed worlds of Barbie and Action Man”

After a careful analysis the researcher concluded that the current gender segregation in marketing children toys is doing more harm than good, effectively pushing kids into pre-fabricated boxes:

“Yet when faced with a ‘packaged world it may well be that children have no option but to learn their place within it, seeing the patterns of behaviour that are represented there as unalterable fact”.

You can access the full article clicking the link below:

http://www.merrisgriffiths.co.uk/blue__pink.htm

 

 

An Excerpt from “A Woman’s Worth” by Marianne Williamson

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In this book, Marianne Williamson challenges women to see themselves in spiritual terms. Here is an excerpt on beauty.

“Feminine beauty is not a function of clothes or hair or makeup, although billions of dollars are spent in this country each year by women who have been convinced by the advertising industry that it is. Beauty is an internal light, a spiritual radiance that all women have but most women hide, unconsciously denying its existence. What we do not claim remains invisible. That is why the process of personal transformation — the true work of spiritual growth, whether couched in religious terms or not — is the only antidote to the pernicious effects of society’s backlash against genuine female empowerment. Society programs us, through the subliminal messages of popular culture, to believe that we’re not truly desirable as women unless we adhere to the current standards of physical beauty. The reason we’re such fertile ground for the dark forces of such lies and social manipulation is that we’re dissociated from the genuine light of self-awareness.

The woman who is truly self-aware knows that her self is a light from beyond this world, a spiritual essence that has nothing to do with the physical world. Those of us who strongly believe in the reality of spirit are quickly invalidated by a worldly power system that senses within spiritual truth the seeds of its own destruction. For if we truly believed in an internal light, we would not believe in the power of external forces, and we would not be so easy to dominate and control. We would not be tempted to see hair and clothes and makeup as sources of so much of our self-esteem and the ideal beauty of a fashion model as a sign that we are not beautiful at all.

In the words of Naomi Wolf, ‘We as women are trained to see ourselves as cheap imitations of fashion photographs, rather than seeing fashion photographs as cheap imitations of women.’

Against the sexualisation of women athletes

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Why a man sport commentator feels he has the right to judge and criticise a brilliant woman athlete on the basis of her appearance?

Read the full story here:

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/07/marion-bartoli-john-inverdale-bbc-not-a-looker/

This is an example of the widespread sexism permeating media culture. Would you imagine a comment of the same type being made towards a man athlete?
Is this kind of messages the media transmit to girls and women on a regular basis and this is from the BBC sport commentary, not a glamour or reality TV show!
After received thousand of complaints regarding the comment the BBC released a public apology…

Was the guy penalised or sucked for his behaviour? Certainly not!

…and I guess this is the reason this kind of comments continue to exist around women athletes…

 

http://www.sparksummit.com/

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This is another US movement which started recently

SPARK is a girl-fuelled activist movement to demand an end to the sexualisation of women and girls in media. They’re collaborating with hundreds of girls (age 13-22) and more than 60 US national organizations to reject the commodified, sexualized images of girls in media and support the development of girls’ healthy sexuality and self-esteem.

“One of the most unique, important things about SPARK is that we’re a movement by girls, for girls and girls’ allies (including boys and grownups). We center girls’ experiences and elevate girls’ voices because we know that “protecting them” from sexualization doesn’t work–we need to help girls develop their own strengths and speak out against the forces that harm them. Our SPARKteam is made up of engaged, passionate girls and young women who are building their own solutions and leading a movement against the sexualization, objectification, and violence against women present in the media”