Author Archives: Francesca Morosi

About Francesca Morosi

Francesca Morosi is a doctoral researcher at Nottingham Trent University. Her research is supported by a 3-years scholarship kindly provided by the University. Her academic background is a BSc Degree in Economics from University of Rome "La Sapienza" (First, hons) and a Master in Marketing Management from De Montfort University, Leicester (Dist). Her main research interests lie in the areas of Marketing Ethics and Consumer Behaviour, with particular reference to the interlocking of media, gender, advertising and children. Her orientation is geared towards mixed-methods, experimenting with innovative ways to research children while advocating a feminist and child-centric approach to research.

Can we stop this stupid T-shirts’ trend against our girls?

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I am reading so many negative and angered comments from parents and girls alike regarding what I would call “the stupid T-shirt trend”!

The ones below are just an example of parent’s comments left on the Facebook page of one of the shop in question:

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So despite many parents’ dismay, it looks like some marketers are working really hard to make sure that girls wear the right labelling attire, brilliant! So that anywhere they go the message will be loud and clear about their dumbness? No thank you! 🙁

I was talking with a girl the other day who seems to proudly display her “drama queen” shirt: I asked her “what is it to be proud about being a drama queen?”, she quickly dismissed me by saying “oh, it’s just a T-shirt!”, but I suspect that there are many young girls out there who would not be offended in the slightest to be referred to a “drama queen” or “gold digger” these days: the pervasive media culture surrounding them makes them think that somehow these are normal girls’ attributes (along with being shopping/fashion/make-up fanatic).

The trouble with this type of marketing is that it is a lazy, unimaginative way to push girls into a corner.

Fortunately, they are plenty of ethical businesses fighting back this trend and new companies producing clever and witty T-shirts are popping up all the time: so let’s make sure to give these girls an alternative and I am confident it will be soon out of trend to wear  “I am a princess” shirts!

I made a few visual slides regarding this point, I would love to see them circulating far & wide on the web. I’ll post them today, your job is to pass them around! 🙂

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Double standards in society and media: feminist parody of Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” inappropriate?

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Today I found an interesting article in The Independent, regarding a feminist remake-parody of Robin Thicke’s worldwide hit song “Blurred Lines”: the video/song parody was apparently removed from You Tube for being considered “inappropriate”!

I had a good look at both videos to see what the fuss was about and couldn’t detect anything remotely inappropriate in the parody video, while I could see why Thicke’s video and lyric have been criticised so much by various feminists and women advocates. The parody is quite hilarious but I would not define it inappropriate in the slightest.

Indeed if you watch both videos you’ll agree with me that the reaction to the parody was simply unjustifiable – and I assume this is why You Tube has reactivated the video after the producers appealed against the removal: it was nothing else than a “reversal of roles” done in a humoristic way: how can anyone find anything offensive in that?

Well…I guess this is a brilliant example of the rampant double standard we have in our culture and media: the definition of “inappropriate representation” varies according to conformity or non-conformity to society widely accepted sex roles.

Girls are the best because we are pretty! That’s it?

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This is one of the drawings coming from one of the youngest participants in my research (Kirsty, 8 years old; all names have been changed to protect girls’ identity).

During a bonding group session with 6 girls (8-9 years old) I asked the girls to make a drawing about what they thought it was the best thing about being a girl. Let’s consider that out of so many qualities, characteristics, situations, attributes…the girl has decided to focus on just ONE: perhaps the one aspect of being a girl that first came in her mind or the one that she considers more poignant, we don’t know about this.

What we know is that a 8 years old girl has made this drawing in response to the prompt: “why girls are the best?”.

In other girls’ drawings (with the exception of one girl who emphasised instead being imaginative, creative and fun) “prettiness” was a constant component, with girls referring to make-up, fashion and boys’ gaze.

I suggest that this kind of drawings are powerful, emblematic representations of the way young girls internalise media and society messages about being a girl/woman and as such their meaning should be taken very seriously.

 

Killing Us Softly – Jean Kilbourne documentary

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I just thought I should add a link to this state-of-the-art documentary by Jean Kilbourne.

This is one of the first documentary I watched with regards to women’s sexualisation and objectification in advertising (and it remains to these days one of the best I ever watched on the topic): it has now been released in 4 different editions
Jean Kilbourne on her documentary “Killing Us Softly”.

Browsing around the web I found the comment of an American college student who had the chance to watch it as a part of the school curriculum:

“For the first time in my college career I did not fall asleep watching an in-class video. Killing Us Softly 4 by Jean Kilbourne was engaging, relatable, and just interesting all around. The film depicted the way women and men mostly women, are portrayed in the media. Kilbourne gave many examples of ads and commercials where ideals of femininity are distorted and destructive.

This generation understands that everything in the media is not necessarily realistic but this film definitely opened my eyes up to how blatant and incorrect the media is when it comes to its negative portrayal of women. Advertising depicts images and messages that are unhealthy and unrealistic perceptions of body image and sexuality. I do believe that these ads are the main reason that there is such a high rate of females with low self-esteem and suicides in females today. With the constant portrayal of women being tanned, skinny, having large assets, and long hair, females have begun to think that this is what they need to strive to become otherwise they are far from perfect. Well in reality no one is perfect and there is no one perfect body type for a woman. Women come in all shapes and sizes, which is what makes us such unique and beautiful creatures. In reality the type of women that are depicted in the media are unattainable. This is the reason why plastic surgeons are rich because women are constantly going to them to enhance something on their body. Unfortunately by making all these physical changes, women are not becoming the “perfect woman”, they are just covering up their insecurities. So in the long run plastic surgery can only do but so much; it is a short-term cure for a long-term psychological problem.

I am grateful that I was always taught to love myself for everything that I am. Truthfully when I was a teenager I did try to look like the women I saw on television or in magazines but as time went on I realized that those women are not me, and can never be me; that is why I am special and unique!” (JPalm88 – blog post, April 18th 2011)

The comment shows how, for many young women, resource like this represent a real eye-opener. I would be interested to hear comments from my readers on whether they would consider such a resource useful or appropriate in primary schools (perhaps at age 10-11): how early is too early to introduce young girls (and boys) to this analysis?

“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