Category Archives: Sexism & Sexualisation in the Media

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.

“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

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…