Tags: fight fun with fun, fighting back, girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd, premature sexualization, princess culture
Posted April 5th, 2012, in Boys and Girls, Creepy Marketing, Equal Parenting, Princesses, Why I Wrote CAMD | 29 Comments
I can’t get this new study on preschoolers and outdoor play out of my mind. Initially brought to my attention by KJ Dell’Antonia at Motherlode, it found that roughly half of parents of preschoolers did not take their children outside to play regularly–suggesting that those children are not getting the level of physical activity they need (see KJ’s post for important caveats). But here’s the kicker: parents were 16% more likely to take preschool boys outside than preschool girls. Why? Researchers theorized it was ingrained (and probably unconscious) stereotypes about how much exercise girls need. This sets the stage for sedentariness in adolescence and beyond. Which, I’m guessing, plays into distorted body image and unhealthy dieting. Great for the 60.9 billion dollar diet industry (with its 95% failure rate); not so great for girls. So you know I’m going to loop this back to the Princess Industrial Complex, right? Girls don’t seem to [...]
Tags: Disney, fight fun with fun, fighting back, girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd, princess culture
Posted February 29th, 2012, in Boys and Girls, Equal Parenting, Princesses, Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups | 21 Comments
In today’s Motherlode Emily Rosenbaum struggles with what seems to her to be a contradiction in the how she parents her daughter vs. her sons. The revelation was triggered when her 3-year-old girl returned from the Home Depot (with Emily’s husband) brandishing a Disney Princess light switch plate (in case you’re keeping track: that would be DP item #25,978 of the 26,000+ I mention in CAMD). It probably looked something like this: Emily was furious, but her husband said: You know, you’re reacting just the way I react when Zach wants to buy pink clothes. You should allow her to express herself as much as you let the boys do it. That pulled Emily up short. Turns out their son, Zach, “is the only boy in his second-grade class to regularly rock a pink hoodie and pink socks. Benjamin spent his toddler years dressed as Tinkerbell, and we potty trained him [...]
Tags: Disney, fight fun with fun, fighting back, girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd, princess culture
Posted February 29th, 2012, in Boys and Girls, Equal Parenting, Princesses, Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups | 6 Comments
Yikes! I just realized I accidentally posted this twice. For the real version please see above. I will also copy the comments from this post into that one. Sorry!
Tags: fighting back, girlie girl culture, Let kids be kids, pink princess culture camd
Posted December 31st, 2011, in Boys and Girls, Creepy Marketing, Equal Parenting, Princesses, Recommendations, Why I Wrote CAMD | 19 Comments
In the wake of my recent NY Times editorial on nature, nurture, gender and the new Lego Friends line, a reader sent me this photo of the gifts she and her husband gave their 5-year-old son this Christmas: her husband’s old Lincoln Log and Tinker Toy sets. He was born in 1972. He (the husband/father) was born in 1972. The Tinkertoys package explicitly states, “For boys and girls.” And note the girl happily building a ranch on the cover of the Lincoln Logs! Their son’s response: “I didn’t know these were for girls, too!” Point made (my point, that is). FYI, you can still get gender-neutral Lincoln Logs (with pictures of cabins on the box, no kids shown). But there is also this set: Again, necessary? Why? How does it affect the potential for boys and girls to interact? Play together? Is it relegating girls to pink and pretty [...]
Tags: girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd, princess culture
Posted August 10th, 2011, in Boys and Girls, Creepy Marketing, Why I Wrote CAMD | 13 Comments
Quick break to post a photo of this week’s most egregious Princess product. Trying to imagine the parents who would drop $2k on this one…. Yes, it’s a Princess Bathtub. An ugly one. From the folks at American Standard. Boys can get a fire truck! Well, the economy should make THIS go away, no? Thanks to the inimitable Marjorie Ingall who alerted me to this via a post on the blog daddytypes. Marjorie also pointed me to this great essay in the UK Guardian about how Hermione Granger’s bookish, brainy persona was made less threatening and girlie-d up over the course of the Harry Potter movies. It starts out questioning the glaring “I can’t” our girl uttered when faced with destroying a horcrux. I do recall sitting in the theater and thinking, “Whaaaaaat??????”As the essayist writes: Did Hermione Granger really say “I can’t” during the climactic battle in the final chapter [...]
Tags: Disney, girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd
Posted June 18th, 2011, in Boys and Girls, Princesses, Why I Wrote CAMD | 10 Comments
Blogger Lainey Feingold pointed out a little tidbit on the front page article in the New York Times in an article titled, “Stores Emphasize Mannequins with Personalities?” The piece is about how retailers are using unique mannequins in unusual poses or bodies to entice customers to part with money in hard times. Nike has made its mannequins taller, and added about 35 athletic poses. Armani Exchange has ordered models that will lie down to help shoppers imagine wearing lingerie. A new accessories-only store by Guess features glossy black mannequins in model-like poses on an actual runway, while Ralph Lauren’s new women’s store in Manhattan commissioned mannequins with the face of the model Yasmin Le Bon. Whatever. But get this one: The Disney Stores chain has added little-boy figurines that fly from the ceiling and little-girl ones that curtsey. Seriously? Little boys that soar and little girls that CURTSEY? Is that one going [...]
Tags: fighting back, girlie girl culture, homophobia, premature sexualization, princess culture, sanity in education
Posted June 14th, 2011, in Boys and Girls, Princesses, Why I Wrote CAMD | 20 Comments
Love this post by Emily Rosenbaum about how “School Spirit Week” is celebrated in her children’s elementary school. Each day has a theme including (wait for it)….Princess Day on which girls are supposed to dress in glitter and tiaras. As are the boys, if they want to, are too–but not because it’s okay for a boy to dress like a princess, exactly the opposite: it’s clear the boys are supposed to be doing it as a goof, with a wink and a homophobic nudge. “It’s making the point (rather strongly) that there are things for girls and things for boys and the only times we break through those barriers is to laugh about it. In other words, rather than making a safe space in which the boys can express themselves, it’s laying down the gender norms even more clearly. Sure, kid, dress as a princess; it’ll be a hoot. It’s [...]
Tags: fighting back, homophobia, pink princess culture camd, sanity in education
Posted June 13th, 2011, in Boys and Girls, Equal Parenting | 13 Comments
Great piece in Friday’s NY Times on elementary school kids who want to wear clothing considered to be for the other sex and how parents handle it. As it happened, the Spanish Dance performance for the 2nd & 3rd years at Daisy’s school was that morning. Here are the costumes the kids wore: Seems pretty obvious that the one on the left is the boys’ while the one on the right is the girls’. But it wasn’t presented that way. The kids were told there were two costume choices and they could wear whichever they liked. A few of the girls picked the khakis. One of the boys chose the skirt and top. Of course, no one said much about the girls choosing khakis. But here is what the one of the teachers wrote me about a boy choosing to wear “girls” clothing: We work hard to bust up stereotypes [...]
Tags: Disney, homophobia, pink princess culture camd, Pixar
Posted June 9th, 2011, in Boys and Girls, Princesses, Why I Wrote CAMD | 26 Comments
Getting over-excited about all the fab comments on my last post re: why bringing up Jessie in Toy Story is not an adequate comeback for “why hasn’t Pixar made any movies about women?” Thank you guys for such a wonderful conversation. One commenter (in fact the one who inspired the post–so double thank you!) asked about the idea that boys won’t watch movies about girls. And added it’s not like 5 year old boys are taking themselves to the movies (though they do have OPINIONS, believe me). But yes, conventional Hollywood wisdom is that boys won’t watch girl protagonists. And every time a movie about a woman or girl fails or under-performs at the box office that is reinforcement. While if a movie about a woman succeeds it tends to be regarded as a fluke. Going to movies with female leads becomes a sort of political statement–hence the hubbub around [...]
Posted May 29th, 2011, in Boys and Girls, Why I Wrote CAMD | 6 Comments
I have a niece and a nephew graduating college this year and another niece and a God son graduating high school. That not only puts me on the hook for a fairly sizable chunk of change (thank you to our sibs for having a collective 10 children, by the way….Love them all madly!!!!) but four graduation cards. So off I went to Papyrus, which is based right here in the Bay Area, to see what I could find. There were a number of neutral cards (though the overuse of the word “awesome”–as in “I think therefore I am….AWESOME!” put me off so there was no way I’d by them). A certain number of pink cards because I this generation of graduates would be at the front end of the pink-is-the-only-color-girls-could-possibly-ever-want wave. Obviously, I wan’t going to buy those. But here’s what really got me: all the cards with pictures of [...]
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