I discovered (via bluemilk) this new feminist-academic-mommy blog that is full of all kind of smart thinking. I was particularly moved by this post which discussed how the writer became confronted with the societal attitudes towards gender during her pregnancy and early years of parenthood. There’s lots of great stuff to unpack in the post, here’s a sample:

Then there’s the experience of watching gendered expectations and values applied to our child, who is largely approached more as “a little boy” than as “a person”–not only by advertisers (gee, why don’t we want him to watch TV?!?) and popular culture at large but also by absolute strangers in our community and even people we love and who love us. Most people comment enthusiastically on his every masculine-coded activity or inclination and simply do not notice or acknowledge all the feminine-coded parts of his experience and personhood. And once you enter a store, whoa. My mom was blown away when she went into a bookstore’s picture book section and inquired about what’s new for a three-year-old, only to be asked the immediate routing question: “Boy or girl?” (gee, where do gendered reading habits and, ultimately, academic interests come from?!?). My partner, our son, and I recently went into a children’s resale shop to find the inscription “Sugar and spice and everything nice” over the nearly-all-pink girls’ section. It’s suffocating.

I’ve talked about this before, and no doubt will keep on talking about it – whenever  godiyeva (who has three sons) and I start in on it, we keep going until we froth at the mouth. There is nothing wrong with girls liking pink or boys liking trucks, but the immense cultural and social and commercial pressure to force children into little gender-approved boxes is enraging and frustrating.

My Dad often tells the story about when I was born, and he went down to buy some baby blankets, and the woman at the shop wouldn’t let him buy “two each please” of pink, blue and yellow, but kept asking over and over whether he had had a girl, or a boy.

It hasn’t got better. Many, many things have got better for girls and women (and boys and men, it has to be said) as far as gender constraints, since I was born in 1978. But many things haven’t got better, and many things have got worse and worse and worse. Walk into a shop, and try to find something that is actually gender neutral, whether that be an item of clothing or a toy. They exist, but they’re getting harder and harder to find. Sure, you can give your daughter fighter pilot Lego and your son fairy wings, but why does every purchase have to be part of a gender revolution?

Why is it so easy to tell which children’s toothpaste is intended for girls, and which for boys? Why is it that only the TV tie in merchandise tends to have a balance of male & female characters within the same range of toys?

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Melander sent me a link to this story about a Canadian academic criticising Thomas the Tank Engine for being too conservative and under-representing women. (heh I don’t know why people send me this stuff either, let’s move on, shall we?)

The article is divided between the opinions of Professor Shauna Wilson, who has an interesting take on some of the more problematic elements of the tv show and some of the messages it presents to children, including a lack of female characters (and a tendency for those few examples to be bossy or know-it alls), an an overall conservative ideology. She also mentions some of the positive messages that the show carries.

The part of the story I think is most important is that she was inspired to carry out this study after watching Thomas with her child. One of the side-effects of being an educated person (ie someone trained to examine texts with a critical eye) raising a child is that you notice this stuff. You find yourself looking in horror as some of the shows or books that your children love, and quietly pushing those dvds behind others that you feel more comfortable about.

Rather than find someone actually associated with the show to respond to the themes Professor Wilson raises, the article quotes a (female) co-founder of the Campaign Against Political Correctness in the UK, disregarding Wilson’s findings as “nonsense.”

Here’s the thing, though: the Thomas the Tank Engine books were originally written in the 1940′s, by a vicar. Of course they represent a conservative mindset! It’s also hardly surprising that their representation of women ranges from meagre to borderline offensive. But there’s a big difference between reading books to your children which you know are from another time, and having them adapted for the TV in shiny colourful ways.

From my point of view, Thomas is an irrelevance – Raeli hardly ever watches it, and it’s one of those shows that makes her want to turn off the tv. She recognises I think that it’s not made with her in mind. But just because it’s a ‘boys show’ doesn’t let the makers off the hook. Because the thing about boys shows is that boys watch them. Which gives them a great opportunity to show by example that the line between boys and girls is not so clear cut as they might assume, rather than reinforcing tired and unnecessary assumptions about gender.

It’s scary how much of the product put out for kids these days is starkly gendered. It’s getting worse, and it gets everywhere.

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