Strollerderby : young girls

Pole Dancing Kits and Other Modern Toys

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Padded bras for first graders, bikini waxes for eight-year-olds, pole dancing kits sold alongside Etch-a-sketches in the toy store—excuse me, but how did this happen? How is it affecting girls' self-image? And, um, what happened to feminism? These are a few of the questions tackled in a recent Salon interview with M. Gigi Durham, author of “The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About it.”

As her book title would suggest, Durham places the burden of sexualizing girls at increasingly young ages squarely on the media’s shoulders. She argues that many companies are looking to exploit tweens’ increasingly significant contribution to the commercial sector by selling them traditional messages about femininity that the older generation of women has by and large rejected.

Interestingly, Durham connects the commercial sexualization of young girls with women’s inability to enjoy their sexuality later on. The abstinence-only sex education programs that have become increasingly prevalent in the Bush years combined with media’s message that “You must look like Barbie to be sexy” creates a very confusing, potentially dangerous backdrop against which young women come to understand their sexuality. Even as teen girls are encouraged to ignore their own sexuality, they’re told, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it. And if you don’t have it, spend a lot of money until you get it.”

Durham’s advice to parents? Discuss, but don’t censure. For instance, instead of forbidding your daughter to read Seventeen magazine, ask her what she thinks of that model’s look or that article about how to make boys like you. And she says that this dialogue about media propaganda should start, in modified form of course, as soon as your kids can talk. Anyone out there tried this method?

Photo: Girlshop.com

Target Sells Boys Powertools, Girls Purple Crap

Madeline Holler — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:51:00 GMT

I'm in the middle of "Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes," which I know is sooooo last year (I'm behind on my reading). So perhaps my knees had been primed to jerk just as this half-catalog/half-circular from Target, featuring all their new spring stuff for kids, showed up in the mail today. I had initially thrown it aside, but then I noticed a $5 coupon. I started flipping.

By about Page 4, I get perturbed. There's a girl watering flowers on the front cover, which is no biggie. Fifty-fifty chance, right? Someone has to water the flowers. On the inside front cover, there's a boy flying a plane. Fine. A boy can like planes.

Next page is sports equipment: the boys are playing on a green field. Girls are cut out on white background -- one's fake-swinging a pink tennis racket, another fake-flinging a pink lacrosse stick, the third is standing up straight and giggling, a pink softball glove perched awkwardly on her hand. ("Gah, what am I supposed to do with this thing?")

Next page: boy flying a remote control helicopter, girl standing across from him with her hands up in surrender, her mouth a perfect circle as if she is saying "ooooooo, Jack, you're really good at that!" Lower on the page, a girl is freaked out by a remote control spider, which takes its commands from a capable but fun-loving (you guessed it) boy.

Flip! A rousing game of something called swingball. Only boys are swinging at the ball. The girls stand in their precious spring dresses and watch. But they're smiling, so they must be having fun anyway.

Flip that page and there's a girl! In an activity! A jumping thing! Way to go, sister!

Annnnnd, the next page: a boy on a cool tear'em up bike, a girl on a super pretty purple bike (with delicate butterflies snapped on to the spokes ... looks too pretty to ride, Mom!)

Then: T-ball, boy. And a next page of character crap. No kids pictured.

I know, quit your bitching. And I can! Because girls are finally represented in the crap-a-log. The next six pages are loaded with girls in all kinds of activities: playing with dolls in a perfect. girly appointed room, taking a stuffed cat out of a pet purse, mixing drinks at the Hannah Montana surf shop, going online with Bratz dolls, having a combined camp-out/princess tea party in the pink tent and dressed in Disney princess costumes.

Awwww, look at that little girl feeding her baby, and now there's a page of girls crafting out! The boys pages come next, with pirates, Spiderman kites, cowboy sheets, Hot Wheels, Pokeman and video games (though the gender balance on video games is equal, if you count using a bionic eye to look at a butterfly not too girly -- at least she wasn't searching for unicorns).

Flip and flip: A boy plays the guitar, a girl works on her letters. A boy loads the race car, a girl wears fake jewelry. A boy plays with trains. A girl, well, she vacuums. Boy has workbench and fake power tools. Girl has melting polar ice-caps, the alphabet and a cute-but-vapid stare.

And on, and on, and on. Not a single gender-role swap in the entire 51-page piece. Not even a token boy in a girl thing, girl in a boy thing. Any "gender neutral" toys mostly didn't have a boy OR a girl interacting with them. Only the item was pictured.

The message is this: boys play, girls watch, unless boys aren't around, then girls play -- but only with soft, sparkly purple/pink things they can nurture, beautify or use to tidy up the house.

Hey, I'm not saying girls don't play with dolls. Or boys don't like power tools. But does it have to be to the exclusion of everything else? Can't Target just pretend to placate moms like me? Can't they even try? Maybe a girl holding a train and a boy watching a girl swing a pink tennis racket? Out of 51 pages, just one such picture will do.

Photo: princessproduction.wordpress.com

Naughty or Nice? Who Cares? Lingerie Dolls Are A Perfect Holiday Gift

Madeline Holler — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:03:00 GMT

I am super excited about the just-mailed Victoria’s Secret holiday catalogue because it’s going to make “Santa’s” job so much easier when it comes to gifts for my daughters. I have been wondering how to get my older one more interested in her appearance and the sexy, sexy things that are out there for her to experiment with, feel pretty in, those things that will help her upgrade from just girl to an even better girly-girl.

I mean, right now her response to bras is giggles, maybe a rousing chant of “boobs, boobs!” with her little sister, so I’d like to find a way to get her to take it more seriously. After all, she’s going to be seven years old soon.

Enter: the VS Pink label, and especially these plush dress-up dolls!

Described as “plush and pretty plaything for the ultimate girly-girl. Comes with two interchangeable outfits: lingerie and a dress,” interchangeable, I suppose, because when you’re wearing one, surely you’re not wearing the other! Sizzle.

Just get her a Barbie, you say? She has those. Whatever. Barbie isn’t going to get her celebrating her (non-existent) sexuality any more than Mattel’s other pink and purple toys, you know? How’s Barbie going to get her comfortable in a AAAA push-up and tiny-heiny thong in time for school pictures next year? (Yes, she'll wear something over them, I just want her to feel scandalously pretty.) See, I figure interacting with her plush girly-girl VS doll -- slipping on the tiny bras or stripping her down for a late-night tickle fight -- she’s opening her mind to the Victoria’s Secret brand, a company that works to demonstrate how girls really look and how they love to (mis)behave (wink!). Having fun with the soft, happy dolls -- with their youthful hairstyles and adolescent proportions -- could help take some of the “for women only” notions surrounding Victoria’s Secret, and skimpy bras and underwear in general, out of her pretty (and pre-sexy) little head. Together, they’ll usher her into the tender, mysterious phase that, seriously, has been put off far too long. Why wait for actual breasts when you can create them with push-up gel bras in fun, party colors? Quit revealing your high-waisted, floral, combed-cotton spanky pants! These low-rise, high-cut bikini’s will lengthen those 6X legs better than any pair of stilettos. When she’s a little bigger,she'll eat up the panties packaged as lollipops and ice-cream cones! Lickably sweet!

If girls just understood that underneath it all, they’re fun, playful, sexy, girly-girls who love nothing more than putting on and taking of big satiny microfiber undies, I wouldn’t have to spend $15 each on the Victoria’s Secret dolls. But I will, because I get it.

Whatever it takes, you know? Whatever it takes.