Today I looked newly at one of the little ones I babysit. At two years old, he’d traded sweaters with his friend and, bearing large magenta stripes, I realized just how deeply the color pink constitutes my emotions around gender. As a feminist who prides herself on subversive thinking it’s surprisingly visceral, this feeling that my perception of him -at such a young age- is not only feminized as he dons the color pink but that my notion of him is already defined by masculinity.
On the same note, I’d already dressed the other child was caregiving - a little girl the same age who’d shared her magenta sweater with her friend. I’d put her in the little boy’s hand-me-down; a positively masculine button-up that hardly masculinized my perception of her the way it had done the ‘opposite’ for my view of her male friend. This is how strongly connected our perceptions of gender are to our emotions. So strong, so visceral, and so abstract, which provides an ideal scenario to perpetuate a binary that orders us into gendered beings. Our perceptions of the construction of gender are so connected to our emotions that it’s no wonder they feel essentialized.
I’ve been so puzzled by this video and this entire internet sensation and things like it that feature children singing adult songs. I really want to be supportive of strong little female voices like her’s. And I am, of her boldness, of her voice, of her adorableness, and I’m not trying to say she doesn’t feel empowered. I don’t think that’s my place to say what her experience is. But there’s something to be said about the words she’s saying, how she’s saying them, and the way her performance feels like such a paradox that it reminds us it’s just that - a gender performance. For me, seeing a small child decked out in dress-up clothes, regurgitating these words with such a brave voice creates the facade that is so often named “girl power” but is mistaken as female empowerment. There’s a vital difference and it’s still something I’m trying to find the words to break apart. For one thing, until female musicians start writing lyrics overwhelmingly about empowering things (and not just “haters” or beauty or men or sex), this little girl’s bravery seems misplaced. Not by her, because I wish I could have been so bold when I was a child, but by the people telling and showing little girls like her that these words give them power.
First posted at The LAMPpost on November 30th, 2011
The Black Friday madness has passed and it’s officially the holiday season. This is the time of year when the millions of children who celebrate Christmas are drawn in by the most vital marketing campaigns of the year, inspiring them to write their Christmas lists. Black Friday initiates this holiday season, where parents gather at 3am to buy what has arbitrarily been deemed “the coolest gift of the year.” This year one woman pepper-sprayed her fellow shoppers to get an X-Box 360 game (as in the video below) while others stepped over Walter Vance outside a Target as he collapsed, dying. This soul-sucking consumerism is the very contradiction of Christmas and for many of us it begins at childhood.
I remember as a child dreading my return to school after Christmas break because everyone would brag about their Christmas gifts. Having grown up in a large family with a small income, my presents were never as cool as my friends’, and most often “cool” meant “expensive.” No matter how fulfilled I felt spending the holiday with my loving family at home, I would return to school feeling like I didn’t get enough. My self-worth was driven not only by what I got for Christmas, but how those items would represent me to my peers.
Sadly, this is the psychology that advertisers thrive upon. That intense yearning that all children feel to be accepted or favored is driven by the peers who are ‘valued’ in the first place and their access to what is deemed cool. Parents want their kids to feel included, to feel accepted, and somehow advertisers convince them that getting them cool things will make them happier. Peer spaces privilege these popular items which are sold through stereotypical marketing campaigns. In turn, what advertisers really end up marketing is a child’s self-worth.
Stereotypes are what advertising is really about. It’s a marketing scheme that works as long as people subscribe to the stereotypes they’re selling. Kids see something during an iCarly commercial break–they see a child that looks like someone they’d like to be playing with some random toy, and not only does it draw their desire, but it draws on their self-worth. If they have that toy, they will be cool. So, they write it down on their Christmas list for their parents to see. If the gift is too expensive, their parents will be the ones to wake up at 3am to get it on sale, so they can hear that squeal of delight on Christmas morning instead of that disdainful groan (think A Christmas Story). These kids will most likely grow up and do the same for their children because that’s what they know and that’s what they think is supposed to be done at Christmas.
This intense desire to feel cool and the reciprocated yearning for parents to make their kids happy by buying them things, though ridiculous, is self-perpetuating. We have yet to see what this year’s cool item is. Maybe it’s that X-Box 360 game that people were pepper-sprayed for, or the same gift in the Target where Walter Vance collapsed. By now, advertisers have the cycle down so that people who are taught to be die-hard Black Friday consumers from the beginning of their lives can pass it down do their children. It’s almost as if the work is being done for them.
“With an equally upbeat sound, ‘Change the World’ aims to empower kids — and girls especially — to think about career options that make a difference (‘Can I be a doctor? Oh, absolutely. I can be an M.D. and help the sick become healthy … Can I be the president? Yeah, I’m positive … if in the White House I lived, I’d make an awesome chief executive. I can be anything. You know that it’s true. I can be anything. Well, how ‘bout you? You can be anything. Can you make this world a better world?’)”
(My awesome teacher friend shared this awesome story with and gave me permission to repost it anonymously here.)
“You know when you’re having one of those days where you’re feeling, as someone dear to me puts it, ‘you’re just tired of being trans’? Today was one of those days. And……it was picture day at school. After the class got their pictures taken, I hear some of the ‘girls’ talking about how their parents used to dress them as ‘boys’ when they were younger, and giggling about it.
An in!
‘What do you think is the difference between girls’ clothes and boys’ clothes?’ I asked them. ‘I like to wear ties,’ I said, motioning down at the one I had on, ‘but some people think they are for boys.’
Student A: ‘Yeah, and my cousin likes to wear dresses and he’s a boy.’
Student B: ‘Wait L, you’re a girl?’
Me, in my head: ‘Crap, that is NOT what I meant. Waaaaait, I’ve been passing as something else for two months for these students?’
Student B: ‘L, are you a girl or a boy?’
I shrugged and smiled.
Student A: ‘Well I think you’re a girl because of your voice.’
Student B: ‘I don’t know…’
Student C: ‘I know! L is an angel!’
Students A & B: ‘Yeah!’
And that was enough, the conversation was over. Obviously the wrong conclusion, but it’s almost like they actually get it…”
Even though the popular mold is slowly breaking, society still looks at gender as something concretely binary: boy or girl, man or woman, masculine or feminine. In my writing I try to deconstruct these binaries, which perpetuate media stereotyping and discrimination that -as The LAMP shows us- are all too easy to point out in our everyday lives. Like any social institution, it’s not easy to define gender discrimination anymore. It is constantly changing, largely because definitions around gender have too. In this spirit, here are some definitions I think by that might be helpful in understanding why this work is so vital:
Sex (vs. Gender)
A basic explanation is that gender is between your ears while sex is between your legs. Sex is viewed on a binary and is used to determine a person’s perceived gender evenbefore birth. There are, however, many individuals who don’t fit into these binary categories, either.
Gender (vs. Sex)
Gender is a social construction used to categorize human behavior, activities, roles and attributes (from dress to labordivision). While gender has long been defined on a binary, gender theory has been redefined in the past couple of decades to recognize its fluidity and performativity. As a result, gender can be reappropriated to mean more than just the two options offered by the binary.
Gender discrimination
Because of the evolving definition of gender, the many faces of gender discrimination are changing too. The greatest motivation for discrimination is lack of education. Most people have never been exposed to the idea that gender is even something different from sex or that it exists on a spectrum or even that it doesn’t need to be static. More often, gender discrimination is also expressed along with various otherforms of bigotry.
Gender stereotyping
Deeply intertwined with stereotypes of race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality, gender stereotyping through media both reinforces and is enforced by gender discrimination. It’s a constant cycle that has been played out over and over again in media. Stereotypes seen on television or the Internet or in a magazine are internalized by the viewer because they reflect the discriminatory boundaries created around gender in their every day lives. These boundaries are seen as “just the way it is,” yet when challenged, people usually meet bigotry at best or violence at worst.
These definitions especially matter when learning media literacy because the more aware a person is of these stereotypes in media, the more aware they will be of a stereotype’s reflection of discrimination in every day life. It’s an enormous cycle that can only be broken with self-education.
