Miss Representation
ShimmyMommy
Posts: 7,505
I just happened to see this documentary on on TV.
I thought it was very thought provoking and worth a post. I feel it would be an interesting discussion to have.
http://vimeo.com/18985647
I thought it was very thought provoking and worth a post. I feel it would be an interesting discussion to have.
http://vimeo.com/18985647
Lots of love, light and hugs to you all!
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After watching the whole film...I have to say I don't think so...but again...I can't be sure...
What caught my attention is what the young girls are saying about how they feel about themselves... :(
Generally speaking I think there are a lot of reasons outside of sexism that there are less women in positions of power. The other thing which is just me playing devils' advocate is that kids and teenagers are easily influenced by the media which is the point but for the past 10 or 15 years at least the media has also been full of this sort of 'what is it doing to self-image' type of thing so maybe that's why the kids say it as well... and feel it.
I know it's not necessarily a popular opinion especially among women my age but I wish femminism would just piss off and shut up - once upon a time it meant something but now the things that they claim to be fighting for are to me not a result of sexism but of many other issues
I didn't finish my thought there as I was distracted by the foot ball game
What I meant with that was if he was remarking sarcastically in response to something else and it was edited together or cut short before he could explain his comments. Think of it this way...take a clip of a famous political figure just saying "no" and have someone keep asking questions and they keep editing that person saying no...follow what I trying to say?
In the film they talk about many of the issues of why this is happening. It was also interesting to see how media has "defined" women through the years. To my knowledge, this film was not made by a feminist, but by a new mother of a baby girl, who, as any new parent, wonders what kind of world our children will be growing up in.
I haven't watched the full interview so I can't comment...but you and I are both have sales experience and I know I can paint people into certain corners verbally at times if I want.
They actually have other clips of other men (and some women :shock: ) also making those comments, and not in a flippant way. I don't watch a lot of the news and celebrity stuff...so I don't know if they actually censor themselves anymore.
You need to post in this thread BTW...you're right up there!!
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=180276&hilit=posts
It's either that or me being a lesbian trapped in a man's body...but we don't need to start that discussion again.
There are many forms of feminism fighting from various perspectives, so I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying here - and how it relates to your opinion about the film.
the trailer mentions the idea of women in congress/positions of power and the divide in male/female desire to get there based on age. I took this as femminist agenda. My point was that in my experience feminism in Australia - obviously different in countries where there is a more extreme gender divide - is unnecessary and to me doing more harm than good. The feminist agenda in modern Australia and I would assume the US is similar but can't speak from experience so much there is that their demands are unreasonable and not based in common sense and its not something I can respect and it disappoints me but i'll stop at that because this isn't the forum for it
I'm still confused about what exactly you're identifying as the feminist agenda of this film. To point out the imbalance of women & men in positions of power and the difference in male/female desire to get there based on age? To point out these differences & attribute them to sexism? To point out these differences & attribute them to the media? To criticize the media and/or sexism?
By equating this film with a feminist agenda, are you saying the film itself is unnecessary & makes unreasonable demands that are not based in common sense, that you can't respect it, and that it's doing more harm than good?
I'm just trying to understand your criticism here.
Another thing that got me thinking about this documentary was how they talked about the effect of compartmentalizing women/girls is also having on young boys. So, I decided to follow "Miss Representation" FB to see if they had more interesting information, and they had just posted this article from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/opini ... .html?_r=2
Should the World of Toys Be Gender-Free?
By PEGGY ORENSTEIN Published: December 29, 2011
NOW that the wrapping paper and the infernal clamshell packaging have been relegated to the curb and the paying off of holiday bills has begun, the toy industry is gearing up — for Christmas 2012. And its early offerings have ignited a new debate over nature, nurture, toys and sex.
Hamleys, which is London’s 251-year-old version of F.A.O. Schwarz, recently dismantled its pink “girls” and blue “boys” sections in favor of a gender-neutral store with red-and-white signage. Rather than floors dedicated to Barbie dolls and action figures, merchandise is now organized by types (Soft Toys) and interests (Outdoor).
That free-to-be gesture was offset by Lego, whose Friends collection, aimed at girls, will hit stores this month with the goal of becoming a holiday must-have by the fall. Set in fictive Heartlake City (and supported by a $40 million marketing campaign), the line features new, pastel-colored, blocks that allow a budding Kardashian, among other things, to build herself a cafe or a beauty salon. Its tasty-sounding “ladyfig” characters are also taller and curvier than the typical Legoland denizen.
So who has it right? Should gender be systematically expunged from playthings? Or is Lego merely being realistic, earnestly meeting girls halfway in an attempt to stoke their interest in engineering?
Among the “10 characteristics for Lego” described in 1963 by a son of the founder was that it was “for girls and for boys,” as Bloomberg Businessweek reported. But the new Friends collection, Lego says, was based on months of anthropological research revealing that — gasp! — the sexes play differently.
While as toddlers they interact similarly with the company’s Duplo blocks, by preschool girls prefer playthings that are pretty, exude “harmony” and allow them to tell a story. They may enjoy building, but they favor role play. So it’s bye-bye Bionicles, hello princesses. In order to be gender-fair, today’s executives insist, they have to be gender-specific.
As any developmental psychologist will tell you, those observations are, to a degree, correct. Toy choice among young children is the Big Kahuna of sex differences, one of the largest across the life span. It transcends not only culture but species: in two separate studies of primates, in 2002 and 2008, researchers found that males gravitated toward stereotypically masculine toys (like cars and balls) while females went ape for dolls. Both sexes, incidentally, appreciated stuffed animals and books.
Human boys and girls not only tend to play differently from one another — with girls typically clustering in pairs or trios, chatting together more than boys and playing more cooperatively — but, when given a choice, usually prefer hanging with their own kind.
Score one for Lego, right? Not so fast. Preschoolers may be the self-appointed chiefs of the gender police, eager to enforce and embrace the most rigid views. Yet, according Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist and the author of “Pink Brain, Blue Brain,” that’s also the age when their brains are most malleable, most open to influence on the abilities and roles that traditionally go with their sex.
Every experience, every interaction, every activity — when they laugh, cry, learn, play — strengthens some neural circuits at the expense of others, and the younger the child the greater the effect. Consider: boys from more egalitarian homes are more nurturing toward babies. Meanwhile, in a study of more than 5,000 3-year-olds, girls with older brothers had stronger spatial skills than both girls and boys with older sisters.
At issue, then, is not nature or nurture but how nurture becomes nature: the environment in which children play and grow can encourage a range of aptitudes or foreclose them. So blithely indulging — let alone exploiting — stereotypically gendered play patterns may have a more negative long-term impact on kids’ potential than parents imagine. And promoting, without forcing, cross-sex friendships as well as a breadth of play styles may be more beneficial. There is even evidence that children who have opposite-sex friendships during their early years have healthier romantic relationships as teenagers.
Traditionally, toys were intended to communicate parental values and expectations, to train children for their future adult roles. Today’s boys and girls will eventually be one another’s professional peers, employers, employees, romantic partners, co-parents. How can they develop skills for such collaborations from toys that increasingly emphasize, reinforce, or even create, gender differences? What do girls learn about who they should be from Lego kits with beauty parlors or the flood of “girl friendly” science kits that run the gamut from “beauty spa lab” to “perfume factory”?
The rebellion against such gender apartheid may have begun. Consider the latest cute-kid video to go viral on YouTube: "Riley on Marketing" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CU040Hqbas shows a little girl in front of a wall of pink packaging, asking, “Why do all the girls have to buy pink stuff and all the boys have to buy different-color stuff?” It has been viewed more than 2.4 million times.
Perhaps, then, Hamleys is on to something, though it will doubtless meet with resistance — even rejection — from both its pint-size customers and multinational vendors. As for me, I’m trying to track down a poster of a 1981 ad for a Lego “universal” building set to give to my daughter. In it, a freckle-faced girl with copper-colored braids, baggy jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers proudly holds out a jumbly, multi-hued Lego creation. Beneath it, a tag line reads, “What it is is beautiful.”
Peggy Orenstein is the author, most recently, of “Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture.”
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on December 30, 2011, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Should the World of Toys Be Gender-Free?.
One of the most difficult parts of being a parent if not the most is simply trying to keep your child from growing up too fast in today's media soaked world.
Media and sales will continue to push the concept of gender specific if they feel it will increase profits.
14 years ago more than a few where horrified that my youngest son's favorite toy was a kitchen set. Today it's pretty normal to see a little boy playing with a kitchen set.
If they are healthy, happy, reaching normal growth stages let kids explore and play with whatever age appropriate toys inspired their little souls.
SMILE Eddie Vedder Cleveland 06.....
I completely agree with you. It wasn't until I became a parent that I really took notice of how prevalent media is in our world, and the messages it's sending to all of us. That's why I found the documentary & article interesting.
Thank you for all for commenting.
Edit - Err discrimination of women in general. Regardless, I think this will be very informative.
Never really thought about it until now, for me, sex doesn't sell. Then again I'm not materialistic too much and prefer more mindful products. (there's an oxymoron for you, lol)
Yes, that's how I shop too. I have a very difficult time purchasing anything that has no practicality to me. There is a point in the doc too where there talk about how they purposefully gear most ads to men between the ages of 18 to 34, even thought they make up a very small portion of the American viewers. Didn't surprise me, but don't really understand why, as the female population makes up more than half of the nation.
And not to be sexist but women shop more than men. I think they just use men as an excuse to do these things saying, "this is what guys want," and why our society and relationships are deteriorating.
I, myself, am not a huge shopper. I have to justify what I spend my money on. I want good quality long-term products, not short-term novelty items.
Yes, that is one of the issues brought up in the doc, how media is negatively changing the relationships between male and female. I need to see if I can get the movie and watch it again.