Posts in the "Dolls or action figures? Gender roles in popular culture." Category

• Guys and Dolls?

  Dolls or action figures? Gender roles in popular culture.

  I don’t follow medical journals with any regularity, but last I checked, the jury was still out on the nature/nurture debate on how we develop and why. Like most complex discussion, it seems like the pendulum swings back and forth pretty regularly. I used to believe that we were generally blank slates when we came into this world, ripe for the inscribing by whatever parent, tribe, or village happened to get to scribbling first.

  That was before I had kids.

  When our oldest, Gabrielle, was born, I remember thinking that she had about as much chance of becoming a cheerleader as a penguin did of not only flying across the ocean like an Wandering Albatross, but flying to the moon and back for extra mileage. My wife, Kris, grew up a tomboy, always more comfortable in jeans and t-shirts than sequins and glam; she wasn’t going to be rushing our daughters into makeup or wedges. And while I consider myself a pretty open-minded guy, probably in touch with my feminine side (if someone could definitively explain what that is, exactly), I had met too many vapid, narcissistic, or selfish cheerleaders for comfort, so I wasn’t going to push our daughter in that direction. (I’m generalizing, of course—plenty of cheerleaders are down-to-earth and genuine. Penguins, too).

  But right around the time Gabi learned to walk, she was accompanying Kris on a shopping trip, and they took what should have been a quick stroll through the shoe aisle. Only Gabi’s eyes lit up like she just saw the most beautiful thing in the universe, and she moved from one glittery pair or girl’s shoes to the next, and couldn’t be coaxed out of the aisle for over an hour. She was in love. Did I mention she wasn’t one yet? (more…)

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• The Space Squids Won’t Care Who The President Is Kissing (Unless It’s A Squid)

  Dolls or action figures? Gender roles in popular culture.

  Thoughts Upon The Role of Gender in Popular Culture, With Special Consideration Given to Science Fiction & Fantasy

  My view on this is very similar to my views on ecological catastrophes. By which I mean that science-fiction & fantasy has a unique ability to postulate things that don’t sit comfortably within a particular societal norm. The first time someone wrote a story that had a black president? Science fiction. The first woman president? science fiction. When the first trangendered clone of William Shatner who’s been genetically altered so that he’s actually an ocelot or something becomes president, historians will be able to point to about a thousand furry/trek fanfic stories that were churned out in the last decade or so. Yay us. (more…)

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• Gender Roles: Welcome to the DMZ

  Dolls or action figures? Gender roles in popular culture.

  It’s always struck me a little odd that people who get so worked up about negative feminine gender roles in pop culture generally have very little to say about negative MASCULINE gender roles in pop culture.  Maybe I just don’t get it because I’m a man, and we all know men are dumb–just look at pop culture icons like Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, pretty much any male sitcom lead, or any commercial with a (male) boss and (female) secretary.  Men are barely capable of farting, let alone going to the bathroom by themselves. 

  But don’t worry, being called ‘dumb’ won’t hurt any man’s feelings, because men don’t have any–as we know from pop culture.  Men don’t have feelings, or if they do and they express them, they’re weak and soft.  Men are like wrestlers or gangsta rappers, violent and angry and incapable of complex thought or emotion. 

  No, men are pretty much surface swimmers.  They don’t think with their big heads, just the little ones.  They’re horndogs enamored of appearance above all and try to sleep with anything warm with a pulse, like James T. Kirk or, I don’t know, pick a Charlie Sheen character.

  Now, to borrow a phrase from Great and Glorious Leader Obama, let me be clear–I’m not claiming these stereotypes are baseless, or even always untrue.  What I’m unclear about is, why are the people who protest these negative stereotypes always focused on the women’s side?   Men are being disrespected, too.  Does that even register?

  For instance, to this audience, one of the biggest issues (you should pardon the pun) is the size of (more…)

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• If Only it Weren’t for Those Squeaking Noises!

  Dolls or action figures? Gender roles in popular culture.
  

  Carol Wolf is the author of Summoning, whose hero, a female, does not squeak, but does bite.

  What a pleasure to be living in the Post-Buffy age!

  In the late 80s, the splendid film The Princess Bride was badly marred by the scene where the hero Westley is attacked by giant rodents, and his true love stands by making squeaking noises, and fails even to pick up a stick to help him. The good news is, no one would tolerate such a character choice anymore. And that is a measure of our progress with gender roles.

  This may not be entirely due to the inroads Buffy the Vampire Slayer made on our collective consciousness, but Buffy was certainly a big step in the right direction. When Buffy struck the evil bad guys, as she did so often and to such good effect, she did, however, still make those squeaking noises.

  Guys might grunt, when they hit someone, though usually you don’t hear the grunt because of the crack of their fist hitting whatever it was they hit. But guys, even boys, don’t make squeaking noises when they hit something, and girls, and even women, do. But still, we’ve come a long way.

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• What if all the male characters posed like the female one?

  Dolls or action figures? Gender roles in popular culture.

  And so we come to gender roles in popular culture, about which many things could be said, but my housemate (a man) sent me the image below to get the ball rolling. I’ve seen a few variations of it kicking about the internet, but this one was especially pertinent given that it depicts comic book heroes.* And it does serve to highlight the general ridiculousness, and narrowness, of how women are portrayed in the media and popular culture.

  

  Gender roles is a topic that comes up over and over in conversation with friends, but it feels like it’s been more prevalent than ever in recent months (or perhaps that’s the influence of Caitlin Moran’s deeply excellent How To Be A Woman, a must-read for everyone, wherein she speaks upon Brazilians and the size of knickers amongst other things. In fact, if I could just quote from Caitlin Moran for the rest of this post, it would make life easier. She also makes me feel better about using copious quotas of exclamation marks).

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• Roll out the roles

  Dolls or action figures? Gender roles in popular culture.
  

  Paul Tobin (he has a moustache now, though)

  This week we’re discussing gender roles in popular culture. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart (and my writing) for a number of reasons.

  It’s fair to say that I’m known for writing female characters. Spider-Girl, Annah Billips from Gingerbread Girl, Black Widow… and a host of others. I enjoy the hell out of writing female characters for two main reasons. First… I simply enjoy the hell out of women. It may possibly have something to do with my theory that women are pretty and smell nice. And another reason I like writing female characters is because it’s a step outside my comfort zone. I’m male. When writing a female character I have momentum from the very beginning, because I start by entering what is, for me, a fantasy world. I’ve no idea what it’s like to be a woman. Well, I have some ideas. Men and women are amazingly similar after all, and even some of our dissimilarities need to be tossed out when writing in the role of the opposite gender. One BIG mistake that men make when writing female characters is to make women relentlessly female. A big mental check-mark I have in my head is the “bathroom” test. Men and women pee differently. We do. But if I’m writing a female character, and I write a line of, “She went to pee, which she did by sitting down, because she is a girl and that’s how girls do these things,” … then I’ve failed as a writer. I’ve written a female character from a decidedly male perspective.

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