Sex on TV

I never intended to be the kind of parent who uses TV as a babysitting service. But then I had a child.

My daughter watches relatively little TV (I think). I save it for the evenings, when she’s tired and grumpy, and I need to distract her while I cook.

One reason I haven’t been too unhappy about my parenting compromise is the high quality of some toddler TV. The artwork is beautiful (Abney and Teal), the characters are well-drawn (Charlie and Lola) and they range from educational (Andy's Prehistoric Adventures) to just plain crazy (Sarah and Duck).

Until someone pointed it out to me, I hadn’t noticed a shocking, striking fact about the gender of the characters that have become a part of our daily lives - nearly all of them are male. Ra Ra. Bing, Boj. Peter Rabbit. All boys.

Photo by Sagesolar via Flickr Creative Commons

So I did a little bit of research. I counted the number of male characters in the titles of TV programmes for toddlers. And then I counted the number of female title characters. The schedules for toddlers' TV is the same every day, so whichever day I picked was entirely representative of that particular season.

Male v female characters on toddler TV

In a single day of CBeebies TV programmes:

• 14 programmes have just male characters in the title 
• 2 programmes have just female characters in the title 
• 2 programmes have both male and female title characters 

I had a look at another TV channel, Tiny Pop. There were:

• 8 programmes with male title characters 
• 5 programmes with female title characters 

The proportion is still far from equal, but it is a lot better. 

BBC could do better

I haven’t introduced my daughter to channels other than CBeebies (the dedicated BBC channel for this age group) because I don’t want to expose her (or me) to adverts, but also because I judged, based on nothing but prejudice (I hadn’t actually seen any of the programmes) that the quality of programmes on the BBC was better. I mean, it’s the BBC. It’s there to inform, educate and entertain. Information and education come before entertainment. Surely that’s not going to rot my child’s brain?

And the quality of programming is high, so no, it won’t rot her brain. But what it will do is from the tiniest age, gently communicate a sense of patriarchy - that males, men, boys come ahead of females. We rarely have more than a supporting role on screen. 

Believing what you see

“Mummy, are you a mermaid?” As my daughter once asked me, very seriously, out of the blue. It was a strange question, but it illustrates that so much of what she understands of the world comes from fiction - from stories and games and books and TV. She hears about mermaids and she hears about hedgehogs - how does she know which is true and which is fantasy?

The characters children see on TV make up a huge part of how their reality is constructed. By ensuring that male characters dominate tots' TV we are sending a clear message about the primacy of masculinity to our youngest, most impressionable and vulnerable audience. We are telling them that girls and women are life's cheerleaders, sitting on the sidelines watching the boys and men do great things.

If we want an equal society by the next generation, this is not going to help. I dearly hope CBeebies and other children's TV providers get their act together soon and start to show girls at the centre of their programming, not just the sidelines.

Bendable doll - what every girl wants

The next generation of women is in good hands. There is a toy on the market to make sure that they learn the essential skills every woman needs.

I refer to this bendable doll. My friend saw it and thought of me (and my daughter), so she sent me this photo.  

You can bend the doll whichever way you want her (that's the best way with women). And I bet if she bends over in that top you'll catch a nice bit of cleavage. 

But the best bit about Bendable Doll is her accessories. she comes complete with a range of cleaning tools, such as bucket and broom, and also hair accessories. 

Women's main interests in life of course are cleaning and making themselves pretty. Usually for a man. 

Hair, beauty and housework - that's what it's all about. 

'It's a girl thing' proclaims the packaging. Just in case you weren't clear. And in the top left corner they include the gender symbol for female, but adapted into a heart shape, because a circle just wouldn't be girly enough.

Pass me the Lego

I want to say "let's all go back to Lego". A beautiful, intelligent, simple toy that boys and girls can enjoy without resorting to stereotypes.

But then I did a quick search.Typing 'Lego for girls' was asking for trouble. 

The Disney and Friends range comes in pink or purple, of course, because girls wouldn't like it otherwise. Did I mention that I HATE THE COLOUR PINK?

Incidentally, if you search Lego for boys it's just as bad - all Star Wars and Super Heroes. 

Brainwashing

The serious point behind these revolting toys is that the next generation of adults are being brainwashed into stereotyped gender roles, with girls nudged towards homely domestic pursuits and boys expected to be macho and intrepid.

How can we expect girls to grow up believing they are equal to boys when they are directed towards toys that teach them only about cleaning and making themselves look pretty. 

And how can we expect boys to see the girls as equal to themselves when they are taught that these strange creatures are only interested in strutting about in pink like princesses?

In 2015 why are we still stereotyping in these ways? Can't children just be children, and toys be toys?

Shoes for the boys

It's a shame I have to write this. Yet another retailer has resorted to lazy gender stereotypes in order to shift more wares.

This time it's high street shoe shop, Clarks.

Signs in their shop windows read: 'Because boys test their shoes to destruction, so do we' and 'Because girls love comfort and style, we design both into our shoes'.

So boys wear their shoes out by running about and having fun in them, while girls just like to sit around being comfortable and looking pretty. I think a lot of mothers of girls would disagree with this. Girls are just as capable of wearing out their shoes as boys, and boys are just as likely to want their shoes to be comfortable and look good.

And of course, the boy sign was in the inevitable blue, and the girl one the usual pink. Don't get me started on pink.

Clarks

I had a look at Clarks' website (there's no sign of these slogans there), and to their credit, both boys and girls are shown involved in an action activity and something a bit arty - boys on their bikes, and a boy playing a guitar, versus girls with a home-made cart, and one clutching a pile of schoolwork.

It looks like they have tried to get a good balance, and not go all pink princess. So it's a shame they did this.

Maybe they have done some research, and actually have some robust data that tells them that boys generally 'test their shoes to destruction' and girls prioritise 'comfort and style' in their footwear. If they do, then I'd really like to see it.

Online petition

The signs were pounced on by lawyer and parent Emma Dixon, who set up an online petition, asking Clarks to remove them.

There are a lot of online petitions, and you might wonder if they do any good, but this is the kind of simple issue that, by signing a petition, you can send a clear message to a retailer that you don't like what they are saying. And so I think there's a pretty good chance it will succeed. That would be another small victory for feminism, although it's a battle we shouldn't still have to be fighting.

Sign the petition asking Clarks to remove the signs here.

Budding baby feminists

I always assumed that the differences between boys and girls didn't become apparent until they were a few years old, non-anatomically speaking.

When my brother and I were growing up, our parents were careful to treat us the same and didn't steer us towards any particular type of toy. My brother was soon requesting guns and cars, while I favoured more sedate pastimes. But we were past infancy, and so subject to wider influences than just our parents - might not our ideas of what toys we wanted to play with come from our observations of the world around us?

Since I had a baby girl, I have started to notice apparent differences between the genders from the very first days of life.

Crying like a girl

After my baby was born I began to pay attention to the way babies cry. Within 24 hours of her birth I could identify my daughter's cry with my eyes closed in a busy hospital ward. I didn't have confidence in this ability, so I still kept checking, even when it wasn't her. But when she wailed, I knew it.

I learnt that not only do babies' cries vary hugely, but that boy and girl cries are very different. The baby boys I know have much more masculine cries, usually deeper and louder, than the baby girls, who can be much more shrill.

While it's difficult to tell the sex of some babies (when they're dressed, obviously, and in neutral colours!), others look distinctly like boys or girls.

The baby girls I know tend to be more curious about the world, insisting on sitting up and looking about them, and less cuddly than the boys, who are more content to lounge about in their mothers' arms.

Differences between the genders shown from research include:

• Boys like mechanical motion and are better at keeping track of moving objects
• Girls understand language and start talking before boys
• Boys express fear later than girls, and less often
• Girls are better at making eye contact as newborns 
• Girls are better at imitating, and are better with their hands

You can read more detail about these differences in 'The real difference between boys and girls'.

What does this mean?

The nature-nurture debate about what makes us who we are, whether it is ingrained in our DNA or learnt from our upbringing and experiences of the world around us, will rumble on forever. And I'm sure that our gender - the way we style ourselves as men or women - is a mixture of nature and nurture.

But these differences between baby boys and girls suggest that traits of masculinity and femininity are ingrained in us from birth. A baby girl is not just anatomically female when she is born, she already carries with her traits of her gender. Her brain is as female as her body. And from the moment she comes into the world, she is learning not just to be a human being, but to be a woman.

The fight against pink

By OttawaAC, via Wikimedia Commons

All being well, in a few weeks I will bring a daughter into the world.

In the meantime, as I struggle with working out what I actually need to prepare for her arrival, I am beginning the inevitable battle with the colour pink.

I always knew this would happen, if I had a girl.

Hating pink

For as long as I can remember, I have rebelled against the colour pink. My aunt still reminds me of the time when, as a child, I refused to sleep under a pink blanket.

I can't remember how this started or where it came from, but basically my reasoning was (and is) thus:

1. You are supposed to like pink because you're a girl. This immediately sets me against it - why should I like anything just because I'm female?
2. It's a weak, wishy-washy colour that I associate with all the bad supposed traits of femaleness - soft, gentle, sugary loveliness - why must I be these things?

The origins of pink

Where does this insistence in colour coding our children come from? 

Apparently, it hasn't always been so. Victorian infants of either sex were traditionally decked out in white dresses. This 1840 American painting shows a young boy in what we would consider an extremely feminine pink dress. 

Anonymous American School painting (Honolulu Academy of Arts), via Wikimedia Commons

In 1918, America's Ladies' Home Journal decreed: 'the generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.'

And in 1927, Time magazine noted, after Princess Astrid of Belgium disappointingly gave birth to a daughter, that the cradle had been 'optimistically decorated in pink, the colour for boys.'

I'm not sure when the tide turned, but it clearly did, because today it is widely accepted that girls will be dressed in pink, to the point that it is difficult to find any infant-related product that doesn't use pink or blue to denote that it is for a girl or a boy.

Pink power

Over the years I have found the colour pink less offensive. I would even concede that some, dark, bright shades of pink are actually quite nice, although I still wouldn't wear it, on principal (bridesmaiding duties aside). And pink just doesn't suit me.

But this colour looks lovely on quite a lot of people, and liking pink doesn't make you any less of a person, woman or feminist. Nor is sleeping under a pink blanket a victory for the patriarchy.

When my friend bought her first flat, as a young single woman, she took great delight in decking it out in various shades of pink. The walls were pink, the utensils were pink - you get the picture. I mocked her, obviously, but actually what she was doing could be seen as a feminist act - stamping her own, chosen feminine identity onto the home that she'd bought and renovated for herself. If that's not female empowerment, what is?

Why does gender matter?

My problem isn't with the colour pink itself, but the fact that girls, at this or any age, need to be set apart from boys.

I explained recently that I used to think men and women were not so different, but I have now revised this opinion. OK, so we're miles apart. And maybe some of those differences do start to show very early in life. But is that really any reason to treat boys and girls differently, the moment they pop out into the world?

Surely if these gender differences are so strong, then children really don't need our help to display them? And nothing highlights a lack of equality more than telling them how very different they are before they can even talk back.

My daughter will have plenty of time to work out why she's different from the boys, does she really need me to colour code her? If she wants to play with trains, kick a football around or dress up dolls, that's all fine.

Equally, if she decides at the age of two that her favourite colour is pink and she wants to be decked out in it from head to toe, then that's OK (although I can't say I won't have a few feelings of sadness). It's her choice about who she wants to be. And it's important to me that she has time to work out who she is and who she wants to be, like I did. 

Pinkification

It turns out there's actually a campaign, 'Pink Stinks', to stop the ‘pinkification’ of girlhood, and reverse the trend in products, media and marketing of prescribing heavily stereotyped and limiting roles to young girls. So it's not just me. 

Hopefully, the tide will gradually turn and there will be more gender neutral options available for parents, or parents-to-be who don't want to pigeon-hole their children as soon as they are born.

In the meantime, I'm afraid I will be dressing my daughter in pink some of the time. A lot of lovely people have given me a lot of lovely clothes, for which I'm extremely grateful, and I will be using them. After all, it's not like she'll know the difference.

Church of England says ‘no’ to women bishops

My recent record in predicting the outcome of current events is pretty poor. Last week I predicted that Obama would lose the US presidency to Romney. This week I predicted that the church would vote ‘yes’ to women bishops. On the first could I was wonderfully, gleefully wrong. On the second, I was also wrong. Sadly wrong.

I can sort of understand that the church might decide that Jesus chose men to be his disciples (ignoring the whole Mary Magdalene thing, as some of them seem to), so vicars should therefore all be men. I’m sure the argument is a bit more complex and theological than that, but that seems to be the gist. OK, so if you think that’s what your religion teaches you, then fair enough. Although you could argue that Jesus worked within the culture of his time, when having women trekking about with him and preaching, or whatever it was disciples did, wouldn’t have been acceptable. He worked with what he had.

One problem with saying ‘no’ to women bishops, is that they’ve already said ‘yes’ to women vicars. That makes no sense. You either accept female clergy, at all levels or you don’t accept them at all. This is plain discrimination – let women in to help with the ground-level stuff. After all, women can be cuddly and nice, so they’ll probably be good at that whole compassion bit. But you wouldn’t want them telling people what to do, deciding what direction the church should take, or whatever it is that bishops do. Besides, those pointy hats won’t make the most of their cheekbones, and they’d only get their stilettos caught in the cobblestones outside the cathedral.

Bishops in the Lords

I’m not a Christian, so in a sense, it’s none of my business. After all, no one is saying that women shouldn’t have independence, education and other positions of power, just that women shouldn’t become bishops. Where I do think it is my business is when it comes to the House of Lords. The Lords have limited power, but they are very influential, and can have an impact on the way the UK laws are made. There are 26 bishops seats in the House of Lords (out of a total 760 seats that's 3.4% - small but not insignificant).

I have issues about religious people having a role in the political process anyway. They should stick with visiting the sick and bothering their flock, and not try to inflict their views on the rest of us. But assigning seats of power to a group that refuses to represent 50 per cent of the population is just unacceptable. The fact that the majority of the clergy voted in favour of female bishops suggests that they probably know this. But the church has to get its act together on this one. Sort yourselves out, boys (and girls).

If the Church of England wants to discriminate against women, contradicting itself in the process, by refusing to let women become bishops, then that’s its decision. But then it should relinquish its seats in the House of Lords until it decides to treat people equally, regardless of gender.