May 20th, 2013
As most of you know, even if you are not in the United States, a backlash has come up against The Walt Disney Company.
My friends and colleagues have written much and well about the Merida redesign by Disney. But others have wondered why it’s a big deal for Merida, the strong and feisty heroine of Disney’s Brave, to get a makeover that brought her into closer alignment with the physical representations of the other Disney Princesses, as shown below. Why does it matter if Merida is standing boldly looking at the audience and holding her bow and arrow or turned sideways, looking over her (much barer!) shoulder with no bow and arrow in sight?
It matters because people, and advertisers, use body language, facial expressions and head movements to communicate essential traits to others. These Princess poses of looking over the shoulder, eyes looking up, head downward, all communicate submission and passivity. But Merida’s original stance facing forward, shoulders up, holding a bow and arrow communicate assertiveness and action. It’s no use saying that you don’t think this is true, there’s vast research literature that supports that it’s true.
And whether we like to admit it or not, the media that we consume matters! It not only influences the way that we feel about ourselves, but the way kids learn to think about what it means to be a girl or a boy. And, ultimately, it influences the way that kids learn to look at what makes a girl valuable and important. You see, what many girls, including my 8-year-old Allie, loved about Merida was that she wasn’t the usual princess character. As Allie said in her own review of the movie, Brave,
“It was different from other princess movies. All of the (other) Disney princesses don’t look like real people. They just don’t have things that ordinary people would have, they’re too perfect. Merida is like a real person. She has freckles and hair that doesn’t look perfect. Her hair acts like real hair! Her brothers have ears that stick out, all the people in the story look like real people, they’re not perfect looking. I liked that.
And, Disney princesses don’t usually do anything wrong. I liked that Merida made mistakes but then was able to fix them and learn something.
I noticed that there’s not really a boy involved in the story that goes to save the day. She’s the one who’s saving the day, with her mom. In Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, the prince saves the day. But in Brave, Merida and her mom (and dad) save the day.
I liked how she could shoot arrows and ride horses. Even though she was a princess, she didn’t want to act all fancy and wear fancy dresses and things like that. I liked that she didn’t want to get married because most princesses in the movies really focus their life on getting married and things. Merida was different. She wanted to be a princess but be a normal person who could do her own thing.
In most Disney movies, the girl has something bad happen to her and someone saves her. In Brave something happens but she learns a lesson and has to solve the problem.”
You see, Merida is special, she’s a princess that is clearly different from the others. Little kids see that. That’s the reason that Merida matters. That’s the reason that parents are petitioning and arguing against the makeover. Merida offered kids a new version of what a princess could be. She offered a strong, courageous, imperfect and unromantic version of a princess. A princess that many little girls could love and relate to. This new version of Merida throws all that away.
Walt Disney believed in the power of imagination. He believed in the power of dreams. But the Disney consumer product division takes the powerful stories that the Disney/Pixar filmmakers like Brenda Chapman tell, and they make them fit a different mode. They create narrow pink and blue boxes and they tell us that’s where our kids belong. Disney can pretend that their new version of Merida doesn’t matter, but it does. It takes an assertive character and turns her into a passive one. When I showed Allie the newest picture of Merida, she said, “That’s not Merida.”
And you know what, I think she’s right.
UPDATE, May 16, 2013: Disney has stated that 1. the 2D image was never on their official web site in the first place (though, oddly, it's all over the official Australia/NZ version of the Disney Princess site--which may have been the source of any confusion), and 2. they will not be retracting the new Merida.
Ah, Mother’s Day. Some argue that it’s just a day created by marketers to get more sales while others see it as a sentimental favorite. Whatever your views, today is a great time to think about the beauty, strength, and challenge of motherhood.
The sexualization of women and children in the media is one of the things that challenges mothers for a couple of reasons. The first is that mothers themselves, as females, are very strongly impacted by the sexualized images and stories that the media tells. With the advent of the “Cougar” and “Hot Mom” personas in the last few years, mothers feel more pressure than ever to meet the media’s standards of beauty. Even women who don’t buy into the beauty myths still feel their pressure. One friend of mine said, “It’s hard for us to teach our daughters not to think that their appearance is all that matters when we’re struggling with that ourselves.”
From features such as “The Hottest Moms over 40” to the never-ending “Hot after baby” stories in magazines ranging from OK! to online sites, mothers feel the pressure to meet unrealistic ideals. This article from Popeater does its best to question the reality of these post baby reveals, which are usually filled with diet and exercise tips. Ok! ran a story about Kourtney Kardashian’s post baby weight loss with a cover photo that had her photo- shopped into oblivion. This was pointed out in this article on Huffpost Entertainment, and you can clearly see how unrealistic the photo-shopped image is next to the real image of her.
But being a new mom isn’t all about losing those baby pounds as fast as you can, and being a mom over 40 isn’t all about trying to stay sexy. Yes, we all want to be healthy and strong. But being a mother is about WAY more than how we look. Instead, motherhood is about the joy and fear of holding your new baby for the first time and wondering how on earth you’re going to do this. It’s about taking care of sick children when they wake up at 3 am, soothing bumps, bruises, and broken hearts. Motherhood is teaching your children to believe in and stand up for themselves, and giving them opportunities for wild success and gentle failure so that they can grow to be strong and independent. And motherhood is not about perfection. No mother is perfect; in fact, we all mess up everyday. But most mothers are doing their best to love their children and to help them become strong, competent adults.
Today I can’t help but think of my own mother who dreamed of being a medical doctor, but instead became the mother of 5 children by the time she was 28 years old. I remember when I was in Kindergarten and my mom went back to college. She was determined to finish, and eventually earned her degree and two graduate degrees, all while raising us, loving my dad, and working most of the time that I can remember. Was she perfect? Heck no, but neither am I as a mom. But what my mom did was, she believed in us. She supported us in any endeavor, and she pushed us when we needed it. And, I’m so thankful to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she loves us with all of her heart.
These are the things that I want to be as a mother: caring, loving, supportive, encouraging, and so many more. Frankly, sexy and hot are not on my list of motherhood requirements. A woman who loves her family and gives her heart to them will be beautiful. Mothering is often an extension of who one becomes through the relationship with our child’s father, and I hope fervently that being sexy in that relationship is an important part of our lives. But, it is not everything that we are. Our appearance and our sex appeal are so far away from solely defining the strong, funny, caring, feisty, determined, loving mothers that I know.
Let’s let go of this pressure to be perfect and look perfect. Here is what I have to say to you: YOU WILL NEVER BE OR LOOK PERFECT, and that is okay. Instead of seeking that, seek to be the best you that you can become, for that is when you will find peace within yourself and your own mothering. Marianne Williamson has a well-known quote that says,
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us….Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do…. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
I know that not all of us had mothers who taught us this message, and we won’t teach it to our own children everyday. But I challenge all of us, on this day of thinking about caregivers, to remember that caring for others involves caring for ourselves. To do that, we must focus on our own authenticity, instead of shallow, surface things. Don’t be afraid to shine, to let your true and glorious self come forward. It is only through the daring adventure of becoming oneself that one begins to change the world. As Joan of Arc would say, do not be afraid, you were born to do this!
MTV.com in 2008 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One of the things that I hear quite often when I talk about why media matters is the idea that children and adolescents understand that media does not depict reality. Adults tend to think that children and adolescents understand media in the same ways that we do. And yet, Cultivation Theory tells us that even adults may have their perception of reality changed based upon depictions that they see in media. Social comparison theory and related research has shown us that adolescents are particularly vulnerable to using celebrities and media depictions as social models.
So why does this matter? It matters because children and adolescents are in the process of constructing their identity, and media is one of the forces in their lives that they use to help them figure out who they are, who they want to be, and who they think they should be. We have to remember when we talk about children and adolescents that they process in the world in a different way than adults do. For adults, it may be easy to say, “That’s just a doll/t-shirt/silly show,” but when children and adolescents see, from a very young age, a predictable pattern in the media they consume of females being objectified, it does impact them. In fact, research suggests that even pre-school aged girls begin to internalize media messages about their bodies (Harriger, Calogero, Wihterington, & Smith, 2010; Dohnt & Tiggemann, 2006). And a growing body of evidence has shown that, for women, sexually objectifying media is linked to body dissatisfaction, internalization of the thin ideal, and disordered eating attitudes and beliefs (Grabe, Ward, & Hyde, 2008).
In a study conducted by Grabe & Hyde (2009), researchers looked at consumption of MTV and self-objectification in adolescent girls. Based on previous research, they thought that watching more MTV would be linked to self-objectification in girls, which tends to be linked to difficulties in emotional well-being. Sure enough, they found that the more girls consumed MTV’s music videos, the more they objectified themselves and the more difficulties they had with body esteem, dieting behaviors, anxiety, and confidence in math ability.
Math confidence, you may wonder, why measure that? Well, these researchers thought that for adolescent girls, exposure to the sexualized and objectified images and narratives in music videos might lead to a stronger focus on themselves as objects of others’ viewing pleasure. Previous research has shown that when girls self-objectify, they tend to also lose confidence in male-dominated fields, such as math. And guess, what, this research confirmed that.
Not only does exposure to objectifying media lead girls to think of themselves as objects for others’ pleasure, it also leads to negative emotional consequences and even influences their vision for themselves academically. Remember, media is a tool. It can be used to promote both positive and negative messages to children and adolescents. Sexualized media can lead to negative outcomes, but media messages that challenge stereotypes and promote complex views of people can open up avenues for great conversations with kids. Recently I was watching Disney’s Mulan with my 7-year-old daughter. With no prompting, she started comparing the way that girls are depicted through Mulan and the way they’re depicted through other Disney Princess movies, such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. She said, “You know, I really like Mulan better than those others, because it shows that girls can do things to make the world better too, not just boys.” Now, I’ve talked with her about thee types of messages before and I like to promote more complex views of both boys and girls. But, this comparison was just her thinking out loud, just a little girl noticing something about what the world was telling her she could be and do through the characters in different media. Think media doesn’t matter? You better think again.
Dohnt, H. & Tiggeman, M. (2006). The contribution of peer and media influences to the development of body satisfaction and self-esteem in young girls: A prospective study. Developmental Psychology, 42, 929-936.
Grabe, S., Hyed, J.S. (2009). Body objectification, MTV, and psychological outcomes among female adolescents. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 39, 2840-2858.
Grabe, S., Ward, L.M., & Hyde, J.S. (2008). The role of the media in body image concerns among women: A meta-analysis of experimental and correlational studies. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 460-476.
Harriger, J.A., Calogero, R.M., Witherington, D.C., & Smith J.E. (2010). Body size stereotyping and internalization of the thin-ideal in preschool-age girls. Sex Roles, 63, 609-620.
Did you know that it’s been estimated that children between 8-18 spend almost 11 hours a day engaging with media (Rideout et al., 2010)? Adolescents who consume media most heavily are at risk physically, socially, and emotionally.
Children develop creativity, problem-solving skills, and social and emotional skills when they engage in free play. But many children spend so much time consuming media, that they aren’t getting the free play time that they need. The Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC) has collaborated with other national organizations to promote the idea of taking a week off of using any kind of screen to give families and children the chance to unplug, reconnect, and begin to make healthy life changes.
Here are links to some great resources for you to organize a screen-free week at home, school, or in your community.
As you and your family prepare to take a week away from screens (TV, computers, electronic games, mobile devices, etc.), what kinds of activities can you do to fill the time that those things usually take up?
Here is a great list of activity ideas and resources from the CCFC. I’m looking forward to sharing them with my own kids! I’ll look forward to checking back in with you next week to see how your screen free week went. Now get out there and play!
Activity Ideas
Here’s a fun activity from the preschool play section of Bobbi Conner’s book Unplugged Play (recommended for Screen-Free Week and beyond!):
Dining Room Campout
Creating a private little world for your child is a wonderful way to give her time alone in her own mysterious world. All too often, we and our children get caught up in the frenzy of our lives; what a treat to be able to steal some time away for a campout!
Materials: Sleeping bag; safe outdoor camping gear; small cardboard box (for pretend camp stove); pots, pans, spatula, bowls, and cups; teddy bear and dolls
Setup: Gather all the camping gear into the dining room or living room and close the window blinds to make it “nighttime.”
Play: Encourage your child to cook a campout meal and serve it to her camp buddies (the teddy bear and dolls), and to sing songs by the “campfire” before settling down inside the sleeping bag.
More Great Resources:
Image via Wikipedia
I’ve been talking a lot about promoting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields lately. Some of you may be wondering how that is related to fighting against the sexualization of children. These two concepts are closely related, because while one presents girls with a strong, capable view of who they are and can be, the other presents girls with a rigid, narrow version of who they are and can be. Sexualized media and marketing campaigns and the gender-stereotyped ideas that go hand in hand with them promote the idea that a girl’s primary worth comes from her appearance, sex appeal, and romantic relationships. Girls need to see a broader version of female worth that focuses on intellect, curiosity, diligence, and discovery. Giving girls access to the STEM fields and role models within them provides them with this different perspective.
Did you know that recent research has shown that males and females are now performing similarly in math? And yet, women continue to be underrepresented in the STEM fields. Why is that? Some researchers have suggested that girls as young as nine are already buying into the implicit stereotype that says that girls aren’t as good at math and other STEM fields. Implicit stereotypes are those that are not necessarily conscious. Rather, these are simple associations that kids make between gender and ability, such as linking math with male. Little girls who tended to do this tended to have lower academic self-concept and achievement and to choose to enroll in fewer courses in those areas linked with boys. The authors of this study say, “Gender stereotypes stressing the incompetence of female students in math appear to have a great impact on women by lowering their performance and interest in math” (Steffens, Jelenec, & Noack, 2010, pg. 947).
This is why products, programs, and marketing campaigns that promote the idea that girls and women are bad at particular skill areas, such as math, are damaging. For example, the “Too pretty to do math” t-shirts (that are still for sale on websites) jokingly put forth the idea that being pretty and female is linked to poor math skills. Many are tempted to see this as simple, harmless humor. But when girls in elementary school continue to avoid math because they implicitly link it with males, when women who do choose STEM fields and face stereotype threat pay for it with their health and well-being, when there continue to be multiple barriers to women succeeding in STEM fields, there is too much truth to the perception of this statement to make it funny.
In order to break the hold that sexualized stereotypes have on girls, adults must present them with alternative viewpoints. We must provide them with female role models who succeed in STEM and other non-traditional fields. We must talk with our girls about STEM areas as if they are interested in them, allowing them to explore new ideas and concepts. We must speak directly against the stereotype that girls can’t be as good as boys in these areas. STEM is just one area that provides girls with an alternate vision of what it means to be female. Sports, performing and creative arts, community service and activism, getting girls involved in these kinds of activities offers them a way to see themselves and their value that is not linked to their appearance and sex appeal.
Lindberg, S.M., Hyde, J.S., Petersen, J.L., & Linn, M.C. (2010). New trends in gender and mathematics performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 1123-1135.
Steffens, M.C., Jelenec, P., & Noack, P. (2010). On the leaky math pipeline: Comparing implicit math-gender stereotypes and math withdrawal in female and male children and adolescents. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102, 947-963.
