Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Assignment #3: Orenstein-Hyperlinks

Cinderella Ate My Daughter
By: Peggy Orenstein

Orenstein makes very good points about the things children are surrounded by at a young age.  She starts by mentioning how even though she tried hard for her daughter not to act like a princess like most young girls do, it happened anyway.  She first realized this when she caught her daughter playing Snow White.  Disney first released princess items in 2000 and by 2009 sales were at $4 billion!  This is shocking just how much young girls are obsessed with princesses.  At a very young age girls realize that they are suppose to play with things like dolls, and boys are suppose to play with toys like trucks, and if they play with the opposite thing, they could get frowned upon.  This video below is a great example of just how young some kids understand this concept.




This very young girl states that “The companies who make these (princess’s) try to trick the girls into buying the pink stuff instead of things boys want to buy” I think its amazing that a girl this young already realizes this marketing strategy.  She mentions that it’s the pink that helps draw the girls to the princess’s and not the superheroes, which relates to how Orenstein talks about how most young girls love the color pink, and it was everywhere when she was at the Toy Fair.

This picture shows just how obsessed some girls get with pink.
 


Another example of the pink epidemic is found in this article here.

This quote below explains the main point of the article, which agrees with Orenstein that there is just too much pink surrounding young girls.
They are complaining about what they are calling the "Pink Plague" that's struck their High Streets hard, with stores almost exclusively stocking pink products for little girls. They say the color puts undue pressure on girls to conform to traditional roles, making them grow up a bit too quickly. Some experts also claim that it creates gender stereotypes and widens the gap between the sexes.”
As the video below states, by the age 3 or 4 most children know the stereotypical activities of boys and girls.

I agree with that article, because just like the girl said in the video, what if girls want to play with superheroes and boys want pink dolls.  It’s very hard for boys and girls to have choices when the gap between the sexes at the age is so wide.





This last video I feel explains a big reason why these kids know these stereotypes at such a young age.  This is a video of gender stereotypes in Disney movies.


Questions Comments:
For class tomorrow I want to talk about this last video and why such stereotypical things are in movies designed to be watched by young children.  Some examples would be how the girls are almost always thin, especially princesses and how the men are normally muscular, especially main characters.  There are many stereotypical activities of men and women that are also portrayed like women cleaning and men doing the hard work, that I feel is one of the reasons that the kids in the 2nd video I put up, and most kids at age 3 or 4 know so many stereotypes of men and women.

3 comments:

  1. I LOVE PINK! I'm pretty jealous of that girl's room lol.. Nice post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. hooooolllly! wow., the pink room. sure is pink...do you think its a back drop lol

    ReplyDelete