Before I begin – thanks to everyone who has been waiting for the Token Skeptic podcast to come out – I strongly recommend you check out the Princess Scientist Podcast while you’re waiting over the next twelve hours or so for me to post up the ‘missing episodes’! As Mur Lafferty, podcaster, author and continual inspiration with ‘I Should Be Writing‘:
“On the Princess Scientist Podcast… Here she talks with her parents about what they’re reading right now, what books she’s excited about, and anything else on her mind.”
Going over my technology-related online feeds today, I found two items which led me to look again at the influence of gender, colour and toys for young people.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for choice. I’m sure many of us have read PZ ‘Pharyngula’ Myers’ disgust last year about pink-science equipment shown in a Toys R’ Us catalogue, with a post called ‘The Powerlessness of Pink’. Earlier in 2007, both Zuska of Science Blogs (’The Biology of Pink‘) and Dr Ben ‘Bad Science’ Goldacre (’Pink, pink, pink, pink. Pink moan‘) tore to colourful confetti the bad reporting in The Times (and what Dr Goldacre said was ‘every other newspaper in the world‘ too) on gender preferences and the ever-posed question of ‘pink or blue’?
Essentially – the media read it wrong.
If you tried to force me into making consumer choices that were limited to only one hue, you’d be getting more than just distinctly blue language from me. Yet I also quite like the slogan on the ‘Pink Stinks!’ campaign shirt, and wish that there was one in my size. I’ve read studies such as those done by Bandura (2001) have demonstrated when there’s over-simplified conceptions about gender roles and the social world of males and females, occupation or general ways of life, it can have an impact on human development.
Despite all this – am I wrong to think that maybe being too strident and outspoken against the color pink and some element of stereotypical ‘girly’ toys and books… is not very realistic? Is there inclusiveness and balance that can (should?) be encouraged?
But first, eager readers, to the rainbow-maned ponies!
How My Little Pony turned a little girl into a computer scientist – MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle’s book Falling for Science, with an essay by computer scientist Christine Alvarado:
…I had one larger, plush My Little Pony, a bright-green stuffed horse with a vivid pink mane and tail that I played with all by myself. I would sit for hours on my own, braiding and rebraiding its tail. I developed a system for braiding the tail of my Pony that taught me about mathematical concepts– from division to recursion…
I learned that I had to start with specific numbers of pieces in order for the braid to come out evenly. These specific numbers, of course, turned out to be powers of three. Overall, though, what I liked most about braiding was recursion. The large braid was made up of smaller braids that in turn were also made up of smaller braids, and I pushed this structure as far as I could take it…. With braiding on my mind, I began to see recursion everywhere.
‘My Fractal Pony’?
Naturally, a commentator on the site questions whether this could just be an example of the use of a toy by a talented child. Regardless of what it might have been (Barbie, Tonka Truck, Rubik’s cube) – maybe this young woman would have been creative enough to investigate the mathematical patterns and make such insights.
Then I turned to the following article – originally broadcast in October, 2009, it’s now mentioned on a more recent article – Independent (UK)’s fashion pages – “Nail polish 2.0: match your laptop to your fingertips“:
Computer brand Dell has come up with a new way of attracting the not-so-obvious gadget user in the new year: by partnering with beauty label O.P.I, nails can now be matched to 26 different laptop ’skins.’
‘Not-so-obvious’? Is this a fault of the writer of the article’s prejudice or Dell computer’s?
I doubt you’d find many young women in a technologically- savvy society these days, who don’t have fairly fierce IT skills in one way or another. But before we get out our Gossip Girl-sharpened SMS-ready claws and start tapping out a mean OMFGG LOL response – is it just another case of a product being fashion-friendly rather than purposely anti-feminist? The article concludes:
Recent pairings between fashion and technology have resulted in limited-edition USB sticks (for example for Hello Kitty’s 35th anniversary last year) and fashion cell phones by brands including Dior, Armani, and Prada. Other designers, such as Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger or Donna Karan, are increasingly discovering the mobile device through iPhone applications.
Matching nails to technological gadgets isn’t really new by the way: Japanese nail artists presented the latest ways of coordinating your fingertips with your cell phone embellishments at last year’s Tokyo Nail Expo.
Is it anti-feminist to be holding a phone with a Prada sleeve? Should I not have a black case on my laptop that is made to match my Chanel Vendetta’d nails?
Suddenly all I can think of is ‘The Devil Wears Prada’’s main character Andrea pointing out that it’s one thing to be proud of how you present yourself as an educated woman on matters of fashion – but quite another to be a stressed-out slave to a Vogue harridan telling you that a ‘little Crisco and a little fishing wire‘ is a necessary ingredient to improving your look.
Besides, I’ve been known to eat carbs, for christ’s sake.
The most recent study I’ve found that addresses the phenomenon of gender and toy selection is the following: ‘Coloring Within the Lines: Gender Stereotypes in Contemporary Coloring Books‘ (Fitzpatrick & McPherson, 2009). The authors analyzed 889 characters in fifty-six contemporary coloring books published in the United States and focused on one region of California with their samping.
Today it would be rare for a young child not to be exposed to a coloring book. Twelve percent of children’s books sold nationwide are coloring and activity books, accounting for over 104 million units sold representing more than $230 million in annual revenue (Raugust 2003). In 1996, Crayola reported manufacturing their 100 billionth crayon (Crayola 2009).
After coding for prevalence of each gender, stereotypic gender roles, activity level, type, and age of character.
Female roles included such tasks as cooking, sewing, caring for an infant, grocery shopping, being a teacher, and being a nurse. Male roles included racing, wrestling, rescuing, being a doctor, and driving heavy equipment (e.g., tractors). Gender-neutral behaviors included such things reading, walking, eating, and sleeping. In the analysis we matched up the characters’ gender with roles to determine if males were depicted doing stereotypically male activities and females depicted doing stereotypically female activities.
Sadly, their hypothesis was right – gender stereotypes abounded, males were more active in depictions and even gender neutral activities (the study includes – were male-image dominated.
Visual media messages that stereotype groups or individuals reinforce rather than challenge social misconceptions. Images on a page or screen become part of our common consciousness, and the role models which are presented provide vicarious experiences that teach and shape our perceptions of the world (Bandura, 2001)... Representations of stereotypes in the media are of importance because of their impact on the socialization process of children. … young children come to visual messages without the protection of learned skepticism. For this reason, media stereotypes often play a powerful role in the social and gender development of young children (Bandura, 2001).
Females, in comparison, were more likely to be children or humans, whilst a range of animals, adults and superheroes were more likely to be male. Huh. No room for a Princess Scientist, I guess. 
As a recent subscriber to the Princess Scientist Podcast (by the daughter of well-established and much awarded podcaster Mur Lafferty), a show that includes book reviews with its pro-girl, pro-science content, I’m led again to conclude that it’s not about limiting choices but giving children the opportunity to incorporate. I just have to look at the very good example of incorporating the Steampunk science-goggles with a tiara, in the logo.
Our daughter has decided she wanted her own podcast to talk about books and science, her two favorite things (that aren’t pokemon). So we decided to start one with her. We started last fall, but decided not to announce till we had a couple in the can. I’ll be posting them here in the next couple of days till you’re caught up with episode 3, or you can just go to Princess Scientist’s Book Club to subscribe!
In the end, I find myself agreeing more with Zuska, who last year blogged in a post called ‘Gender Smog – Dell Version’:
If this is the most creative marketing that Dell can come up with to reach the female consumer, I hope the company dies a swift painful death.
Hat-tip to the very savvy Petstarr’s ‘Practical Chick’s Guide to Being a Woman Journalist’ for the image of Andy showing the profession’s must-wear before hitting the streets!
Select Bibliography:
Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory of mass communication. Media Psychology, 3, 265–299.
Fitzpatrick, M., & McPherson, B. (2009). Coloring Within the Lines: Gender Stereotypes in Contemporary Coloring Books. Sex Roles, 62 (1-2), 127-137 DOI: 10.1007/s11199-009-9703-8
If you’re interested in other science books for children-related posts, check out the Skeptical Books for Children blog-post series.
![[Valid RSS]](http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/9879/validrsscf0.png "Validate my RSS feed")
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 1 trackback }