It is of relatively little surprise that I would have some
opinions about the television programming being aimed at little girls these
days. There are, of course, some shows that are working really hard to
neutralize the gender pushing and to portray female characters as something
more than catty or compliant. And then there are the shows that my daughter
likes to watch; the shows where all the female characters are about high school
age, have legs for days, wear butt cheek grazing skirts and high heels, and
talk with a valley girl stab.
Plots to these shows hardly stray from the formula where a
group of girl friends work together to solve problems in their greater
community. Along the way, there are staples in the conflict:
- · The villainous leader girl whose valley girl accent is thick and mean, as opposed to just present, and generally leads at least two dumb minions who are not intentionally as mean as much as they are sheep.
- · The unbalancing of harmony or spirit as a prized possession is lost, stolen or destroyed.
- · The confrontation of tradition and the pushback from older or male characters.
I have an ongoing contention with my 6 year-old-daughter about
these shows. I call them “sassy girl” shows and otherwise judge them in front
of her, in a poor attempt to create dialogue around concerning issues. She only
hears the judgment part (she’s pretty intuitive…) and then blocks out the other
parts (…and stubborn).
Recently, as summer is winding down and camps are running
out but I still have the same amount of work to do, my daughter has been
watching these shows with greater abundance. Because of my intolerance for her
attitude after having watched a “sassy girl” show, I have started banning
certain shows like Barbie and Brats (the obvious sassy factors), and I
teeter on Monster High (more on that
later). So, she decides to revisit My
Little Pony Friendship is Magic. (Now,
this show I stand with. I was an avid My Little Pony collector as a child. I
still have ALL of them and am just waiting for a clear weekend to clean them
up, comb their hair and display them in a china hutch we recently inherited).
The ponies are great! They are headed for gender neutral, none of them has a
valley lisp, they all WORK, and their whole purpose is to build community.
However, my little teenager trapped inside a young girl gets tired of all this
practical entertainment and switches to Equestria
Girls, which is basically an elongated sassy-fied pony girl with legs for
days, a short skirt, and chunky boots. (HASBRO! Why did you need to do that!?!?
The ponies were just fine as they were!) For the most part, the main characters
maintain their character but as teenage girls, they all now have boy crushes,
human female insecurities, and rely a little more heavily on the guidance of a
leader (Twilight Sparkle) instead of working together as a group. And the
skirts! What is with that?!
A couple days later, I hear my daughter sneaking an episode
of Monster High and wander around the
corner to start being contentious when I am frozen by the high degree of sexism
that is taking place before my eyes. I realize that I am walking in mid-show
and that there is context missing, however, no amount of context could make
what I was seeing okay. I decide that I need to sit down and watch this episode
start to finish, whilst taking notes, so that I can more confidently bring the
hammer down on this once and for all.
I had been waffling on Monster
High for months and would not allow her to watch it at the house. She was
watching it at her grandmother’s house and playing with her friend’s MH dolls
at school. My waffling was due to the fact, solely I think, that they are
monsters. They still have waif waists, SUPER short skirts and Carrie Bradshaw
heels, but they are also monsters and so I was trying to be a little more open
to them. I mean, monsters are a step in the right direction, yes?
Truth be told, I was unaware whether or not they were “sassy
girls” as I never watch the show with her. The only reason my kids watch TV is
because I need to work, cook, clean, breathe, hide, internet shop, or otherwise
be unengaged with them. But the other day I said to my daughter, “Hey will you
watch the roller skate episode of Monster High with me later today?” Her face lit up like an octogenarian
birthday cake. Her smile wrapped clear around to the back of her head. She
couldn’t believe it. She agreed with all the happiness and excitement I have
ever seen her respond with and she set out to find the right episode and get it
ready.
At that point, seeing her sheer and pure joy that I would
want to watch a “sassy girl” show in its entirety, without doing anything else
at the same time, WITH HER, took all the air out of my need to assess and
deconstruct what I might see. We watched it and I have another essay prepared
about what I saw (Roller derby being an all boy sport? Boyfriends putting their
paws down about stuff? Team support coming with the slinky costume change?
Egh!) but I also have to say that I had made some assumptions about the show
that weren’t true. The monster girls are kind, they overcome a pretty big
sexist conflict, and many of the characters are two and half dimensional.
Mostly what happened though, was that after watching the
show together, my daughter was newly open to talking about what we saw. She
asked me, over pizza, what I had written about the show. I said I hadn’t
written anything yet and then I asked her if she wanted to know what I learned.
She did. We had a really cool conversation about the team uniforms and how I
thought it was weird that no one supported the team when they wore big clunky
uniforms. But after the monster girl team decided they needed to play “more
like themselves” instead of playing “like the boys” and changed into short
dresses and high heel skates, the whole school showed up to cheer them on.
She thought hard about this. I could tell as her chewing
slowed and her eyes looked up into her brain searching for clarity. She
responded, “Ya, mommy, that’s because they trained SO HARD in those big armor
suits that they earned their fashion.” She repeated, “They EARNED their
fashion.”
I’m still not sure what to make of that. But I like it. I like that we
can talk about it. And I’ll call this one a tie: Monster High-1/ Mommy-1.
