Ghoul Talk

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.