This is the
last article you can comment on for December/January.
I need to
make one thing clear here. Make sure
you do not use “fairy tale” in the way that Slovaks commonly do to refer to any
stories or television programs meant for children. In English, the phrase only refers to those (usually traditional)
stories with princesses, magic and the like…
Is the
trend of making toys (such as Legos) and books (such as the Rainbow Magic
series) appeal to only one gender a bad one, even if it encourages children to
read and learn? What are the positive
and negative aspects of traditional fairy tales such as Beauty and the
Beast? Should we try to come up with
new ones as this writer suggests?
Contunuation od my comment:
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I agree that some of the stories and fairy tales really do carry a very stereotyped message about genders. They do not only promote the abuser/abused dynamic as was stated in the article. The stories also often display male characters as the dominant ones and the females as the ones that need to be dominated. Both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty as well as Rapunzel needed a male character – in all three cases a brave prince – to be saved from their peril, thus they are depicted as the weaker ones in the relationship towards males. But on the other hand, there are various stories from The Well Loved Tales in which the female characters are the ones that are smart, fearless and strong. Gretel is clever enough to trick the witch into showing Gretel how to open the oven and strong enough to shove her in, by which she saves her brother Hansel. The Little Mermaid is courageous enough to save the prince from drowning in the water and selfless enough to sacrifice her voice and accept life in constant pain to be with the person she loves. Gerda from The Snow Queen is brave and tenacious enough to go looking for Kai barefoot in the cold and snowy land for a long period of time. All of them are females that can be admired and viewed as role models. Thus, the statement that the fairy tales label female characters as the ones that are abused and dominated is not completely true. The author suggests that these stories should be substituted by some that would not present children with the stereotyped way of viewing women and men. Because even if children do not notice this inequality and stereotypes consciously, it is always remembered in their subconsciousness. But I think that the message that the children get from the fairy tales strongly depends on their parents and how they interpret the stories to them. That is why they should be careful not to communicate the stereotypes but on the contrary the ideals of love, bravery and intelligence when reading this stories. This way, The Well Beloved Tales could be preserved as the cultural and artistic treasure they are and the issue of the wrong dynamic of the stories would be solved.
In conclusion, the fairy tales should not be divided into ones for girls and ones for boys because it sends wrong message about gender equality. Also, since some of the stories themselves communicate the wrong idea of relationship between women and men they should be treated carefully by parents when read to children. But the stereotypes that are sometimes depicted in the fairy tales are not a strong enough reason to forsake the stories that carry so much cultural value.
First of all, I completely agree with the author's standpoint that books should not be divided into girl ones and boy ones. In fact, I don't think that anything should be classified into such categories. Nowadays, any time you walk into a toy store or children clothes shop the division is strikingly visible. All the girl shoes, dresses, pencil cases and backpacks are pink and decorated with animals or princesses. On the other hand, all the t-shirts, socks and notebooks that are meant for boys are blue and filled with cars or dinosaurs. I understand that the fashion for girls and boys must differ to some extend such as does the fashion for women and men but in the case of girls and boys it differs in a way I find too sexist. The same happens with toys. Personally, growing up with two brothers we mainly used to play with toys primarily meant for boys. On a few occasions, both of them were on the contrary forced to play with dolls since I liked to play with them too. Being aware of the fact that it is perfectly fine to play with toys that were initially meant for the opposite gender broadens minds and keeps children from viewing both genders as unequal. On the other hand, being taught that it us only acceptable to play with the toys designed for your gender narrows the minds of the children and makes them more likely to think in a stereotyped way and contribute to this injustice in the future. In a society where gender equality is still a great issue, the differences between girls and boys should not be emphasized but omitted.
ReplyDeleteFor the beginning I would say that for me there is nothing wrong when some fairy tales are only about a female hero focused on a love story, while in others is the main character some brave young man who has to work out many difficult and dangerous tasks to get the victory and be the most powerful so he becomes the icon for many young boys. People might think that children who are fans of the fairy tales focused on one sex only can become disrespectful against the opposite sex. But what I see in these stories is, that in every princess fairy tale there is a man who saves her and in boy stories there is a girl that the main hero saves and falls in love with. And so in the girl´s eyes her classmates becomes her heroes and boys learn to be gentlemen.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, there is also one negative I found on this topic. The problem here is that the time when little boys and girls realize that there is always needed an opposite sex for the happy end, is when they are a little bit older. And until they realize it they make fun of each other. Boys are sick from all those kisses and girls are bored from fights. And so they are divided into two groups in class. Group of dolls and dresses and the group of guns or cars. So in this case I would consider the idea of the writer of this article as a good one. There could be stories where the love story is mixed with a lot of adventure and danger.
Even though I think that it depends on the parents what stories they will read to their children. If there are only daughters, then of course they will look for princess stories. Sons would be happier to hear some adventure of their male hero. And in families with both daughters and sons, parents can either look for already mentioned stories where the love story is mixed with adventure or they can simply make compromises. One night there will be princess story and the fighting and adventure on the other day.
In conclusion, I think that books oriented on hero of one sex only are all right because there is always a person of opposite sex that makes this story a story.
Well, I do not agree with Simona about her idea of boys becoming gentlemen due to the fact that they watch/read fairy tales where a male hero saves a helpless princess. Few days ago, I read an article about gender stereotypes and as I have just realized traditional fairy tales are very important for keeping these stereotypes alive even in the 21st century. Women are supposed to be at home, washing dishes, cleaning, cooking or just beautiful, neat princesses, waiting for help of the others. They never lead the kingdom nor the rebellions, they are simply good girls, listening to the commands. Men are those brave, tough guys, fighting for everything they want and being able to get it in the end.
DeleteDue to this gender stereotype which has been developing for hundreds of years is our world often divided into 2 groups – males and females. Both genders are simply supposed to wear in a way, to behave in a way, to be able and not to be able to do certain things. Isn’t it extremely horrible to loose determination and ambitions to achieve something just because “we are girls and we simply can’t do maths” as mentioned in the article?
Even though, our traditional fairy tales turned out not to be very educational, prosperous and can have a negative impact on the behaviour and moral values of our small ones, I cannot image my childhood without these beautiful fairy tales full of magic, love and heroism.
This trend of making toys, books and also movies appeal only to one gender is really annoying. And honestly, who would watch a story that you know it will end and everyone lived happily after if you can watch Cars or Planes? However the recent Disney movie Frozen is a good example of breaking all fairy tales stereotypes that exist, like true love kiss or prince saving everybody, and still being very successful. And still it has all the things a fairy tale should have: magic, princesses, true love. The same goes for Brave, but still I think girls like these movies more than boys.
ReplyDeletePlus the fact that a girl liking boys stuff is more acceptable than boy liking girls stuff. I don't really know where this comes from but it's not okay. And companies do this dividing in an assumption that it would make them more money as people would buy one pink book about princesses to a girl and a blue book about knights for a boy rather than one book with all fairy tales in it. Or making clothes only with pink sequins or cars is another great example of stupidity, as they think that people would buy more clothes. Well, that's not a complete truth. For instance, when I was small and fast growing my parents mostly bought boys clothes, so that after me my brother could wear it also. It was all right to me because I knew that if I had pink clothes with princesses and then my brother would have to wear it, he would be called names. But if today I went outside in my brother's t-shirt, even with angry birds on it, nobody would actually care and that's the way it should be.
This comment is from Sona Langova:
ReplyDeleteI must agree with Ema in the point, that how children understand the story depends on parents and on the way the story is interpreted to them. It is the same with toys. It is possible that dividing toys and books into genders can lead to sexism and to refusing to understand the other gender, however it still depends on parents, if they teach us that girls can play also with the toys for boys and vice versa. I think that dividing books is not a problem, it is normal that boys prefer some type of books and girls prefer some other type. But in the end, by dividing books we encourage children to read the book. It is natural that girls would rather take a pink book with princesses, because the cover promises them that the story will be more interesting for them, than a story about astronauts. I think that if all the books were not labeled, kids would not know which book they want to read more and books could seem boring to them, which would result in them not taking any book. Nowadays we need to encourage children to read, as the author wrote, and this is one way how to do it. Of course, we do not want girls to think that the blue book about astronauts is inappropriate for them, and that is what parents should teach them. Only they can teach us to understand that even though boys and girls have different interests, there are lots of exceptions and there is nothing bad about it. Like Ema, I also used to play with toys for boys, not only with dolls, and I did not find it strange, because my parents taught me it is normal. Also it should not be a shame for a boy to take a pink book if he wants to read it – but this should not be solved by generalization of books, but by teaching kids to understand the other gender and consider it equal. Nevertheless I think that most of boys would not be interested in reading about a princess in love, and that’s why they have differentiated books that could be more interesting for them.
SonaLangova III.A
Here is a comment from Martina Sabova:
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I would like to say a bit to the reaction of my classmate to your question about forming stereotypes in toy, book and above all, in product industry. Without any offense, I personally consider including clothing and toy industry into this subject is a little bit off topic. Let me explain you that very quickly before I move to my main point. Clothes are made with taking account of sexes because clearly, industry can´t make the same clothes for men and womer nor for boys and girls. The clothing apparel for females IS supposed to be different from the male one. That is, basically, how sexes identify themselves, they must differ because they are opposites and in this case I don´t think that clothingindustry is the best example to talk about. However, there was a little talk about toys and as I think that boys and girls have different intersts there should not be anything changed about the production of toys. In my opinion you can´t just miraculously change the preferences of young children just by making toys a unisex thing. If a boy wants to play with a car and a girl wants to spend her afternoon setting up a life for a young barbie it is their own choice and industry can do nothing to change that.
However, different thing happens with books. Books are something made for EVERYBODY. Regarding this huge spectrum of audience books should be made taking account all of their readers. They should be made unisex or if not so they should not emphasize and cherish the stereotypes, the ideals of nowadays society. Unfortunately they do so. Lot of classic fairy tales which we read to our kids, to the minds of the future generation, depict men as strong and heroic while females always take the side of vulnerability, helplessness and dependence. Of course, there are many books where the heroine is depicted as strong and dominating, but is that enough? Is it really enough to show our children how important is to understand that we are all equal? Some may argue, that children do not take stereotypes that seriously, that they do not even see the small ulterior signs of male superiority put into each story, but they are wrong. I may sound too confident to say that, but I have a young sister and I see those stereotypes slowly creeping into her absorbing mind as her mother reads her bedtime stories. She may not even realize it, but as she listens, she automatically accepts the role of the princess in the story. To be rescued. The role of the prince, you ask me? To save her, naturally. We accept the truth we think we deserve. And this, frankly, is what young girls think they deserve. They desrve to be pretty, they deserve to be saved. However don´t they desrve to fight?
Here is the continuation of Martinas comment:
ReplyDeleteMy third point is about how these stereotypes are actually formed in these fairy tales. As the author of the blog said in his last two paragraphs it is not about the label but what really matters is the content. I must disagree at one point. Yes, content may form stereotypes about girls as inferior to boys as I explained in my body paragraph, but to some extent, label has the real responsibility. To make it clear let me give you an example. Imagine there are two children born at the same time. One is living in complete isolation from the society and one lives within it. When they are approximately six years old you ask the boy who was raised in our society: “What book do you want me to read you? About football or about fashion?” Not depending on his interests he immediately shouts the answer football. He did not even think about the second option. He did not even let himself consider if he likes fashion or not. He does not want to like it because it is girly. If you asked the isolated boy he would probably like to listen to both of the stories because he does not know what fashion is like and what football is like. He does not know what he is supposed to like or dislike or how he is supposed to act because he was never told to. So in conclusion, it is not the content we provide our kids with but it is the stereotypical label we gave it. It is the society which made dolls girly and cars boyish. However, changing it now will not change anything if the stereotypes are rooted deep inside our manipulated minds, will it?