Packaging Girlhood

Oh boy how I love sticky notes & sticky tags. They save the day when you don't own the book, and can't fold down corners & scribble in margins.

Here are a few tidbits from Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes

At the mall:

The commercialization of girlhood hits hard. Sexy clothing for four- and five-year-olds is all the rage, and if you read T-shirt slogans, you know how girlhood is marketed. Your daughter can choose her identity, but the choices are frightfully limited: Professional Drama Queen, Paradise Princess, or Pretty Princess Beauty Queen. ... There is also Extra Fancy & Delicious/Quality Guaranteed, Spoiled, Princess Soccer Club, 100% Angel, Hollywood Superstar Film Crew, and Cheer Bunny. p. 16

Older girls can tell the world that they're Born to Shop and that Math Never Spells Fun.

Our survey and experience with middle school girls is that they're proud of their intelligence. So why all these messages about angels, princesses, shopping, and socializing as natural qualities and activities of young teen girls? Maybe it makes people anxious when girls get smarter; maybe these Ts symbolize the discomfort and represent a sort of collective nervous giggle. Or maybe it is something more serious. More girls are going to college than boys right now, and there is a spate of books asking what we should do about boys falling behind. Thus this more public display of the stereotype - boys' smarts and girls' social interests - could be a kind of backlash. pp. 42-43

The resistance to gender stereotypes is now sold at the same store that perpetuates them. It is like the time when sixties die-dyed shirts lost their roots in the counterculture and became available at Sears and Bloomingdale's. Don't think about what it really means to challenge or take a political stand. Just buy the appearance of taking a stand. And selling resistance means, of course, containing it, restricting it so that it is manageable and not really resistance at all. p. 33

It is amazing how frequently and pervasively teens are sold an image of hot and sexy. The message is that that's what women are prized for in the culture at large. That's what makes women interesting. For middle school girls in particular, being sexy is what will get them noticed and give them power. p. 44

We don't advise dismissing sexy dressing as 'just the fashion,' either. Sexy clothing is marketed earlier and earlier to girls, and they may find it hard to resist the attention they get when they look sexy. You can talk to them about how difficult it is to have people see the 'real you' in this glammed-up, hypersexualized world and that it is unfortunate. p. 48

On TV:

Girls watching these shows have two types to choose from - girly and tomboy - whereas boys have a range of options available to them. They can be brainy, goofy, sensitive, tough, loyal, funny, mean, depressed, or bizarre. Girls can be either for the boys or with the boys. p. 62 emphasis added

On evil superheroines in movies & TV:

Like the popular girls [they] are defined by their looks. The are described as sophisticated beauties, supersexy, femme fatales, models of high tech or high style. Or they are the opposite of all this; they wear outdated jumpsuits and glasses or have gap teeth. Those who aren't fashion-challenged are cold, calculating versions of Lara Croft of Charlie's Angels: big-breasted, skinny-waisted, and long-legged, full of sensuality and anger. They are the antithesis of good girls. They don't fake niceness or smile a lot - kind of like the Terminator with big breasts and fashion sense. But they are made for boys - adventure and porn rolled into one. p. 78

It is as though the male creators of these shows are having flashbacks to their awkward prepubescent days and are unable to appreciate how present-day girls with more voice and more power might make better friends, might deserve real names and not the thinly veiled insults they are given, and might want to be genuine allies with the boys in their lives. p. 79

On media & girls in science:

In 1989 the National Science Teachers Association conducted [....] a draw-a-scientist experiment with over 1,600 children in grades two to twelve. Only 8 percent portrayed female scientists even though 60 percent of the responders were girls. In 1997 another study found similar results. p. 80

The persistent stereotype of science and scientists certainly has something to do with what girls see in the media. p. 81

There are no girl scientific geniuses. Not one. We scanned TV shows aimed at kids for scientists of any kind. Girls appear as backdrops or very occasionally as friends, collaborators, or assistants. A few are smart, but never are they scientifically brilliant. In fact, since boy geniuses are stereotypically socially challenged, they seem to need the help of precocious, annoying girls to make them look good. p. 81

On high schoolers watching TV:

The girls we surveyed said they watch Friends, Will&Grace, and Sex and the City religiously. p. 167

Over the past few years these shows have introduced topics to teens that we would guess 90 percent of sex education classes don't cover. p. 168

The bottom line is this: If you let your daughter watch TV and go to the movies, you're essentially enrolling her in a sex education course written primarily by boys and men, using traditionally sexy women as their teachers. Is this the curriculum you want? p. 115

On computer games:

There there is the ultimate marketing wonder - Neopets! .....There is nothing innocent here. Neopets is actually a sophisticated marketing scheme disguised as virtual pet care. ... The company is unabashedly gleeful about using 'immersive advertising,' which is 'an evolutionary step forward in the traditional marketing practice of product placement.'.... "We live and breathe market research," says Neopets' executive vice president....Neopets takes what seems like a natural caring nature in your daughter and finds a way to profit from it. ... What they're doing with little girls has long been done with mothers, playing on their desire to love and care for their children by creating anxieties that can only be met with products.p. 247

On Disney girls (pp.66-71):

Disney girls are women with Barbie doll bodies.
Disney girls and women are gossips and chatterboxes.
Disney girls mother and do the housework.
Disney girls have lovely voices.
Disney girls have no support systems.
Disney girls can't resist a mirror.
Disney girls are incomplete without a man.
Powerful Disney women are evil and ugly.
Disney girls are innocent.

Related books I recommend:

Born to Buy by Juliet Schor

No Logo by Naomi Klein

The Corporation by Joel Bakan

Backlash by Susan Faludi


and on my TBR list: Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole