It's Not A Double-Standard If You Never Thought Of It

A friend of mine sent me this picture, which I found rather surprising. I don't think it's a double standard, so much as their just not being interested in the quality of boys' toys to the same degree. I had honestly never thought of their point at all. Of course I remember He-Man, who was just a cleaned-up kids version of Conan, a physically similar character.

All three are really popular, which may say something about what is really going on here. When we talk about Conan books, the usual screed against them is that they represent a simple kind of male wish-fulfillment. I think that's unfair: at least the original R. E. Howard stories are really quite good. But it might be true for He-Man.

36 comments:

DL Sly said...

Your picture link says:
"Hello there nice person from the Internet, the page you're looking for is not here anymore. But you can still check out one of these awesome pictures."

Granted, it's the first time the internet has told me I'm a nice person...hell, it's the first time in a looonnnngg time the phrase "nice person" has been used in association with me, period.

He-Man was a pretty good cartoon. The only flaw was in the belief that with a simple silver trinket the man had the Power. Everyone knows that it's the woman that possesses the Ring of Power.
heh
0>;~}

Grim said...

Try it now, Sly.

I can't recall the cartoon well enough to evaluate it, except that there was a boy who could become a big strong man and protect his family at need. That's not the worst aspiration for a boy.

DL Sly said...

I recall the cartoon because at the time I was babysitting the children of a friend for extra cash. He-Man, the Thundercats and GoBots (precursor to Transformers) were the boy's favorite. Needless to say, I spent many a day watching those cartoons.
FYI, He-Man's power came from the sword he carried. But, like all magic swords, you had to be know the activation phrase.
Me, personally, I liked the Thundercats best...they had better toys.

As you know, the VES is a teenage girl. I know well from my own growing up experiences the pressure to look just right in order to fit in. She's growing into a truly beautiful young lady. (Much to MH's chagrin - guns don't kill people, Dad's with pretty daughters do.) However, the last vestiges of childhood (aka baby fat) are still hanging around as she makes the transformation into that young lady, so she is the subject of rather hypocritical comments from girls whose bodies are doing the exact same thing. The latest body image fad is called "Thigh gap". This is because a couple of virtually anorexic models have a visible gap between their thighs when they stand with their feet together. This has now become the *body norm* for which young girls are supposed to strive. Now, also, with the surge in metrosexual styles for men, the feminista's will soon be coming for the boys, too.
As the old song goes, "Teach your children well...." because by the time the media and peer pressure gets ahold of them, they will need to have a firm grounding and strong roots to withstand the storm.

Texan99 said...

I almost always find the pushback against feminists unbearably silly, but this one makes a good point, I think. It's certainly not only girls who get weird messages about perfection.

Cass said...

Here's the difference I see between the two "ideals":

Girls are meant to aspire to be like Barbie because she's really pretty and has big boobs and the much coveted thigh gap. Barbie doesn't "do" anything except look good and buy stuff. That's why I had no interest in Barbie as a girl.

Boys are meant to aspire to be like He-Man (or any of the other male superheroes, all of whom are heavily muscled) because they are heroic and strong.

I don't think it's a problem to present role models or ideals with "unrealistic" body images, per se. I do think it's a problem when the unrealistic body image is all there is to aspire to.

Anonymous said...

The marketers know that little girls love gaudy. They just do. Little boys don't. And I don't ever recall my boys wanting to buy He-man dolls, or wear any kind of clothing except for isolated incidents involving Ninja and Captain Underpants outfits. Barbies, meanwhile, have been a hit for many decades.

The mystery to me has always been where that horrible little-girl culture comes from. Perhaps from stupid grownups?

As a child, I was always asked by adults what such a smart little girl wanted to be when she grew up -- a secretary or a nurse? Seriously, that's how they asked it. My daddy taught me to say "Neither. I want to be a doctor." His rationale was that a secretary or a nurse works just as hard as their bosses, so why not make the real money? I have a doctorate (not an MD) and I will say the money is SO much better, and the work about the same.

I had nice clothing for Sunday, but I went to parochial school, and we all wore uniforms. Clothing wasn't an issue.

I had sons. In school, all they wanted to wear was T-shirts and pants. Their hair was short enough so that, if it wasn't combed, you might not know it. I could get them out of the house in 30 minutes. All the other boys looked like ragamuffins, too. This was private school, but no uniforms.

At school, the little girls were turned out for Sunday most days. Their mothers talked about spending an hour or two(!) hours every morning, half of it on hair. You could tell it had been a bad morning by the state of a little girl's hair.

I listened to my sister-in-law chatter continually to her daughter about her pretty clothes, and what goes with what, what was her favorite color, etc. She said it took better than two hours in the morning to get her to the bus stop on the corner, and a lot of this time was spent getting the kid to dress herself.

And I watched the little girls in school play mean social games amongst themselves about clothes and status, that left the boys completely untouched. The boys didn't even hear it.

Little, bitty girls in our culture are subject to enormous pressure every day from their mothers to spend significant time in an effort look just so and to conform their behavior to girlie norms. Thank God my mother never wasted my time that way.

Valerie

bs king said...

If they had tried to prove their case with She-ra, I would have bought it.

As it stands, Barbie has been culturally relevant for far far longer than He-man was. Why call out a cartoon character that went off the air in 1987?

Cass said...

Little, bitty girls in our culture are subject to enormous pressure every day from their mothers to spend significant time in an effort look just so and to conform their behavior to girlie norms. Thank God my mother never wasted my time that way.

Amen.

As a little girl, I did like to dress up occasionally but then frankly so did my two sons. The key word here is "occasionally".

For school, my sons had to wear a shirt with a collar, decent shoes, and neat pants. And their hair was neatly combed and worn short enough to stay fairly neat when they played outside.

I've never understood the princess phenom, but I never saw much of that growing up. My experience of girls' play was that it was more centered on playing house than looking pretty or Barbies. I remember wanting a Barbie because everyone else had one when I was 5. Once I got one, I hardly ever played with it because it was pointless (or at least it seemed so to me).

I spent far more time reading or playing outside (doing stunts, acrobatics, practicing physical skills like walking on stilts, riding bikes, etc) than I ever did playing dolls.

Cass said...

I watched the little girls in school play mean social games amongst themselves about clothes and status, that left the boys completely untouched. The boys didn't even hear it.

I agree that my boys and their friends weren't terribly concerned about clothes, but they were definitely concerned about whose bike was more expensive or whether they had the latest GameBoy, etc. It was more about possessions (and the status gained thereby) than what you were wearing.

That was a major challenge as a parent - to convince my sons not to pay attention to superficial stuff; that what they did was more important than what they owned or the popularity of who they hung out with. One of the most painful experiences I can recall was the nastiness one of my sons suffered after refusing to ostracize a boy who was unpopular. The popular boys tried their darndest to get him to shun his friend (one of the first kids to be nice to him when he moved to a new school). To his credit, he refused even when it cost him, socially.

I think boys engage in most of the same behaviors - they just do it differently.

Anonymous said...

I never could fit the 'norm' for girls (pre-princess late 1980s) and am too independent to try. Well, that and my body ain't never going to be tall or willowy, period. So I rebelled by dressing semi-Victorian. I was so solidly in the NERD camp that the popular girls left me alone. It was the guys who went after me, because I wouldn't throw myself at them. Because everyone knows that pathetic loser girls will sleep with any guy who bothers to pet them a little. *pa-thooy*

LittleRed1

Texan99 said...

I can remember only once running up against a mean-girls manifestation, when I was about twelve. Honestly, in general my high school memories don't conform very well to what I hear most people describe, in terms of bullying, fights, or any of that stuff. Going to college was a big change, but not because people got nicer. They were nice there just as they'd been mostly nice in high school. The difference was I was much more likely to find things in common with them. This was the mid-70s at a school with an engineering emphasis; there wasn't much of a lipstick-prom-dress culture there. No fraternities or sororities, for instance.

I do recall an experience in Girl Scout Camp. There was a girl who was mildly ostracized. Nothing extreme--no swirlies or buckets of pigs blood--but rather mean and cold behavior nevertheless. A counselor mentioned to me one day how unattractive she found that cliquish tradition, which brought me up short. It caused me to examine it more closely than I would have done otherwise, and to make an effort to include the ostracized girl when otherwise I've had tended to ignore her. There were girls with a lot of charisma who developed quite an adoring following, but it didn't have to do with hair or clothes, and it wasn't particularly cutthroat.

All my information about this supposedly universal and unavoidable aspect of feminine culture comes from books and movies.

Grim said...

Cass:

Here's the difference I see between the two "ideals": Girls are meant to aspire to be like Barbie because she's really pretty and has big boobs and the much coveted thigh gap. Barbie doesn't "do" anything except look good...

In fairness, didn't you (oh, a month or a year or two ago) show me pictures of the Barbie Astronaut? And that reminded me that I knew of another one from twenty years prior, so when I looked sure enough there was an astronaut Barbie from the 1980s. Just today, it looks like eBay has a whole page devoted to different career Barbies, everything from "Civil War Nurse" and doctor to lawyer to President (both traditional and Asian President Barbies are for sale).

It's true that He-Man has an essentially heroic character, and Barbie isn't essentially any of these things -- but that is just why she can be whichever one of them the girl prefers her to be.

That makes He-Man, if anything, a much less good role model because he's a cardboard cutout. It's good to have heroes when you're a boy, of course, and to aspire to heroism yourself. But he's really just only the one thing: he can't be anything else. According to Mattel, Barbie can do whatever she wants.

DL Sly said...

"Little, bitty girls in our culture are subject to enormous pressure every day from their mothers to spend significant time in an effort look just so and to conform their behavior to girlie norms. Thank God my mother never wasted my time that way."

My mother dreamed of having a little girl she could dress up in frilly dresses, curl her hair and tie it up in ribbons. (Stop laughing, Cass...you, too, Grim) She gave up when I was four after I came running into the house with my frilly dress filthy and torn sporting two black eyes. My explanation for the state of my dress? "They let me play shortstop today!"
I have tried to not dictate style choices to the VES. I do draw the line at some fashion fads (skinny jeans being the biggest throw-down point right now), but, for the most part, let her decide what she's going to wear. Sometimes she pays more attention to peer pressure and fads than is really necessary, but part of that is due to being the new kid in school every three years and trying to fit in *somewhere*.

Grim said...

(Stop laughing, Cass...you, too, Grim)

Now that's not a fair request! :)

Texan99 said...

If my (step)mother had had any notion of what I habitually wore to school I'm sure she'd have been horrified. But from as early as I can remember she was out of the house before I got up and home only after I returned. Every now and then she'd get wind of something in my closet and try to veto it. She was always chasing me around trying to get me to cut my bangs and my fingernails, too, though it rarely did much good. She was trying to do the right thing in her eyes with this wild child she'd been given charge of, and prepare me to be acceptable to the world. It just didn't work. She hadn't any moral authority with me on any issue concerning gender roles or sexual morality.

Strangely, she did have moral authority on things like the duty to take care of old and sick people and to be honest and honorable and so on, though it took a while for those lessons to sink in. She was quite upright in a number of important ways. I don't think she could have been brought to steal or cheat under pain of torture. Still, none of that could make the prospect of acting like a princess hold any appeal for me at any time.

I don't envy stepmothers.

Cass said...

In fairness, didn't you (oh, a month or a year or two ago) show me pictures of the Barbie Astronaut? And that reminded me that I knew of another one from twenty years prior, so when I looked sure enough there was an astronaut Barbie from the 1980s. Just today, it looks like eBay has a whole page devoted to different career Barbies, everything from "Civil War Nurse" and doctor to lawyer to President (both traditional and Asian President Barbies are for sale).

Well, maybe I am missing something but I have never seen a career Barbie in real life. I'm sure Mattel offers them, and I'm pretty sure they don't sell particularly well :p

But I could well be wrong - I didn't have little girls. I do know that in the 1980s my boys had several female friends and I never saw any career Barbies. But then I never saw ANY Barbies - baby dolls, yes. But Barbies, no.

Maybe certain types of girls like that sort of thing.

Cass said...

Here you go: Amazon's best selling Barbies:

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Toys-Games-Barbie/zgbs/toys-and-games/276201011

There is one non-princess (Catniss from Hunger Games).

Grim said...

Now that's a book I'd want my Barbie-age daughter to read! My wife recently read it (easy reading from a hospital bed) and was telling me about it. Sounds pretty dark to me.

Cass said...

I saw the movie. It wasn't bad :) Haven't read the book yet though.

I remember being mildly obsessed with Eowyn and Galadriel in LOTR as a girl.

DL Sly said...

The VES has read (and re-read and re-read) the entire Hunger Games series. She swears they are fantastic. I, after seeing the movie, have a hard time keeping in mind that it's supposed to be *fiction*.

Grim said...

I just reread the LOTR. Eowyn and Galadriel are wonderfully drawn characters. Tolkien really understood what he was talking about.

Cass said...

I reread it every 4 or 5 years, and it gets better every time :)

My biggest disappointment with the movies was that I knew the dialogue so well that when they changed or left out the most beautiful passages, it really bothered me.

I feel that way about Shakespeare - there's certainly a lot of bloat in his plays but there are also lines so lovely that they cut right to the heart. Watching a favorite play, I find myself almost holding my breath, waiting for them.

DL Sly said...

I read the Hobbit when I was very young and started into the trilogy, but, at the time, it couldn't hold my attention. I never saw a reason or need to try again. Given the love of science fiction my father imparted upon me, I gravitated toward the Dune series and have read the original six book series too many times to count. I've also read and reread the 9 or so subsequent prequel novels written by his son after finding trunkloads of notes in the attic.

Cass said...

Now I didn't really like the Hobbit at all. I read LOTR despite that :p

I've read most of the Dune books but the first was so much better than the sequels that I've never re-read any of them.

Cass said...

If you're ever tempted to try LOTR again, the 1st and 3rd of the trilogy are (IMNSHO) the best. The Two Towers drags a bit, and the last one is my unquestioned favorite.

Grim said...

I grew up with the Hobbit, long before I first read LOTR. I've always loved it.

I like the Two Towers as well, especially the parts with the Rohirrim. Tolkien clearly intended them to be his own beloved Anglo-Saxons in Middle Earth, and the riding culture is beautifully detailed. (Likewise they get some great scenes in Book III).

The parts that I've had trouble with in the past were the parts in the middle of Book I, the second half of Book II, and parts of Book III in which not much is going on except crossing territory. But this time I found that I enjoyed those parts much more. I came away with a real sense for the land. Tolkien must have spent a lot of time on foot himself to have understood trekking so well.

Cass said...

The Rohirrim were the best part of The Two Towers. The chase scenes went on a bit too long for my childish taste, but as I got older I got more patient :)

Anonymous said...

The scene were Theoden rides into battle in Gondor never fails to bring tears to my eyes.

douglas said...

"Now that's a book I'd want my Barbie-age daughter to read!" (Hunger Games)

My 8 year old daughter has recently informed me that she's no longer into Barbies- too old (though she still plays with them with her one and two year younger friends). I think she's too young for the Hunger Games!

I have to say that I wasn't too keen on Barbies, but my wife had been quite fortunate to have gotten some as a child in communist Hungary, and loved them. She, of course, wanted her daughter to have them too, so what could I say? I don't worry too much about the cruel girl games we see some of the older girls in her school going through, as she also is like her mother in not taking crap from anyone, and her desire to not show weakness to anyone if it can be helped. That's all along with her desire to always show me how she can keep up with older brother (11). The minute we go out back to shoot a few pucks in our goal, she comes out in skates, stick in hand, and demands I check out her shot!

Still, she's a Princess- but a rough stone, not a highly polished and delicate one! She loves to dress up and do things with her hair, but, like her mother, she doesn't want to spend too much time on it. I think that's about right- it's good to try to be attractive and care about appearances, so long as it isn't gone too far. We'll see how it goes come the teen years, though. There's just so much constant pressure from society for girls to want to be 'older' than they are. For God's sake, let them just be girls for a time...

Cass said...

Still, she's a Princess- but a rough stone, not a highly polished and delicate one! She loves to dress up and do things with her hair, but, like her mother, she doesn't want to spend too much time on it. I think that's about right- it's good to try to be attractive and care about appearances, so long as it isn't gone too far. We'll see how it goes come the teen years, though. There's just so much constant pressure from society for girls to want to be 'older' than they are. For God's sake, let them just be girls for a time...

She sounds like a perfectly normal (and wonderful) little girl to me.

I don't know what you do about the pressure to grow up prematurely, Douglas. The other day on the way to work I was listening to a talk show about the influence of fathers on daughters. The guest (a women who is now a mother of a large brood of her own) told of her father taking her aside frequently before dates and saying, "You are a lady, and don't ever let a boy treat you as anything less." Done right (IOW, also teaching respect for others along with self respect), this sounds like wonderful advice.

Speaking as a woman who well remembers being a rebellious girl, I think that's the biggest danger for girls. Their gentle side can make them too trusting and too willing to put up with disrespectful or bad treatment. My Dad never said those words to me, but somehow he did convey to me that I deserved the respect of others so long as I showed them reciprocal respect and that protected me from a lot of the dangers in the world.

Dads are so incredibly important in a girl's development. I wish people talked about that more.

douglas said...

I already open the car door for her as well as her mother- hoping to send just that signal, and I'm sure I'll have that conversation with her in a few years. I'll also pass along one of the best pieces of dating advice I ever heard- watch how your date treats the waiter/waitress- they're nice to you because they want something- but they'll act the way they really are to the service staff...

I've heard that Dad's are uber important to girls development- and it worries me- I didn't have a sister, and it took me a long time to get truly comfortable around females. I worry I won't really understand her, and may not be complementary enough- I sense her looking for attention the wrong way a little too often- interrupting and getting right in front at the wrong times- and I feel like I need to make sure I spend some more time with her- Just Daddy and daughter. The boy I think I get, but the girl does worry me!

douglas said...

Heh- I should have added that she's a princess who is just as likely to be digging up slugs from the lawn as having a tea party! Quite a girl, she is!

Texan99 said...

I can probably help you with her mysterious mindset. She thinks you hung the moon and are the source of all truly important approval and attention, and she wants to be number one in your eyes at all times, except when she's distracted and busy and needs to be left alone. She understands that other people have legitimate claims on your attention, but that scarcely affects how she feels.

It's not complicated! :-) When she's about 15, THEN it will be complicated.

I have no idea how it is with little boys. I assume they adore their daddies, too? But with little girls, it's more like a (we hope) platonic love affair.

douglas said...

Yes, I think I do understand that- and perhaps there's a big part of me that's not comfortable being that 'hero' that I know I'm not really. It's my nature to be deferring and to not want to feed a need for attention- I've not been one to seek it, for the most part, and never understood those that did. My worry, I suppose, is that in playing down the attention issue, I end up creating a need for it-

Thanks, though, for reminding me of that role I play in her eyes, and now that you've gotten me thinking about it, I've always seen my Dad as a hero- the everyday kind- the best kind- and he always did his best to live up to it- I know he has flaws, but I also know that I don't know them all. Now as a father, I know how tough a job that is- to preserve that hero that this little boy always looked up to, and still does.

With the boy, I know he does see me in an elevated light. He clues me in a little sometimes. But he also sees me as his biggest obstacle at times- and I think that's good. I have expectations, and hold him to things that he might not like, but he's seen that's a good thing sometimes, so I hope that all works out right in the end.

Sorry to be playing out my parental concerns, but it's a good exercise. Thanks.

Texan99 said...

See, it's never really about whether you live up to the role of hero--assuming, you know, you don't get drunk every day, plunge the family in to penury, and beat everyone. But if you're always basically a regular OK guy and not going to prison for serial murder, she'll know soon enough that you're flawed and human--and it won't make the slightest difference to the depth of her hero-worshipping affection. It's just there. You can make it go into hiding now and then, but that's about the worst you can do.

It's the flip side of your absolutely unreasoning love for her, which has very little to do with whether she's growing up into the ideal daughter by some standard or another. Your love can get hidden behind your disappointment or need to discipline, just as hers can get hidden behind disappointment or the need to rebel, but it doesn't really matter. The trick is not to trap her between that overwhelming, unreasoning love and any need to escape you because you're behaving too badly or won't let her grow up or whatever. That's a pretty low standard.

Texan99 said...

PS -- I'm not trying to imply that it's easy to raise her right. I have no idea about that; I've never tried it. I'm just saying that the hero-worship part isn't going to be the problem. That's so hard-wired that you'd have to go to unreasonable lengths to mess it up. That part I do know about.