When I go to my little cousins' birthday parties I can expect either one of two things: a princess themed party or a superhero themed party. So I was not surprised when I saw my 8-year-old cousin dressed as Elsa at her party a few months back, nor when I ate a piece of cake with Iron Man's face at my 6-year-old cousin's Avenger-themed birthday party. I have been seeing the same thing over and over again since I was having these princess parties myself. What I would really like to see is a picture of Black Widow on a boy's birthday cake. Or blue streamers and ribbons at a girl's party. I would like to walk into a kid's party without it having to be blatantly obvious that it was being thrown for a boy or a girl.
We make it very clear to kids at a young age that certain objects are assigned a gender and it is socially frowned upon if we don't respect the system that has been created. So a girl can't be independent because she must aspire to marriage and God forbid a boy should ever show that he has feelings because that would make him weak. So who are we supposed to point the finger at? The immediate and obvious answer would be to blame parents for not doing their job right, but then again who taught them? The media.
These ideas of gender and heteronormativity aren't just being fed to the younger generation, we see it present in shows and movies made for adults. Whether they are trying to define what it means to "be a real man" like in the show How to Be a Gentleman, or they are perpetuating the idea that as women, all we really think about is guys like in 27 Dresses or basically any other Rom-Com. Although we might overlook hidden messages that are being transmitted in movies and TV shows because, after all it's just a kids show, the truth is that these messages follow us to adulthood and then we pass it on to the next generation.
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