The exclamation marks in blog titles will stop any time now. Any time now.
So, do y'all remember sometime last year when we were talking about sexting in here, and I said that I thought things were worse and more restrictive for girls in 2009 than back in my day? If not, too bad. You could look it up. Anyway! I have new evidence.
So, do y'all know who Shiloh Jolie-Pitt is? You can probably guess by the name that she's Brad and Angelina's kid. Furthermore, she's their biological child (and, therefore, hit the genetic megabucks, looks-wise.) She is three. Well, the whole world--by which I mean, of course, the effin' media--is in an uproar because little Miss Jolie-Pitt has a new, short boyish haircut. But even before that, they were on high alert: Angelina dresses her in "boy" clothes, the definition of which seems to be jeans, and shirts that are not pink. Apparently US Weekly did a whole story about whether Brad and Angie were going to confuse young Shiloh about her sexuality if they didn't knock that the hell off. They called in psychology experts and everything to weigh in on this crucial matter. I assume these experts got their psychiatry degrees from the same crackerjack box I did, but nevertheless they apparently said that it was okay as long as Angelina wasn't "repressing" Shiloh by forcing her to wear jeans.
Well, leaving aside the fact that parents of 3 year olds *have* to force their children to wear many things they would prefer not to (i.e. our lil MILF's 3 year old wanted to wear a sundress to school two days ago, in February, in the pouring rain, and protested being forced to wear a sweatsuit and UGGs instead by taking ten minutes to walk from the door to the car), it is apparently a given in 2010 that all little girls want to wear pink ruffles all the time and do not want to wear jeans like, say, their mothers. And if they ever deviate from this path, they are lesbians-in-training.
This is definitely a step back from my childhood wherein it was properly assumed that sometimes little girls would want to wear sparkly tutus and sometimes they'd want to wear grubby playclothes and they might go through phases when they wanted to wear a frilly dress every day and others when they refused to put a dress on unless forced. And there was none of this fetishization of the fucking color pink. My favorite dress when I was five was orange and purple paisley. Shut up, it was 1968. I also had hair shorter than Miss Jolie-Pitt's, which was not *my* choice. My mother followed through on her promise to cut it if I didn't cooperate with brushing it. (For the record, I grew up to have sex with men despite this horrible repression.)
Even in work today, all our stickers are gendered. Spiderman and Transformers for the boys, Disney Princesses and Barbie for the girls. I can't really compare that to my childhood, however, since if I remember correctly, there was no such thing as stickers-for-prizes. We got nice sugary teeth-rotting lollipops at the doctor, thankyouverymuch. But I do remember there being at least a nod towards there being things that boys and girls both like: animals! bike riding!*** Speed Racer! Snoopy!
I dunno. I know I'm just old and cranky, but you can't convince me things haven't gone backwards. Girls can play on boys' sports teams, which is great, but they better have long hair and pink nail polish while they're doing so, which isn't.
xoxo
**Okay, alright, my first bike was a raspberry/magenta color with sparkly silver handlebar grips with fringe and a sparkly silver banana seat, but it wasn't pink and it didn't have a Disney Princess anywhere on it.
9 comments:
Whatever happened to compulsory therapy for budding shrinks? I'm fed up with the parade of "experts" pimping whatever halfass idea the media is promoting this week.
Case in point: E didn't voluntarily wear a dress for any occasion until she was well into college. I leave to your imagination the angst when she seriously considered going to the junior prom in a tux. It won't surprise any well-adjusted human that she turned out just fine.
It isn't just sexism. The job hunt world is packed with fools masquerading as authorities. It's a byproduct of the 24/7 media culture, I think, in which somebody must always pretend to be right and can never admit to not knowing the answer.
Oh, the "experts." We're talking about a society in which the Dr Phils and Dr Drews of the world not only get a platform, but get rich, and MeMe Roth, Nutcase AntiObesity Freak Extrordinaire, is invited on news shows when her only credentials are a non-medical degree, an eating disorder, and blond hair, with a side of self-loathing.
Note how the "experts" are only called on by the popular media to comment on how everything is going to hell in a handbasket because things aren't like they were "in the old days". Those stories are always so conservative, never, for example, how much better off the girls would be if they were raised more gender-neutral and thus more competitive in our globalized economy.
And I note that they're not complaining that the Jolie-Pitt's aren't taking their sons to enough rodeos or out killing small animals so they'll learn to be "real men". (Or maybe they are and you just didn't quote them). The mainstream media is nothing if not 1) deathly afraid of offending their shrinking audience or b) working on the underlying assumptions that societal conservatives are inherently right. However III) they sure know that complaining that some celeb isn't being "traditional" enough can always be guaranteed to get the moralists tut-tutting (witness Mr. Wood's wood) while complaining that a celeb is too traditional will garner not a peep. Not even from their neighbors in Brooklyn who couldn't give a rat's ass about "traditional family values".
I'd never before heard of MeMe Roth but she sure does seem an impressive piece of work. Perhaps she can join Ann Coulter on an all blond, all anorexic, all-intolerance speaking tour. This article in The Guardian seems to skewer her nicely http://bit.ly/6Jw08
See, I don't even see it as a liberal vs conservative thing. It's hard for me to even articulate what I see it as being about instead, but it has something to do with commercialism and conformity. The media exists almost entirely in this society to make people buy shit, and to sell people [whatever] you need to make them conform, squish them into niches, make them tow the line societally-speaking.
I actually totally meant it the way you did. I didn't mean liberal vs. conservative as in current politics. I meant "conservative" as in resistant to societal change, supportive of powerful/wealthy interests, not wanting to rock the commercial boat, etc.
And, as a corollary, supportive of those parts of society that want to continue the reign of the old social order, with regard to gender roles, moral scolds, etc.
Exactly so. Tom Wolfe was very good on this subject in "The Right Stuff" when he was commenting on NASA and media expectations of how astronauts' wives were supposed to act.
But no one wants to talk about bear erotica, DO THEY? hahaha
Nope...just bare erotica (ducking).
Puns are the lowest form of humor. Just sayin'. :-)
Post a Comment