I hesitated to insert this bit of commentary into my review of Winnie the Pooh because I’m dead serious about it, and I couldn’t find a way to make it work amongst the preposterous “complaints” about the film that filled my “screed.” (Though obviously not everyone can see sarcasm even when it’s staring them in the face.) But there’s this, too: what I’m about to complain about is not something that’s uniquely a Winnie the Pooh problem but yet another example of a problem that plagues our pop culture. So it didn’t seem fair to make it seem like I was piling on poor old Pooh.
Here it is now.
I was sitting there watching Winnie the Pooh and letting the silly, utterly inconsequential sweetness wash over me when suddenly it struck me, for the millionth time but with the power of a new ephiphany: Every single character but one here is male… and the only female character is defined exclusively by her motherhood.
Pooh? Male.
Piglet? Male.
Eeyore? Male.
Owl? Male.
Christopher Robin? Male.
Rabbit? Male.
Roo? Male.
Kanga? Mother.
*sigh*
Now, we’re not “supposed” to point out unpleasant stuff like this about kiddie movies. We’re supposed to just relax and enjoy them and let them wash over us and not think about it too much. But that’s why it’s so insidious — and yes, I mean that deliberately: insidious.
If our pop culture were pretty balanced among some stories that were mostly about boy characters and some stories that were mostly about girl characters and some stories that were about a fairly balanced bunch of both boy and girl characters and some stories that 75/25 boys/girls and some stories that were 75/25 girls/boys, and so on, it wouldn’t matter. But this is not how it is. The vast majority of stories are about male characters. The vast majority of stories about groups of character feature lots of different male characters — often defined by various traits: The Fat One, The Smart One, The Clumsy One, The Daring One, and so on — and perhaps, if we’re lucky, a single female character who is defined solely by her gender: The Girl One. Nothing beside femaleness is needed to define this character: she is not brave or cowardly, reckless or prudent, smart or dumb — she’s just the girl. She’s probably pretty, because that’s how you know she’s a girl: she’s there to make the world more pleasant for the male characters. She might need to get rescued at some point. She’s almost definitely the carrot dangled in front of The Leader One, with the prospect of her as the prize he wins if he succeeds.
Now, in the world of Pooh, Kanga does not serve this purpose… but she also serves no other purpose but to be mothering. She says and does pretty much nothing but deliver gentle maternal scolds to all the boys around her, who clearly — boys being boys and all — need it. (That’s sarcasm.) But there’s no reason in the universe why Owl could not be female: no story hinges on Owl being male. There’s no reason in the universe why Rabbit could not be female: no story hinges on Rabbit being male.
No, I don’t think that A.A. Milne chuckled evilly to himself and set out to exclude female characters from his stories because he hated women. He was only unconsciously regurgitating the biases of our culture: that maleness is the default, the neutral, and that there’s no reason for a character to be female unless ladyparts are required (such as, in this case, having given birth).
Here’s where the insidious comes in: When all children see are stories in which boy characters run the gamut of human potential and girl characters are only notable for their girlness, they internalize these notions. They learn that boys can do anything and girls can only be a narrow sort of “girlness.” Girls are never The Funny One or The Depressed One or The Wise One.
Kids see this in even the “inoffensive” children’s stories, like Winnie the Pooh’s tales. Like in the Toy Story movies, which grudgingly allow more than one female character in, but again only when they must be female — of course Bo Peep and Jessie the Cowgirl have to be girls — but never when the gender of a toy is absent or ambiguous: Rex or Slinky or Hamm or many of the other toys could have been female, but aren’t. Even the really good, really wonderful, really must-see stories follow the same plan.
It’s depressing to realize this, if you care about exposing children — boys and girls alike — to fairer, more humanist ideas about what they are capable of.
And that’s why it must be pointed out. When even the “nice” movies engage in this, these biases get deeply ingrained and powerfully reinforced in our individual subconsciouses and in our cultural supraconsciousness.
I’m not suggesting that anyone should have changed Milne’s characters in the name of feminism. I am suggesting that we need to be creating new stories that allow girl characters to express the full range of human experience to balance the likes of Milne out… and to make sure that when someone creates a “nice” new story, its Rex or Slinky or Hamm aren’t create male by lazy default.
This is interesting to me because I have a problem with Kanga in the movies after having read the books. Disney portrays Kanga as a kind and reserved moher. There’s nothing objectionable about that on the surface, until you look at the source material. She’s totally different. We first meet her when Pooh, Piglet, and Rabbit try to kidnap her son. She figures out what’s happening immediately, but plays along until she eventually turns the tables on them and it ends up as a wickedly funny prank, if a bit cruel (but again…they kidnapped her son, so…). The best chapter in either of the books and her character has as much depth as any of the others, but she happens to be a mother.
Thank you!
FINALLY a valid point!
I have (more or less) been asked to leave this site.
I will do so.
Goodbye.
Hmmm, that may be so. But a well-developed Smurfette is still a Smurfette. There’s no reason nor excuse for there only being one female character, who also just so happens to be a mother. That’s what MaryAnn is complaining about.
uhhhmmm. love?
you DO know that A.A. Milne wrote the original Winnie the pooh stories from being inspired by watching and listening to his son (the real) Christopher Robin Milne, playing with his toys, right?
Being a little BOY, of course Christopher Robin’s teddy bear (pooh) and his other toys would be predominantly MALE! Just as any little GIRL’s toys would be “female”, in her mind.
PLEASE! I mean, honestly. must EVERYTHING be a flipping GENDER ISSUE??
Look at how many books, cartoons and the like have predominantly female characters!
Why is THAT not an issue of “sexism”? Because then it’s predominantly FEMALE characters, and, oh, THAT’S okay.
Which is SEXIST, in and of itself! How would you feel if MEN’S groups constantly whinedabout TV shows, movies, books and so-on with predominantly female characters, and insisted upon shoving male characters in, where they are neither needed or wanted? (I doubt things like “Sex and the City” would have been quite the same).
Can’t we just leave the guys alone, for a change?
And we wonder why Western men are so sick of us, refusing to marry, and are going on shooting sprees.
Anyone ever wonder about that??
Yes, they’re *so* put upon.
Holy shit. Feminism makes men go on shooting sprees? Holy shit.
And I’m not your “love.”
please read what i say above, dear.
You’re new here, so I’ll give you the rules. Don’t be an asshole. Don’t be a troll. Play nicely and carry on a conversation like an adult, or leave.
MaryAnn, MaryAnn. A simple scrolling down in the comments reveals that you are insulting people like calling their reading comprehension bad. I agree with this comment, but take your own advice, please. Thank you.
Your reading comprehension *is* bad.
Thanks for admitting that I am correct, MaryAnn.
You’re not correct. And I’m very close to giving you the pleasure of banning you.
YES! Thank you!!!
Okay… Why is it, that when the characters on a show, in a book or movie are predominantly male, it’s always; “Ooooh!!! SEXISM, SEXISM, SEXISM!!!”??
But when it’s the reverse, and the characters are predominantly FEMALE (or completely female), it’s all; “Oh! Now THAT’S progress, tra-la-la-la-la!”?
Another rule: No strawmen.
You’re off to a bad start.
No. I simply disagree with all this horse shit.
And of course, we can’t have THAT, now can we?
Dictatorship cannot tolerate dissent, can it, love?
(And I am BRITISH, so we say “Love” alot. Sorry.)
…and no. You are not my “love”, I rather suppose.
(don’t hate you, either, but… yea)
“You’re new here, so I’ll give you the rules. Don’t be an asshole. Don’t be a troll. Play nicely and carry on a conversation like an adult, or leave.”
Excuse me??????
Really????
You’re rubbishing a cartoon bear, You’re rubbishing an entire gender, (Men) and you tell *ME *to “carry on a conversation like an adult”?
Oh, please! Really! Come now!
Get over your *special* privilege!
Fine, though.
I’ll happily leave your site.
Oh, One last thing before I go.
I didn’t say that “feminism” is directly responsible for men that go on shooting sprees. Don’t take my words out of context and try to misrepresent what people say.
I would elaborate on what I meant, when I said that, but your mind is so filled with Androphobic hate, it would be a waste of both our time. despite my harsh words, I wish you well, and i hope you can get past your hatred for half the human population.
That’s a lot of hate.
Take care. And goodbye.
…and the problem with stories with mostly BOY characters, becomes a feminist target.
Just putting that out there.
Yes. To what you said about A.A. Milne and his son.
No, Just because J.K. Rowlings main character was a boy, doesn’t mean she is disguising her gender, in any way.
I’m a writer, myself. Some of my main characters are male, some are female. So what does that mean?
Oh, that’s right, it means NOTHING.
What about male writers whose lead character(s) is/are female? Are they “disguising” their gender, as well?
Oh, no. of course not. As with everything when it comes to these silly ‘gender issues’ it only works ONE way, eh?
“So we are making progress”
…no we’re not.
We are just replacing one extreme with another, and shouting victory. -_-
Nope. Roo is an “evil male”.
No…. he got the point, just fine, love.
BINGO!
Oh, for G*d’s sake!
When I was a little girl and watched Winnie the pooh, I didn’t even notice or CARE that most of the characters were male.
Why? Because not EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING was(is) a GENDER ISSUE with me.
Good grief, what utter bollocks!
Uhmm… I used to BE a feminist.
…they have no consciousness, outside themselves and their self centered little agenda.
That’s one of the BIG reasons I left.
And every sexist b–ch of a woman had a FATHER (unless the mother unlawfully refused the visitations of the father, as my Mum did with us) and it doesn’t seem to have done much for their HUMAN consciousness.
I say… You are so narrow-sighted, I am betting you can look through a KEYHOLE with BOTH eyes!
Why do men have to be “Feminists”?
Why don’t you become a Masculinist?
It’s basically asking the same thing, really.
Here’s an idea, Become an EGALITARIAN, then you really WILL be for equality.
Mmm… but I see that misandrist Neanderthals are just ducky!
No double standards here.
Noooooooooooooooo
It wasn’t the name calling, I assure you.
It’s because dictatorship cannot tolerate dissent.
Yes, Love.
But you see?
Feminists have to take such a non-issue and MAKE an issue out of it.
Because… well… Feminists have Issues.
…Did I say “Issues”. I mean they have the whole SUBSCRIPTION!
“Oscar can be cranky but if he were a woman he’d be seen as a bitch or a shrew.”
Bollocks! That is simple assumption, mary, and you know it!
the movies have male actors but in the books only Christopher Robin is male and only Kanga is female but the rest have no genders
Except that all those other characters are referred to as “he,” “him,” etc. You’re seeing male as “neutral,” which proves MaryAnn’s point.
Do why do the movies have male actors? Because our cultural default is male!
Okay so officially they are these genders, but when I thought about it when i was little I thought it was:
Pooh? Male.
Piglet? Female
Eeyore? Male.
Owl? Male.
Christopher Robin? Male.
Rabbit? Female
Roo? Female
Kanga? Female
It makes no difference to the story and isn’t often firmly stated. I always imagined my teddy bears as mostly guys, but it didn’t make a difference to my opinion that girls ruled.
Isn’t Rabbit and Piglet female?
No.
No, but The Birds is coming.
no. the only female is Kanga, Roo’s mother.
What the sh*t? It seems we already solved all problems of the world, when we invest time and energy to study gender of animals in fairy tales :-D
G4.
It’s pretty easy to dismiss Winnie the Pooh as a mediocre kids’ movie, but when even very young kids are getting the message that women don’t matter, and that the girls stay home while the guys have adventures, I actually do take that kind of seriously. You can decide for yourself what you want to invest time in, and you can accuse me of being humorless, but I’d say that that message is responsible for a lot of the problems in the world.
Yes! That’s *exactly* how the world works!
I hope you don’t go to the doctor when you break your arm because there’s no cure for cancer yet…
Uhhhh… talking of missing the point here… not saying you have but you very well may have. There is a lot of debate about the gender of Pooh her/himself…. many opinions land on the decision the the character is actually based on a female bear…. just sayin
And if someone wants to make a film out of Finding Winnie, then we can talk about its representation of women.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/lindsay-mattick/finding-winnie/9780316324908/
This film, however, like Milne’s books about Pooh, has a largely male cast of characters.
Please do tell: What point have I missed?
Or, is it possible that *you* have missed *my* point?
That’s not opinion. That’s fact. So why isn’t Pooh *ever* depicted as female? Why does a woman *never* supply Pooh’s voice?
Just askin’…
Its true there should be more of a variety but remember this is a movie from early 2000s but i also see winnie the pooh through the imagination from cristifer Robin and its about his stuffed animals and as a kid your more likely to make your stuffed animals the same gender as you I had tones of stuffed animals and almost all of them were girls so It can be naturally obvious that his would be all boys except a mother i know their are valid points but this was also based off of a book too and I think it was based off of a MALE author and his stuffed animals he had as a kid.
It’s from 2011, but what does that have to do with anything?
Says who?
Actually, I think there might be some truth to this. When I was a little girl, I made most of my toys female. Now, I did play with Barbies as a kid, but gender-neutral stuffed animals and even pillows, whatever I could get my hands on, were female in my eyes. Still, even then, it’s not absolute. My male cousin had a variety of stuffed animals, and the gender ratio was fairly equal.
I also happen to think it doesn’t even matter. People need to stop coming up with excuses for male-dominated stories(and then dissing female-dominated ones for being “sexist” against men), and consider why the idea of male as the default is so widespread. Winnie The Pooh might have a “reason” to be male-dominated, but it is still part of a larger issue in our pop culture. We’re just sick of male-dominated plots and storylines(and the excuse that they’re “gender-neutral” but still obviously male, which just exacerbates the issue), and want something fresh and new, preferably something female-dominated for a change. Is that so bad?
Isn’t the characters from a little boys imagination? I think that’s why they are mostly male.
Read the rest of the comments thread if you genuinely want a response to this.
The characters of Winnie the Pooh have no sexual private parts, are stuffed animals, and are the figment of a boy’s imagination. To say that Christoper Robin, a prepubescent boy has ‘insidious’ intentions for simply having his imaginary friends also be male is not supported by any parts in the series.
Winnie the Pooh also has nothing to do with gender roles or sex.
Who is saying that?
And yet they are all gendered. And mostly gendered male.
YOU are saying that MaryAnn. That reading comprehension comment you made to me is really blowing up in your face.
You say it is insidious that WP is mostly male (stuffed animals). Well, all of these animals were made up in the mind of Christoper Robin (based on the author’s son with the same name who also even had a bear like winnie the pooh), therefore you are calling him or his son insidious.
I think your problem is that you skim read the Winnie the Pooh stories. You seem to not have a grasp on some key story elements and facts on the author and his original inspirations.
You can prove me right by deleting my comments and banning me. It seems to be your go to reaction when you are not ‘winning’ the argument.
What is wrong with you?
What part of this is at all unclear?
Or this:
Why are you so intent on not hearing what I am saying?
Andi who is the gender boy who owned buzz and the cowboy also identified as a boy and it makes sense that he likes boy stuff. Telling stories about boys is OK
Who says that telling stories about boys ISN’T okay?
What isn’t okay is that the vast majority of stories are about boys.
This isn’t that difficult to understand.
It’s a sad thing to blame men for women not writing more. No one is stopping women. Just get a pencil and a paper and have it. You can do it right now! Cmon, I believe in you!
I’m blaming patriarchy for women not writing more. And it’s the same root cause for your condescension. I hope it makes you feel better.
Explain to us how a stuffed bear who’s character motivations are 1) honey 2) Piglets friendship 3) everyone else’s friendship is giving kids negative gender conventions? Christopher Robin is a prepubescent boy so naturally his friends, who he made up in his head, could also be boy.
There is nothing wrong with identifying as a boy.
I suggest you work on your reading comprehension.
And also learn what a straw man is, and why they are to be avoided.
Your comment here in itself, is a straw man. You dodge the argument i made in my previous post. Try again, but read the books first please ;)
The question you ask is in no way a reasonable response to my essay. I suggest you read it again.
No thanks, I understood your simple point the first time and would much rather read more complex writing like Winnie the Pooh, which you haven’t read. You should read it some time, or better yet, write your own Winnie the Pooh book and if it does poorly, accept that it was your fault and dont try to blame men. No one is stopping you from writing, even simpleton stuff like what you are writing now.
” which a woman author has to disguise her gender (at least initially) and tell a story from a boy’s perspective,”
And now everyone thinks JK Rowling is TERF.
If there are more male writers, there will be more stories with men as leads.
JK Rowling *is* a TERF.
You’re SO CLOSE to getting it.
And who’s preventing more women from writing? You are not close, I’m afraid.
MaryAnn, I think you should write your own Winnie the Pooh. Be a part of the solution.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that you’ve never read Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing. I highly recommend it!
https://amzn.to/3txGRbU
Straw man.
But thank you for providing an example that further proves my point that women can write, be published, and become popular like this book.
Answers that directly address what you asked are literally the opposite of straw men.
I’m beginning to think that you are nothing more than a troll.
Translation: “Oh no, a person who actually read winnie the pooh and knows where its inspirations came from has challenged my simple ideas. Time to name call and deflect” I’m done. Good luck with your failing writing career.
Your comments are complete non sequiturs. You are wasting my time. Enjoy the persecution complex that comes from my banning you.
It seems as though Pixar took your advice :)
Nonsense. There’s no reason why a female owl(or woman in general) couldn’t be a boring, dry professor or stranglehold on academia. This is a reach.
So, what, girls aren’t allowed to be feminine anymore? As long as she has a personality that extends beyond being a perceived “priss”, there’s no reason why Rabbit can’t be female. Also, you do realize you just insulted your auntie by calling her a female stereotype, right?
And yet, strangely enough, they’re still male. Funny how male characters get the benefit of being seen as “androgynous” and “gender-neutral”, while female characters are always definitely identifiable as female. Stop looking for excuses for stories to frequently, year in and year out, be dominated by casts of male characters. There’s no reason why we couldn’t have gotten a female Pooh(I mean, his name is Winnie the Pooh.), a female Piglet(I actually thought he was female, at first!), a female Eeyore, a female Owl, a female Rabbit, a female Christopher Robin, a female joey, a female whatever-character-I-missed. But the prevailing sexism in media dictates that characters are male by default and only female when they need to be: she’s a mother(like Kanga), she’s a love interest, she’s the “emotional” one of the group, she’s a princess, she’s a damsel in distress, something or other. Meanwhile, men can be anything they want to be(up to and including being feminine, which is often used as a joke.). And it sends the message to girls(specifically ones of color) that, no matter what, their existence is always called into question(because their girlness is the only notable or valuable thing about them), while boys(and usually white ones) get to exist freely and do a whole other bunch of interesting and exciting stuff: they’re boys, so they’re the default, and so nobody questions why a boy is the one who’s a hero saving the day or an incompetent lacky or a ferocious dragon or an “ambiguous” toy robot, he simply is.
For your own sake, I insist you do research on “The Smurfette Principle”, why it matters, and why it is a problem. Perhaps this article may be of assistance.
Yeah, but the problem is, hockey is still seen as a traditionally masculine sport. I highly doubt having them both be dressed as ballerinas, ice skaters, cheerleaders, or gymnasts would have been seen the same way. Because male is seen as the default, so a girl can don traditionally masculine gear and pursue “male” hobbies with the girls, no problem! But a guy “can’t”(although we all know of course he can) do the same because femininity is derided and seen as specifically for women(aka: “The Other”). So even relatively harmless attempts to improve the way gender is perceived can reinforce the exact same norms, if not worse ones.
Yes. That is MaryAnn’s exact point. The ONLY reason Kanga is female is so she can be a mother. Because women can only be mothers. If not for the pouch, Kanga would’ve been male. But even then, there’s no reason the joey couldn’t have been female. We could’ve gotten a sweet, heartwarming, and loving mother-daughter relationship. And yet we didn’t. Why? Because there was no “reason” for the joey to be female, of course! *facepalm*
Also, “male boy” is incredibly redundant.
Well, that’s refreshing, at least. Hopefully we’ll get more female characters in the future(including ones who aren’t just “genderswaps” of a male character). It’s certainly not enough, but it’s an improvement.
That’s right! I was actually just thinking about that! It’s good to have more female characters(and more than one in each group), but why do they still feel the need to tip it in favor of the male characters? It’s like they’re trying to say, “You can have more than one female character, but not too many, otherwise it’ll be a ‘girls” show, and we can’t have that, do we? After all, boys ‘won’t’ like it, and we always need to take boys into account first and foremost when making any form of media that’s not specifically aimed at girls!”(because once again, it’s that “male default” complex shining through.).
I was so happy when I saw Haruhi Suzymiya, ANT Farm, and iCarly because they had either three girls and two boys(Haruhi) or two girls and one boy(ANT Farm and iCarly). For once, it was tipped in favor of the female characters! And when the amount of characters in the main cast reaches the double digits? Then you can basically guarantee that there will be more boys than girls in it. Assassination Classroom, for instance, has some of the best male and female characters, and a relatively equal amount. Except it’s still ultimately tipped in favor of the male characters. Thirteen girls, fifteen boys. Trust me, I did my research. If Itona had been female, then it would’ve been even. But, once again, it always has to have more men than women.
It’s also related to a similar phenomenon, called the Token Trio, or Missing Black Woman Formation. The Token Trio, according to TV Tropes, consists of a white man, a black man, and a white woman. Not only is the black woman left out, this formation ensures that there are always more white people than black people AND more men than women. Add a black woman to the trio(resulting in a quartet, of course), and you get an equal amount of black people and white people, AND women and men. But no. Not to mention in these trios(and in general), the white man is almost always the protagonist. ANT Farm, though, inverts this by replacing the black man with a black woman and making HER the protagonist. But it’s still troubling to see so many shows leave black women out, or include as few girls as possible.
The late Dwayne McDuffie used to talk about the “rule of three”: If you include three or more Black people, you’re telling a “Black story,” with all the politics that involves.
https://youtu.be/u16sKK-1oLQ
Which makes sense, but again, most movies don’t have that excuse and yet they make all or most of their characters male anyway.
Except they are still clearly male! They all use male pronouns and refer to themselves as male. The fact that they don’t have visible penises doesn’t change the fact that they’re all to be read as male. The fact that you conveniently see them as “non-gendered” just proves MaryAnn’s argument about male being the default. How come we don’t see female characters as gender neutral? Because they’re always heavily coded as girls: pink bows, heels, dresses, eyelashes, etc. In a gender-diverse or female-dominated cast, having a female character(or more than one) who looks like this isn’t a problem; there’s nothing at all wrong with being girly. I’m girly. But when all the characters are featureless and male except for the one who wears a pink bow on her head and has eyelashes, that IS a problem. It’s saying male is the default. Eeyore might wear a pink bow on his tail, but he exists in a story in which most of the characters are male and male is the default, and so, by extension, he’s male, too. Do you see the issue with this yet?
See I5 on the 2017 Bingo card.
The science about women’s athletic abilities seems to be sort of inconclusive, partly because there are so few female athletes to study (at least in comparison to men). The term “vicious circle” may apply here.
This. So much this.
One other thing I’d also like to point out is that…the problem with the Smurfette principle is that when you do include female characters that go against the mold, it will always be called into question.
Because if stories present the idea that male is the default and that female characters are only female because they have to be, it sends the message that female characters’ mere existence requires an explanation. Think of how the Transformers creators stated they wouldn’t include more female Transformers because a female Transformer apparently “requires an explanation all on its own”. Characters can never be female, just because. They have to be female because the plot required them to be. Meanwhile, males get to exist freely without being questioned for their existence. Nobody questions a male character because male is the default state of every living being, even if that living being is an anthropomorphic toy, dog, monster, or little yellow blob, even when it would actually make more sense for them to be female, like the hyenas in The Lion King or the male calico cat in Home(granted, Haruhi Suzumiya also had a male calico cat, but they specifically pointed out how weird it was in-universe, never mind the fact that it was talking, plus, the main cast comprises of three girls and only two boys, so I’ll let it slide.).
And because so many stories feel the need to have an exhausting overabundance of male characters, people absorb the message that this is how it should be, that a story needs a prominent male character(or perhaps more than one) in order to properly function. I know we all like to talk about how stories often include a girl or a black person as a quota to “check boxes”, but there seems to be another unspoken quota, too: that every story apparently NEEDS a male character in it to drive the story, even when the cast is predominantly female, because a guy lets you know the show is worth watching and without him something is wrong. I cannot tell you the number of times I have heard people complain that a story doesn’t have “enough male characters” in it and is thus practicing sexism against men, when these same people will brush off stories that don’t have enough female characters because “it’s just a story” “not every story needs to include women because you say it should” or “it just happened that way”. So female characters aren’t necessary, but male characters always are.
Here’s some examples: Take My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic(and it’s human-focused spinoff, My Little Pony: Equestria Girls), for instance. As others in the comments have graciously pointed out, it’s an animated show starring six colorful talking ponies: studious Twilight Sparkle, gentle animal-loving Fluttershy, workaholic cowgirl Applejack, dramatic fashionista Rarity, sporty “awesome” Rainbow Dash, and giggly party-throwing Pinkie Pie(my personal favorite, but I digress), lovingly dubbed “The Mane Six” by fans. All of them are girls, and the only male among them is Spike, Twilight’s baby dragon companion who has an unrequited crush on Rarity(she does care about him, though.). All of them are diverse and unique from each other, and one of the intended takeaways from the show is that there are many ways to be a girl, and that none of them are wrong. Lauren Faust self-identifies as a feminist, and says that her goal was to have a show of her own “for and about girls”, in which the cast of female characters was varied and diverse, and not bound by their status as “the girl”, or a necessity to be perfect. There are a variety of girls to choose from and relate to, and that’s part of what makes the show unique(although it shouldn’t be unique.). And yet despite it being aimed at girls(which may incite an argument that a female-viewing audience is the only case in which you can have a largely female cast), it has managed to garner a large male following of self-proclaimed “bronies”(older female fans such as myself exist, too; they call themselves “Pegasisters”.), thus subverting the notion that shows about girls can only be enjoyed by girls.
And yet, for some reason, there are some people(bronies included) who think it’s sexist that the show doesn’t have a lot of male characters, or think that the male characters are underrepresented and underdeveloped, and want the show to include more of them, preferably in mane roles. Because a show about girls aimed at girls is not good enough, we NEED a male character to assure us that this show isn’t “girly” and took us men into account! Even though the show is supposed to be a female-empowering one with the prominent characters as female, because we need more of that in our media today! But because maleness is seen as the norm and femaleness is seen as a purposeful deviation, introducing more female characters into your work is derided by some close-minded folks, who feel the need to remind you to “redirect” back to what is normal.
And it’s not just MLP. I’ve heard similar complaints about Sailor Moon(although fortunately not as much) about how it’s sexist that only women get to be Sailor Senshi, and that the men are always “emasculated” so the women can save them. Even though the manga is wish fulfillment for teen girls, and Naoko Takeuchi created it with the intent to show that women are strong and should rely on each other instead of on men, and there are clear feminist themes in the show, such as the girls standing up to Jadeite’s sexism, the use of femininity as a source of strength, and the Moon Kingdom being a matriarchy. But no, all that gets thrown out the window because a few people got mad that men, who SHOULD be running the show, are shoved off to the sidelines. I normally don’t like saying this, but…now you know what it’s like, guys. Suck it up or leave.
And then there’s Project MC^2, in which the protagonists are a quartet of teen girls who are the smartest in their class and get admitted into an all-female spy organization that secretly runs the world and stops crime(with the leader of the organization literally saying “that’s right, women do run the world!”). Although one of the girls was always a member and is the daughter of the leader. While the show can get a bit cheesy and unrealistic at times, it’s also genuine good-natured fun designed to encourage girls to go into STEAM without coddling them or making science “easier” for them; it has lots of girly stuff, but it seems less like gender essentialism and more like making it fun for girls in a way that isn’t contrived or forced. And yet naysayers still rag on it for not having any prominent male characters and apparently making all men idiots, and sending the message that girls are smarter than guys. I even saw a review saying that after watching it with their son and daughter, they somehow felt the need to remind them that guys aren’t dumb. Because that’s the lesson we should be taking from this and guys’ fragile feelings must always be taken into account before anything else(such as, you know, empowering girls?). Don’t these people ever get tired of prominent male characters? Don’t these people ever get tired of the year in, year out repetition of male-dominated casts and male-centric storylines? Don’t these people ever get tired of women being shafted, sexualized, tokenized, and ridiculed in media? I guess not.
My point is, even when we make further improvements on the treatment and depiction of women in popular culture, each time we shift away from the preconceived male “default”, there will always be naysayers who decry such forms of media for not depicting what “should” be normal: stories about men, by men, for men, and dominated by a cast of men. Even when you try to fix that, there are people who will act like you’re the problem for wanting to see more of yourself in media, because male must always be the default and females are a last resort that aren’t worth including unless extremely necessary. And that, my friends, is why The Smurfette Principle still persists to this day: because people are all too accepting of and comfortable with the status quo.
Fascinating points
Thanks! I’ve been telling people this for ages and they predictably just can’t seem to get it, so it’s good to know someone smart is out there who agrees with me! >////<
The scary thing about what you’re describing is that it’s so invisible
– as you mention, it’s hard to get people to even understand what you mean when you point it out (like trying to explain water to a fish – they can’t imagine what you’re talking about)
– and yet this sort of thing plays a huge role in shaping people’s attitudes –
Yeah, the water to a fish thing is a very good simile for this because this type of sexism is everywhere and yet people are either desensitized to it or choose not to see it, while not realizing that dismissing it is only reinforcing it and thus proving that it, in fact, DOES exist.
Like, I’m an aspiring writer and my stories are always centered around female characters of color. I hope that when I’m an adult they’ll eventually get published, but for now I’m happy with showing them to my family and seeing what they think. At least, I used to be. Sharing my stories with my family has always been a hassle because they always bite my head off for “hating on men” or excluding men in my stories. They’re always saying my stories are sexist because they have very few male characters and cast men off to the sidelines and focus on women being powerful. As if men are underrepresented in media by any stretch of the imagination. They say I’m going out of my way to make men look bad, but the only reason they think that is because they’re so used to men being the dominant, prominent characters in fiction, and thus can’t conceive of a story in which men just…don’t play that big of a role. The same way women have not played a big role in stories written by men, or have been hypersexualized, infantilized, degraded, fridged, or made as tokens. But when I point out this fact to the members of my family, they simply don’t care or deny it exists, or deny that it is a problem.
It’s just…you can write as many male-dominated stories as you want and society will never bat an eye, because men are supposed to be the movers and shakers of any given story and if you complain about that then you’re the man-hater who gets told that stories don’t need to represent women well, after all it’s not like women are expected to do much but look pretty and get kidnapped. But the second you write something centered around women you get all this unnecessary flak for being “misandrist” or “ignoring men”, because unlike with women, representation of men is required for a story to be good and be given the time of day. People like this think they’re helping matters, when all they really are is victims of a society that tells them that men’s point of view matters more than women’s so it’s only necessary to write about them.
It’s nice that your family members are interested in reading and engaging with your work – but I know it can also be frustrating to feel isolated in one’s outlook
At the same time, arguing and debating so much is great for sharpening one’s own reasoning skills, and frustration can often feed and strengthen one’s sense of inner drive
It can also be psychologically exhausting – I hope you’re also seeking other outlets, other responses to your storytelling, from different perspectives – friends, teachers, classmates – it can be reassuring if you also have feedback from people who share some of these concerns you’re voicing
That’s true, but it’s still progressive even in that respect. Lauren Faust created the show specifically to show that shows for girls aren’t inherently lesser just because they’re aimed at girls, and that media made for girls so often talks down to girls and underestimates their intelligence. She made this show because she wanted an intelligent, empowering show that little girls could watch with their parents together, that showed that there was more than one way to be a girl, rather than shoehorning them into a box of “perfection”. See more on her intentions with the show here.
In her own words:
So while I do agree that shows about girls shouldn’t automatically be relegated to “girl” media, I don’t think that the fact that a show is girly or aimed at girls should necessarily negate its value or be seen as less than…but I also think that those shows should be seen as okay for boys to watch as well. Fortunately, there are a lot of male fans who call themselves “bronies”, which is an improvement, but they’re still often made fun of, which is saddening. She stopped working on the show after Season 2, which is also saddening, but it’s good that the writers left behind still developed the characters well and treated them with respect. I think they helped in the effort to save femininity from a bad reputation.
I don’t like Harry Potter, but that makes me worried…was Harry Potter originally supposed to be about a girl(like, say, Hermione, for instance), but editors forced her to make it about a boy? I hear a lot of Potterheads claim that Hermione would make a better main character, which makes me suspect that she actually WAS going to be the main character, but she was told by higher-ups that a story about a girl “wouldn’t sell”(uguggggh), and forced her to write it about Harry. The same thing applies for her disguising her gender: was she originally going to do it or did she do it because she was told to, with the reasoning being that nobody will want to read a story if it’s written by a woman?
It makes me fume at the unfairness of it all.
Don’t forget Teen Titans, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Two girls, three boys. Though they’re somewhat balanced out by Terra and Kristy respectively. Also, Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum, Let’s Go Luna! and Flugals have two boys and one girl. Although the first one is evened out by their robot pal Berby and Yadina’s stuffed turtle Dr. Zoom being girls(who refreshingly lack tertiary sexual characteristics), and how, half the time, they visit a child version of a historical figure who is a girl. And Power Rangers always has a male leader, regardless of the gender ratio of the rest of the group. At least Inside Out, iCarly, ANT Farm, and Haruhi Suzumiya have three girls and two boys, or two girls and one boy. But it’s unfair, gotta agree.
What?
Which can be fixed by having multiple female characters with different character traits, so that no one of them can be said to represent traits that all women apparently possess. I’ve been trying to explain this to someone I know for quite some time: In a show with only one female character, that female character, by virtue of being the only one, is automatically characterized primarily by her sex. As a result, any traits you could possibly give her WILL be seen as a reflection of women on a whole, whether you intended it to be that way or not. In the case of Winnie The Pooh, Kanga, the only female character, is a mother, and thus her characterization sends the message that ALL women have to be mothers/motherly.
But if you have multiple female characters(take Strawberry Shortcake, for instance), you can no longer characterize any one of them as “the girl” since they’re ALL girls, so you actually have to put effort into distinguishing them and giving each of them their own unique traits to set them apart. So rather than having one female character represent “all women”, you have multiple girls across the board who represent femininity in various different ways, which avoids shoehorning girls into a certain box. Just like with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic above, the message is that there is more than one way to be a girl, that no two girl is the same, so obviously there are a wide array of female characters for girls to relate to to choose from.
I feel like that’s what Sesame Street was trying to do, too, but like Lady Tenar said, they run into the problem of female characters being judged differently for possessing certain negative character traits, partly because of negative views of women, and partly because of those characters being accused of being negative stereotypes of women. Which is in turn the fault of female characters being relied on to represent their entire gender alone, which in turn puts women into a box.
Reminds me of how, in the MHA fandom, someone brought up on a subreddit what they thought about either Deku, Bakugou, or Todoroki being made female instead of male. Most people liked it, obviously, but there was at least one person who brought up the fact that, with how ruthlessly Bakugou bullies and abuses Deku, him being made female would make people think she was a Tsundere with a crush on Deku, which might make people take her less seriously. I’ve talked about the problematic sexist elements of the Tsundere archetype before, so I won’t do it here. Back on topic, someone else said that Todoroki being a dude was important because making him female would be reinforcing the idea that it’s only women who can be abused, as well as the problematic implication of the one female lead(even though Ochaco exists) being the one who was abused by her father. Personally, I’m against the implication of cold-hard female characters being secretly vulnerable and having been hurt or abused to be the way they are, so I don’t really mind Todoroki being a boy. But Bakugou or even Deku being a girl wouldn’t be a bad idea either(there are shonen which exist that have female leads, after all.).
Another thing I’ve seen is in the Yandere Simulator fandom, in which people talked about the rivals being male instead of female, only for someone to point out the inherent problem with the fact that them having a crush on the male Senpai(minus his sister, Hanako, of course) would make them gay guys that the female player character ends up killing to be with her love(technically Senpai can be male or female, and their suitors will always be male, so the rivals are already bisexual girls that you can kill; not sure if that’s any better.). So there are all kinds of ways in which changing a character’s gender can make or break a story, but maybe that’s because we let it be an issue.
Holy crap, that forum is trash. Not one person there actually answered the question asked by the OP(which is “why do so many films fail The Bechdel Test?”), save for perhaps one person, as everybody was too busy pissing on the test for something it was never intended to be(claiming that the test treats films which don’t pass as if they’re automatically sexist or automatically feminist if they do pass), convoluting the test so that it was asking a question it wasn’t(asking if talking about traditionally feminine things fails the test; the test clearly says don’t talk about men, I’m not sure how people missed that. If anything, it seems like this was just another attempt to accuse the test of evaluating a film’s sexism, even though there’s nothing wrong with talking about traditionally feminine things.), and acting as if female underrepresentation isn’t a big deal or doesn’t exist(with the only person who pointed out that it, in fact, DOES, accused of “reaching”.). And that was only the first page. I didn’t even read the rest of the forum because it was all a load of horse manure. Just…wow.