Children's Television - Sexist media representing a sexist world.

I’m the first to admit that I am at times a slack mum. What with two children, two jobs, a partner, activism, a social life, a flat and garden and the rest, I wasn’t going to beat myself up for leaving my daughter in front of the telly, sometimes for hours at a time so that I could just get on with it. However it wasn’t something I often admitted to others and I did used to feel guilty. I knew it was bad parenting but the quiet time it gave me was precious and necessary, I thought. Molly loved tv, and could literally watch it for hours, leaving me time to have a cigarette, send some emails, tidy the house, sit and chill for five minutes, whatever!
It did however come as a shock when, surprise surprise, despite all my best efforts at feminist parenting, age four my daughter transformed from a happy-go-lucky confident unselfconscious grubby child into a pristine pink princess with a “passion for fashion”. Her sexist utterances were even more surprising, “girls can’t have short hair”, “boys can’t play fairies” and her refusal to wear anything that wasn’t a dress and pink or sparkly ensured mornings were traumatic for all involved.
Although I tried to deny it for a while, I knew it was my fault, after all mothers are the primary passeroners of patriarchal values. My slackness, my desire for a few quiet moments, had left my daughter vulnerable to the brainwashing. I knew the risks, I knew the danger of the mainstream media, its power to corrupt, and I deliberateraly sat her down in front of it. I thought I could beat it. I couldn’t!

Its sexist, its racist, its homophobic, its classist, it twists reality, it makes us feel insecure, its pushes consumerism down our throats, it promotes violence, competition, vanity, selfishness, and that’s just the children’s programmes, never mind all the rest.
Bob the Builder, Postman Pat, Underground Ernie, Lunar Jim, Gordon the Gnome, Bottletop Bill, Mr. Men Show, Thomas the Tankengine, Roary the Racingcar, eh hello, say no bloody more! Its obvious what the problem is, isn’t it? The whole plotline is based around boys and men, the main character is male. There are sometimes female characters but they’re always the sidekick. Even when the main character is an inanimate object, like a train or car or robot, or an animal, its still blatantly a male character. Even if I had a son I would find these characters deeply sexist, they’re so 2d, strong, clever, they work hard in traditional male roles, they don’t show emotion, etc.
Where are the programmes with girls or women as the stars, where are the female role models? Although few and far between there are programmes where girls and women star such as Peppa Pig, the Little Princess, Bratz, Fifi and the Flowertots. But then these types of programmes are even more disturbing than the overtly sexist ones mentioned above. The female characters in them are kind, caring, passive, spoilt, and immature, they love cooking and ballet and very little more, and they’re all bloody pink!

And it’s not just me with my “warped” feminist mind making problems where there’s none, last year a comprehensive study of children’s television was done and it proved rather conclusively that it is a biased media representing a biased world.
The International Central Institute for Youth Educational Television (better known by its German acronym IZI) released findings on gender representation in 19,664 programmes from 24 countries in what was according to them “the worlds large quantitive media analysis of children’s television so far”. The survey showed very clearly that there IS a gender imbalance in favour of male characters in television programming for children in public and private programmes, domestic and international programmes and in animated and real life formats and that this is the trend all over the world. Surprisingly, to them perhaps, public and state broadcasters have a worse gender balance ratio (31%:69% female to male representation) than their private counterparts who stand at 33%:67%. The reports authors consider this a remarkable result “since public broadcasters – with the public mandate – have the responsibility for representing reality in a balanced way. The reality of human life is 51% female to 49% male (unfortunately the report does not consider those people who are trans, intersex or do not identify as male or female), which could not be found in children’s TV anywhere”.
The researchers found that girls and women account for only 32% of lead characters compared to 68% for boys and men. In some series girls and women are almost absent. Animation programmes have 87% male characters as compared to 13% female and this leads the researchers to conclude that “the reality of children’s television proves. that today gender equality is still a long way off”, but hey we already knew that.
And this is just the gender bias, children’s tv is also racist. 72% of all main characters in children programmers around the world are white. I would also like to know what the figures are in relation to representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people in children’s programming, as well as people with disabilities and I don’t think that I have ever seen any representation of any other family structures other than that of the traditional nuclear family.
Basically this report backs up what many of us have observed, the media, in this case children’s media, as a cultural vehicle only presents an extremely limited, sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist view of society where women and girls are portrayed as beautiful, underweight, sexualised, modest, tidy and moral beings who are motivated by a romantic interest and are dependant on males who, in their turn are leaders, heterosexual, able-bodied and white!

What are we saying to our children? In particular what are we saying to our daughters? We’re saying to them that they can’t be builders, or postmen, or astronauts, or whatever they want, that they can merely aim to being feisty yet fashionable. Little girls are presented as only valid as princesses, pretty in pink, secondary to males. Our daughters are not secondary, they are the primary characters in their own lives, and so should be represented as such.
I hate it on so many levels, for what it does to me, my children, women, and the world. I got so fed up of shouting at the telly, of trying to critique the propaganda with my daughter, of seeing little fairy princess dvds, of seeing advertisements aimed at parents through their children, where girls wear pink and play with dolls and boys wear blue and like transformers. I was going to try to write a letter to the heads of broadcasting for children at the various tv channels, but I reckoned we’re too far gone for that. This rubbish has become an institutional part of our life and we just accept it. Even if I did complain, nothing would change.

Then about six months ago sister fate played her hand and provided a solution for my family that was so simple yet so effective. One night, thank the goddesses, our tv died. It choked, it spluttered and before our very eyes, it passed away. I admit at first I was gutted, what would I do without my almost daily dose of Eastenders, and Neighbours, and Home and Away, but then almost immediately I felt better. Molly cried for a while, but she quickly got over it, after all there are so many things for a five year old to do. She still loves pink, and dresses, and glitter and all that, but maybe that’s just what she likes. But instead of sitting in front of the tv, she spends hours drawing, or reading, or just playing. I have no more or no less time than I had before, but we are all a lot happier doing the things we want to do.

For a practical and immediate solution to the nightmare that is the television just throw the bloody thing out, after all the television will not be revolutionised!


The full report can be found at http://www.br-online.de/jugend/izi/english/publication/televizion/21_2008_E/21_2008_E.htm.

Butterflea, 2008
butterflea@riseup.net
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