PINKSTINKS FORCES SAINSBURY’S SUPERMARKET CLIMBDOWN OVER ‘SEXIST’ LABELLING:
Pinkstinks has forced UK supermarket giant Sainsbury’s to withdraw the ‘sexist’ labelling on some of its children’s clothes. The retailer – which has more than 500 stores nationwide – has agreed to re-label thousands of children’s dressing-up outfits after pressure from Pinkstinks and the group’s 13,000 supporters.
Sainsbury’s has now admitted that its gender-specific product-labelling was ‘not acceptable’. The store was selling princess outfits and a ‘circa 1940s’ nurse outfit labelled GIRLS, while pilots, superheroes, soldiers and most astonishing of all, even doctors white coats were marked BOYS.
Abi Moore, Pinkstinks co-founder said: “We asked what sort of message this was sending to girls about what they are ‘fit’ for and what their aspirations might be. As far as we are aware, there are more women at medical school than men nowadays. On our website – www.pinkstinks.co.uk - one of our most popular role models is Flight Lieutenant Kirsty Moore, the first female Red Arrows pilot. An amazing achievement and yet Sainsbury’s pilots’ outfits were also labelled ‘boys’. As were the army outfits even though women have been fighting alongside men at the front line for years. We simply drew to Sainsbury’s attention the fact that it would be a hugely confident and independent little girl who would dare risk the ridicule of her friends by asking for a costume in-store clearly ‘meant’ for boys, no matter how much she wanted to dress up like a doctor, while the nurses outfit sends a message to boys that they are not ‘meant’ to be nurses either.”
Sainsbury’s has pledged the outfits with new non-gender specific labels will be in-store from July. Sainsbury’s customer director, Gwyn Burr, told Pinkstinks: “It isn't
acceptable to suggest certain professions are the reserve of any gender. This is an error and one I am seeking to address ASAP. The new labels which will be non gender specific will go on the next allocation of clothing, so will be in store from July.”
Says Abi: “Though this may seem trivial, it is important. This kind of labelling is
part of the drip, drip of messages that girls (and boys) receive on a daily basis about their roles in life and the expectations that they should have. Pinkstinks is committed to tackling any kind of gender stereotyping, in particular that which is aimed at children, which we see as damaging, limiting or just plain old-fashioned. We want to congratulate Sainsbury’s on its swift action to redress this matter and hope other retailers will follow their lead. We will be watching.”
For further information contact Lucy Lawrence, Head of communications, at media@..., or on 020 8318 4582. For out-of-hours enquiries please phone 07887 635698.
MORE INFO ON PINKSTINKS:
Pinkstinks was established in 2008 to challenge the culture of pink which invades every aspect of girls' lives. In 2009 its founders won the Sheila McKechnie Foundation’s campaigners award in the Women Creating Change category.
Last December, Pinkstinks ran the campaign Early Learning Centre – Early Learning Emergency, to try and raise parents’, educationalists’ and other concerned parties’ awareness of the widespread gender-stereotyping of the toys and dressing-up outfits being sold in its stores. We felt very strongly that, although the ELC is by no means the only such offender on the high street, its commitment to stretching children’s boundaries was being directly undermined by the products it was marketing towards girls while, at the same time offering boys all manner of exciting action,
adventure, educational and other toys. That campaign received coverage on hundreds of websites, in newspapers, on TV and radio, in 43 countries around the globe and gained us more than 11,000 supporters on Facebook alone.
Pinkstinks aims to counteract the national obsession with celebrities and to champion women who we see as inspirational, important, ground-breaking and motivating. Our website is for parents and non-parents alike and aims to gather support, promote discussion and ultimately to mobilise that support to influence commerce and the media about the importance of promoting positive gender roles to girls.
Also, under development, is our project cooltobe.me, aimed directly at children themselves. Using the best in design, writing, interactivity and content, we will use the power of the web and multi-media to challenge the norm. Unlike many toy manufacturers we will credit our audience with intelligence. We will engage with girls - and boys - to give them something real and cool to aspire to be."
VIVA LA REVOLUCION FEMINISTA!
Showing posts with label toys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label toys. Show all posts
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Monday, 29 June 2009
New Book Extract: 'Turning Children into Consumers' by Sharon Beder
[This book report is from Media Lens- "Correcting for the Distorted Vision of the Corporate Media" www.medialens.org, please sign up to their emailed 'media alerts' to receive more info about media-related books like this one]
Introduction
Sharon Beder, visiting professor at the University of Wollongong, Australia, is one of our favourite political analysts. Her book ‘Global Spin’ (Green Books, 1997), is a devastating exposé of corporate, including corporate media, manipulation of politics and culture. Like Mark Curtis’s ‘The Ambiguities of Power,’ it is a book that defies attempts to underline the interesting bits - it’s all interesting! The title of Beder’s new book is self-explanatory: ‘This Little Kiddy Went To Market- The Corporate Capture Of Childhood.’ (Pluto Press, 2009)
Once again, this is a must-read analysis explaining how people and planet are being systematically subordinated to profit. We were so impressed by the second chapter, ‘Turning Children Into Consumers,’ that even before finishing the book we wrote to Beder asking if we could use some of it in a guest media alert. She has very kindly agreed. You can order a copy of ‘This Little Kiddy Went To Market’ at a specially discounted price from Pluto Press here: http://www.plutobooks.com/beder/ Sincere thanks to Sharon Beder and Pluto Press for letting us publish this tremendous material.
We invite you to imagine a world in which Beder’s work was “on every school curriculum”, as John Pilger recommends. Imagine if children were provided with tools of intellectual self-defence to counter the relentless campaigns of corporate manipulation. It is simultaneously depressing and heartening to consider how much happier, healthier, more compassionate our society would be as a result.
David Edwards and David Cromwell
Media Lens
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TURNING CHILDREN INTO CONSUMERS
Sharon Beder
Extracted from “This Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Capture of Childhood”, Pluto Press, London, 2009.
Children are naïve about advertising and can easily be manipulated and exploited by marketers to want and demand their products. Corporate marketers believe that overtime they can be shaped into lifelong consumers with brand loyalties and that can be profitable for decades to come. What is more, children influence family spending decisions worth hundreds of billions of dollars on household items like furniture, electrical appliances and computers, vacations, and even the family car.
Corporations began targeting their marketing messages directly to children during the 1980s, as affluent adult markets became saturated with consumer goods. Large firms established ‘kids’ departments and smaller firms specialised in marketing to children. A number of advertising industry publications were created such as Selling to Kids and Marketing to Kids Report. The academic literature began to feature studies of children as consumers. In the US the amount corporations spent marketing to children under twelve increased by five times between 1980 and 1990 and ten times more during the 1990s. In 2004 around $15 billion was being spent marketing to children.
Conferences on the best ways to market to children are held all over the world. There are also awards for the best advertisements and marketing campaigns with hundreds of entries. Much marketing to children now consists of sales promotions such as direct coupons, free gifts and samples, contests and sweepstakes, and public relations exercises such as using celebrities and licensed characters to visit shopping centres and schools. These additional forms of marketing have supplemented rather than replaced advertising as the importance of the children’s market has grown. Their aim however is the same as advertising.
The international children’s market is increasingly attractive to transnational corporations who seek to make their brands and products popular in different cultural milieus. The food industry was a pioneer in these efforts. In 1997 Brandweek magazine noted that McDonald’s was the favourite fast food all over the world and Coca-Cola the favourite drink.
To read the rest of this media alert, please go to: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php
Introduction
Sharon Beder, visiting professor at the University of Wollongong, Australia, is one of our favourite political analysts. Her book ‘Global Spin’ (Green Books, 1997), is a devastating exposé of corporate, including corporate media, manipulation of politics and culture. Like Mark Curtis’s ‘The Ambiguities of Power,’ it is a book that defies attempts to underline the interesting bits - it’s all interesting! The title of Beder’s new book is self-explanatory: ‘This Little Kiddy Went To Market- The Corporate Capture Of Childhood.’ (Pluto Press, 2009)
Once again, this is a must-read analysis explaining how people and planet are being systematically subordinated to profit. We were so impressed by the second chapter, ‘Turning Children Into Consumers,’ that even before finishing the book we wrote to Beder asking if we could use some of it in a guest media alert. She has very kindly agreed. You can order a copy of ‘This Little Kiddy Went To Market’ at a specially discounted price from Pluto Press here: http://www.plutobooks.com/beder/ Sincere thanks to Sharon Beder and Pluto Press for letting us publish this tremendous material.
We invite you to imagine a world in which Beder’s work was “on every school curriculum”, as John Pilger recommends. Imagine if children were provided with tools of intellectual self-defence to counter the relentless campaigns of corporate manipulation. It is simultaneously depressing and heartening to consider how much happier, healthier, more compassionate our society would be as a result.
David Edwards and David Cromwell
Media Lens
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TURNING CHILDREN INTO CONSUMERS
Sharon Beder
Extracted from “This Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Capture of Childhood”, Pluto Press, London, 2009.
Children are naïve about advertising and can easily be manipulated and exploited by marketers to want and demand their products. Corporate marketers believe that overtime they can be shaped into lifelong consumers with brand loyalties and that can be profitable for decades to come. What is more, children influence family spending decisions worth hundreds of billions of dollars on household items like furniture, electrical appliances and computers, vacations, and even the family car.
Corporations began targeting their marketing messages directly to children during the 1980s, as affluent adult markets became saturated with consumer goods. Large firms established ‘kids’ departments and smaller firms specialised in marketing to children. A number of advertising industry publications were created such as Selling to Kids and Marketing to Kids Report. The academic literature began to feature studies of children as consumers. In the US the amount corporations spent marketing to children under twelve increased by five times between 1980 and 1990 and ten times more during the 1990s. In 2004 around $15 billion was being spent marketing to children.
Conferences on the best ways to market to children are held all over the world. There are also awards for the best advertisements and marketing campaigns with hundreds of entries. Much marketing to children now consists of sales promotions such as direct coupons, free gifts and samples, contests and sweepstakes, and public relations exercises such as using celebrities and licensed characters to visit shopping centres and schools. These additional forms of marketing have supplemented rather than replaced advertising as the importance of the children’s market has grown. Their aim however is the same as advertising.
The international children’s market is increasingly attractive to transnational corporations who seek to make their brands and products popular in different cultural milieus. The food industry was a pioneer in these efforts. In 1997 Brandweek magazine noted that McDonald’s was the favourite fast food all over the world and Coca-Cola the favourite drink.
To read the rest of this media alert, please go to: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php
Thursday, 25 June 2009
'Fallen Princesses': Anti-Disney Art
Disney.
What images and emotions does this word conjure up for you?
For years now, I've been wanting to create a visual image- a piece of artwork- that sums up how I feel about the sexist, racist, capitalist, (add your own 'ist' here), Nazi-funding empire that is 'Disney'.
Finally the life-long dream was fulfilled when, thanks to a photoshop-savvy friend (view her online news and culture mag here: http://www.labouchemag.com/), the image of TinkeREBEL burning down the pink Disney princess castle appeared within the CRAP! Collective's 'Raise Some Hell!' zine (see PDF in sidebar, or email the Collective for a copy of the zine). The Collective is planning to create a series of these images- probably as more of a cathartic remedy for ourselves, rather than a political statement! (Get in touch with us for collaborative possibilites, or if you know of any great anti-Disney art out there that would satisfy our bloodlust)...
Anyway, when reading the blog 'blue milk' (http://www.bluemilk.wordpress.com/), I saw this series of wickedly stunning photographs entitled 'Fallen Princesses' by Dina Goldstein (See 'Cinderella' photo opposite; more photos from the project here: http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/11918), and they totally hit the spot! Although they're not anti-Disney, and also aren't empowering images of the women, they are certainly thought-provoking, and it's refreshing to see the Disney facade stripped away. As Dina describes them: "These works place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The '...happily ever after' is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues...such as illness, addiction and self-image issues".
Have you created feminist anti-Disney art? Send us a photo here!
What images and emotions does this word conjure up for you?
For years now, I've been wanting to create a visual image- a piece of artwork- that sums up how I feel about the sexist, racist, capitalist, (add your own 'ist' here), Nazi-funding empire that is 'Disney'.
Finally the life-long dream was fulfilled when, thanks to a photoshop-savvy friend (view her online news and culture mag here: http://www.labouchemag.com/), the image of TinkeREBEL burning down the pink Disney princess castle appeared within the CRAP! Collective's 'Raise Some Hell!' zine (see PDF in sidebar, or email the Collective for a copy of the zine). The Collective is planning to create a series of these images- probably as more of a cathartic remedy for ourselves, rather than a political statement! (Get in touch with us for collaborative possibilites, or if you know of any great anti-Disney art out there that would satisfy our bloodlust)...
Anyway, when reading the blog 'blue milk' (http://www.bluemilk.wordpress.com/), I saw this series of wickedly stunning photographs entitled 'Fallen Princesses' by Dina Goldstein (See 'Cinderella' photo opposite; more photos from the project here: http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/11918), and they totally hit the spot! Although they're not anti-Disney, and also aren't empowering images of the women, they are certainly thought-provoking, and it's refreshing to see the Disney facade stripped away. As Dina describes them: "These works place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The '...happily ever after' is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues...such as illness, addiction and self-image issues". Have you created feminist anti-Disney art? Send us a photo here!
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
We will not be Sassified! a poem for grrls
We are Girls.
We are Sassy Girls.
Are we Sassy, Girls?
We are wild!
We love rainbow colours!
We wear dungarees and get all muddy!
We ride bikes- faster than the boys!
We play pirates, spaceships and pretend to be dinostegleosauroctopusses!
Girls, we aren’t Sassy.
Sassy is Silly!
We are …
Smart
Strong
Successful
Scary
Skateboarders
Sorcerers
Special
Solar-powered
Super
Splendid
Subversive
Supportive
Survivors
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
We are Sweet Sea-faring Songstresses Sizzling Soya Sausages for Sunday Supper with our Sisters.
Sorcerers
Special
Solar-powered
Super
Splendid
Subversive
Supportive
Survivors
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
We are Sweet Sea-faring Songstresses Sizzling Soya Sausages for Sunday Supper with our Sisters.
But…
We will Slingshot you into Space with our Self-made Scuzzle-guns if you dare Step aboard our Ship!
So.
Screw you!
We ain’t Sassy, Sir.
So.
Screw you!
We ain’t Sassy, Sir.
anti-copyright (taken from Spratz! a feminist kidzine. For those of you that haven't heard of 'Sassy Girls', they are a cheaper Bratz doll substitute. But they sting just as bad)
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