Given that I have the opportunity to watch closely how children are socialized and I believe at some points and some parts I almost have the power to control what the children think and feel at this point. It becomes obvious that gender assignation between femininity and masculinity in childhood is so strongly reinforced, thus producing children with the ability to see the world in those said eyes. Although the world of children are not made up entirely of television, nevertheless they contain bits and pieces of the mechanism that helps children to 'understand' the world. Added to that formula, the prejudices of teachers and parents too make up a child's perception. However, this could work on the opposite case for instance myself and a friend of mine who had a mother and an aunt respectively who were extremely prejudiced (my mother prejudiced and sexist, her aunt xenophobic) whereas herself and myself turned out exactly the opposite, and its not even about 'revenge' at all or 'acting out' (its possible as well to assign such symptoms to women, this is because in the Asian and Muslim world women are considered half of a man, or an incomplete man).
In this case I wanted to talk about Dibo the Gift Dragon. Fascinatingly, there are only two female characters in Dibo the Gift Dragon, Annie and Bunny. Annie in the theme song was 'I'm Annie, I'm kind and I love to cook'. The 'other' female was Bunny, she is the archetypal 'bitchy woman' who stands up for herself and love to make herself pretty, on the other hand Annie (who incidentally is the only human rag doll) only wishes to help others and is very well-liked. For one thing, Bunny is a pink doll, I'm not sure why she is not any other color but its obvious that pink is associated with frivolous womanhood whereas in Annie's case she wears a chef top hat (constantly) and an apron and is constantly cleaning up for everyone else including Bunny (the rest of the cast is an all male cast). In addition to that the clever and the stupid characters are male. Even in this childrens' show it seems that there is already a delineation of the sexes and apparently the spectrum of womanhood is only two, the bitchy Bunny and the subservient Annie.
1 comment:
I totally agree with your article. I was hoping it was just my imagination but sadly not. I hate how at the start when its introducing the characters it says that ' cro knows everything( the blue male character ). I watch loads of kids shows with my toddler and every show is the same. The female is always getting screwed over and the male is never sorry for creating a problem. Ugh very frustrating no wonder there is so much sexism around.
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