Boys, Girls and Toys- Oh My -

                Generally speaking, the boys side of the toy  is often filled with colors of blues and greens or other cool colors, but not purple, while the girls side of the toy store is filled with pinks and lavenders and oranges, warm colors. Again in terms of colors, the boys side often has strong vivid colors while the girls side has more muted pastels. Over time and as a result of gendering, boys toys have been guns, trucks, building blocks, superheroes, science kits, and action figures with jobs in the military or firefighting or police work while girl's toys have been teddy bears, princess dresses, craft kits, baby dolls, pretty fashionable dolls, or playhouses revolving around domesticity. The girls toy idea promotes domesticity and femininity, often through princesses, possibly teaching girls that if they act the way their toys teach them, their Prince Charming will come and take them away.  The boys toy aisle teaches boys to be active and powerful, a direct contrast to what the girls toys tells them. These gendered toys limit the child's beliefs into what he/she can do in the future. These gendered toys tell girls that it's not right for them to be a firefighter and it's not right for boys to be a stay at home dad.  Good thing is that children are picking up on the fact that they're being socialized to buy certain toys. A little girl named Riley went viral a few years ago after talking about how it's unfair that girls have to buy princess stuff while boys get to buy superheroes.  She makes it a point that boys and girls can want princess and superhero stuff, that toys shouldn't be assigned to one group. 

This ad from Walmart shows boys playing with toys that promote masculinity and violence (shield and axe and Nerf gun), as a rockstar, and with toys that promote building and critical thinking. It shows girls playing with dolls, cooking and being domestic, and doing domestic tasks dressed up like a fairy.

 

Here is a gendered crayon set. Not only are the colors of the boxes themselves gendered, but the names of the crayons and the colors of the crayons are gendered as well. The boys "Truck  Crayon Set" is blue with more vivid and dark crayons, with a lot of crayons in variations of blue. The girls "Princess Crayon Set" is pink with more pastel crayons, with a lot of the crayons being variations of pink.

Here are some gendered blocks, because obviously boys can't play with pink blocks and girls can't play with blue blocks (sarcasm if you couldn't tell).

 

Here is an ad that is pretty good at neutralizing gender norms,  having both boys and girls take part in domestic acts. But, upon further inspection you can see that girls get the pink vacuum while boys get the blue vacuum. The iron and ironing board seem to be relatively neutral.

 This whole video provides a multitude of gendered toy ads over the years. Boys ads often have violent undertones, loud music, and darker colors. Boys toys revolve around, building (0:30, Trio Batcave), violence (2:48, Battlegrounds), or critical thinking (2:32, Battleship). Girls ads are often brighter, happier, and have an overall more positive tone. Girls toys revolve around fashion (3:46, Liv Girls), beauty (3:18, Barbie Glitter Blow dryer), domesticity (5:16, Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery), and motherhood (4:17, Baby Alive).

The Kardashian Phenomenon: News Interpretation

                This article focuses on what the media calls the "Kardashian phenomenon" where their empire is everywhere and inescapable, creating spin-off after spin-off full of drama and family life. While the Kardashians started off from humble beginnings, over the years they have created and maintained pop culture dominance from their reality show, appearing on cover after cover of national and international magazines. Although, the media coverage they often receive is negative and paradoxical to their popularity, but why?

                This article mainly focuses on the Kardashian's life in 2011, the year where Kim got married and divorced, when Kourtney announced her second pregnancy, 3 different Kardashian series were on TV, the family was featured on Barbara Walter's annual Most Fascinating people special, and Rob Kardashian was on Dancing With the Stars. Khloe and her husband Lamar's show, Khloe and Lamar, garnered attention not only in pop culture media, but also drew attention in sports media and raised many questions about Lamar and his basketball playing.

                The article raises the question of why are the Kardashian's popular even though they "lack talent" and are "popular for doing nothing," phrases often found in articles talking about the Kardashians. Viewers discuss their liking of the Kardashians because their lives are real, but so lavish and extreme that watching their show is like a mix between reality TV and primetime dramas. The article then discusses how body image plays a part in the Kardashian empire. Kim herself has been praised over the years for embracing her curvy body type, which contrasts to the stick thin women we have grown used to seeing on TV. Khloe is now being praised for her curvy body, both of these women making body acceptance normalized and also a way to relate to their viewers. While their bodies are curvy and fit, they're bodies more closely resemble the bodies of other women, more so than the stick thin women. Kim has been looked up to as a role model for body acceptance and sex appeal. Over the years, Khloe has been the butt of negative comments about her weight, yet again showing their relateability to their viewers that have dealt with negative comments as well. The article discusses the Kardashians and their familial bond, which, long story short, is pretty much the same as any other family. The article then discusses how the Kardashians are moguls in the social media world and are incredibly popular in business and branding today. Their name is a brand and they raise money by being themselves and releasing products they know people will buy because they made them.

                To some, the Kardashians represent the degeneration of American society, a focus on a lavish lifestyle that people believe was handed to them, an increase in plastic surgery and beauty, and general depravity. Positive characteristics the Kardashians exhibit, like ambition, industriousness, and family, are downplayed by the press and instead portray the Kardashians as famous, fashionable, and self-obsessed. One cannot deny however, that because of their extreme popularity and ever increasing empire, the Kardashians are here to stay.

Gender and the Military

                Yes, I do know someone who has been in and/or gone into the military. The people I know I have never been close with, so I don't know exactly how gender affected their military experience. The people I know are all young men and I would imagine that their gender, them being men, had an effect on their military experience. Knowing what I know about the military, I would have to think that them being men has made their military experience less awful. The military was designed for men only and the acceptance of having women in the military has been slow and still struggling. Women often report their experiences as more negative and the rate of military rape is very high (even though military rape affects both men and women, it does affect women more). The social dynamics of all male groups and co-ed groups are completely different, especially in the military where manliness and strength are praised, and that means that group cohesion would be affected. Also men and women are physically built different. As much as we don't want to admit it, men are physiologically different and are often stronger than women. Men and women are often psychologically different which leads them to react differently in certain situations. This means that there are fewer women than men that are physically and psychologically suited to take part in combat, but it does not mean that all or almost all women are unsuitable. For these, and other reasons, I expect that the young men I know that are in the military had an easier time than if they were women.

                The media and pop culture, in my opinion, portray male and female soldiers pretty similarly. Male and female soldiers are more often than not portrayed as strong and brave. But, the media has to do this. They have to portray all soldiers as strong and brave and fighting for a good cause, or else American citizens will start to question the military. If soldiers in media and pop culture were portrayed in a negative light, the ramifications on the military would be pretty bad. Military respect would probably drop and then recruitment would probably drop as well. Media and pop culture has to portray all soldiers regardless of gender as strong and brave if we want to continue to have a strongly respected military. However, while military women are portrayed as strong, they are often highly sexualized, with the women sometimes acting as a prize to be won by the male soldiers. A strong patriotic woman was viewed as sexy, and still is.

Pussy Riot in Translation

                This article centers on the Russian feminist performance group/band Pussy Riot, specifically on their February 21, 2012 event and its aftermath.  On February 21, 2012, 5 young women in bright dressed and tights with ski masks entered the Cathedral of Christ that Savior in Moscow, Russia. The women ran to the stage type area of the altar and began performing their song that began with " Virgin Mary, Mother of God, chase Putin out." Security grabbed Yekaterina Samutsevich, out of the cathedral before she could even start her performance and the other four women were rushed out of the cathedral after about a minute of their performance.

                After a period of hiding from arrest, 3 Pussy Riot members, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Maria Alyokhina, were arrested and held without bail. The trial became an international sensation demonstrating the oppressive state of Russia and made Pussy Riot internationally famous. Alyokhina, Samutsevich, and Tolokonnikova received  two-year sentences for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” During the trial, the prosecution picked and chose the lyrics it repeated in court, removing the parts of the song that were about Putin and focusing on the parts about the Orthodox Church in order to prove that Pussy Riot had committed an act of “religious hatred” rather than political protest. The women were also judged for exposing their bodies in a place where their bodies should be covered.

                Thier sentence produced international outrage and criticism from people like Amnesty International, Barack Obama, Madonna, Bjork, and other international celebrities, mostly musicians. The problem was that these people didn't really know what Pussy Riot was. Are they a musical group? Are they conceptual artists? No one really knew how to view them. Madonna and Bjork offered to play performances with Pussy Riot, but they refused because Pussy Riot doesn't want to perform as part of the capitalist system.

                Pussy Riot regained their popularity when Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina reported on the terrible conditions in prison. Tolokonnikova declared a hunger strike to raise awareness for the for the outrageous conditions in prison, a hunger strike for which she was eventually hospitalized. Even with all the popularity Pussy Riot was gaining internationally, they reached little sympathy in Russia and they might have actually done Putin a favor by strengthening support from core conservatives. Their performance was followed by discussion of sexualized corporal punishment, with suggestions of instead of being put in prison, the members of Pussy Riot should be spanked, pinched, stripped naked and whipped, covered in honey and feathers, and tossed out in the cold. These ideas are just highly sexualized and violent repercussions for little girls, instead of adult artists making a serious political statements.

                The article concluded with incidents happening to members of Pussy Riot. Now that Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina have been released from jail, some of their critics have managed to realize their sadistic fantasies. In Sochi during the Olympics, someone whipped the two women, and at a McDonald’s in Nizhny Novgorod, men threw trash and green antiseptic in their faces, calling them whores and telling them to go to America. In both cases, the men who attacked them did not cover their faces even though they were being filmed, and even though they were being filmed, no arrests were made.

Intelligence vs. Icon

                Marilyn Monroe was an icon for a generation and has remained iconic throughout the ages. I think that she hid her smarts because simply put, smart women often weren't seen as hot. Being smart might not have made her seem approachable or sexy. Then, she would not have gotten the roles she had. She might have hid her intelligence and wore a mask to simply keep getting good movie roles and continue her career. Her iconic look and act as a dumb blonde was simply an act to keep people interested. Acting like a dumb blonde keeps you more relevant than someone who lays low and reads instead of going out at night. Ms. Monroe might have been smart enough to pick up that people were calling her a blonde bimbo and might have continued to hold up the act because it was easier than trying to convince people you're smarter than they believe you are. She might have known that even if she tries her hardest to convince people that she was smart, people are set in their beliefs and would have refused to accept the fact that beautiful women can be smart. She might have known that people are only going to look at her for her beauty anyway, so why bother trying to show people she's intelligent when they only want to look at her? When it all comes down to it, I think Marilyn hid her smarts because she knew the world wasn't ready for the real Marilyn and playing dumb was the only way to accomplish her goals in that time period.

                Today, there are a number of well known celebrities whose intelligence is ignored of not even known. I think, as 2009 Jezebel article points out, openly smart educated women are often called negative things, like an "annoying bitch"  or a "horse-toothed snob," or they may think that she's "cocky" or "smug." This is obviously an incentive for women to stay quit about their intelligence as it's evident that we currently live in a society that values looks over intelligence, in terms of women. Women don't want to get made of for their intelligence in an already critical world. Braininess is not considered a feminine gift in the current state of our society and culture. For example, the Kardashians are all intelligent in their own way but often hid it, their intelligence only used behind the screen in their multiple successful business ventures, where she is still publicly known as the women with a big butt and a sex tape. Kate Beckinsale attended Oxford University where she studied French and Russian literature, is fluent in German, Russian, and French, but sadly, she is mostly known as the hot girl from Van Helsing. Cindy Crawford is an iconic fashion model who graduated high school as valedictorian and graduated Northwestern University where she studied chemical engineering, yet, she's the famous model with the mole. All these women, and many more, are very smart and know our social structure and that in our society looks are more important for women than intelligence, and they are able to capitalize off of that to have successful careers, even if it means hiding their intelligence.

http://jezebel.com/5162403/why-dont-we-value-intelligence-anymore