Meg DeJong - Children's Media Presentations Response

When I first set out to start watching children’s television programming for the assignment, I didn’t know quite what to expect. It had been years since I had actually sat down to watch a children’s television show on my own and often the children I babysit for are not allowed to watch television at all. I started out by watching PBS, which was one of my favorite channels when I was younger. Overall, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the shows I watched, “Curious George” and “Martha Speaks.” Even though the shows had a lack of female characters, I felt that none of the characters were hyper-feminine or hyper-masculine. From watching other people’s presentations, I feel that the general consensus was that PBS had a lot less gender stereotypical characters on their shows than both Nickelodeon and Disney. However, one point that I found very interesting was the difference between Muffy and Buster’s rooms on “Arthur.” Blair pointed out that Buster had a desk in his room, while Muffy only had a vanity. Even though this is a subtle difference, it sends a powerful message.
After watching the shows on PBS, I watched shows two shows on the Disney channel, “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” and “Chuggington.” Both these shows portrayed extreme gender stereotypes, especially “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.” In the shows, female characters were portrayed as weak, fragile, and in need of help. Additionally, in “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” Minnie did extremely gender normative activities, such as gardening and baking. Also, on both “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” and “Chuggington,” an entire episode focused on helping a female character in need. Overall, I was really discouraged to see these images on the Disney channel. Watching the presentations, it was amazing to see how every show somebody focused on had at least some portrayal of gender stereotypes and often times showed female characters as weaker than male characters. I thought the contrast between Dora on “Dora the Explorer” and Diego on “Go, Diego, Go!” that a couple presenters focused on was very interesting. Diego, Dora’s cousin, is portrayed as much more active and adventurous than Dora and never needs as much help as Dora does.
Ultimately, it could be easy to dismiss the gender stereotypes seen in children’s televisions shows by saying that children don’t pick up on them. However, that is not true. Media is one of the most powerful tools of communication in our society and there is no exception when it comes to children. When I was younger, I never consciously made note of the gender roles on the shows I was watching, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t try to emulate some of the female characters. Looking through old family photo albums, there is one photo that always makes me cringe: me, at 10, dressed as cheerleader Barbie standing next to my brother, at 7, dressed as Spiderman. Even though my parents never forced strict gender roles on us and always encouraged us to just be ourselves, we were clearly picking up on powerful messages from the media. Even at fairly young ages, we had both picked up on the message the media sent us: boys are superheroes, like Spiderman, while girls are cheerleaders, like Barbie.
One thing I noticed in watching shows and commercial on both PBS and Disney is the fact that there were many racially diverse characters. I felt like this was an improvement from many of the white-washed images in past children’s shows and commercials. Even though we have a long way to go in terms of improving the gender roles portrayed in children’s media, the presence of more racially diverse characters gave me hope that there may one day be characters that portray more diverse gender roles.