Response to Children's Media Presentations - Brooke Dinsmore

I thought overall the childhood media presentations were very insightful and identified a couple of very interesting patterns. The most obvious pattern that nearly everyone found examples of was the gendered appearance of the children’s characters. I expected people to find this but I admit I was shocked by some examples of it. Super Why in particular surprised me with how gendered it was. I was particularly disturbed by Little Red Riding Hood’s outfit which as several people mentioned was really revealing. This almost crossed the line from feminine into sexualizing which was not a happy thing to see.

To me the most disturbing pattern pointed out by several people in particular Meg, Emily, Melissa and Garrett was that female characters rarely ever drove the action of the story even when they were main characters. A particular example of this that I thought was great was a comparison between the roles Dora and Diego take in their respective shows. On Dora, it is the audience and her helper objects that take the most active roles. Even though she is the main character she is still a passive object instead of a subject whose actions drive the story. I was particularly disturbed by Blair’s revealing of this pattern in Arthur, which is a show I had always looked upon as less problematic. There is a great danger inherent in telling little girls that they are not active subjects of their own stories but rather passive, moved by the story rather than creating their own. This affects your self-view in a way that goes beyond the superficial or the surface. Undoubtedly it is bad to tell girls to focus on their appearance but it is even worse when you tell girls that their appearance, their physical presence is all they have or can expect to have.