Jon Cogburn posted a great quote on novels that can change "a bookish fourteen-year old's life", in particular in that one of them "often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world". There were some nice comments in the thread, but nobody picked up on the obvious gender dimension of the whole thing (I must have become a real feminist by now, I see 'gender dimensions' everywhere!). (I'm not going to get involved in the Rand debate though, I know too little about the whole thing to say anything sensible.)
Rather than elaborating on it, let me go with the idea that 'a picture is worth a thousand words' and post word clouds made with the most common words in toy adverts, split by gender. The source is this blog post, and this has been circulating all over the internet -- it is impressive stuff. Still, maybe some of the readers of this blog are not in the habit of reading feminist blogs, so here it is again; I'm sure I don't need to tell you which one is which...
Anyway, the message is clear: for boys, battles, heroes and power, just as in Lord of the RIngs and so many other books. For girls, love, magic, babies and mommy.
And here is a cartoon that I picked up over at Feminist Philosophers a while ago, making a similar point.
But here, I think it can really go both ways. Just as little girls long for their Disney princes, little boys may also end up longing for the equally unrealistic Disney princesses. Ditto for porn (although admittedly, statistically women watch less porn than men): women may also end up longing for their insatiable stallions. Either way, these are all steretypes that nobody can live up to (which is a good thing!), but their reinforcement, in particular in childhood and adolescence, seems to contribute to the outcome of adults who are "unable to deal with the real world". Sigh...
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