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Sunday, January 26, 2014

In the pink

I think about feminism a lot; since having a baby girl, I am increasingly angry and frustrated that society seems to be going backwards rather than forwards with how we treat girls. Walk into any high street children's clothes shop; I defy you to find more than three items of girls' clothing that aren't pink or purple. You certainly won't find any that are blue or green. Those colours are For Boys. As are dinosaurs, bears and tigers. Cats, cows and rabbits are reserved for girls.

And don't get me started on the revolting toys that are marketed along gender lines; make-up sets and cupcake kitchens for girls (including pink Lego, because if they used regular Lego, they would probably become infertile, or lesbians, or both); army toys, science kits and robotic cars for boys.

I have talked before about why it matters, but for the genuinely mystified, there are some excellent resources here and here.

I don't want the baby growing up feeling that her choices are limited, or that she needs to pick the pink item in order to fit in. It isn't about forbidding pink. It's about encouraging her to choose from the entire spectrum.

One thing I do stand my ground on is "no TV with adverts"; the sort of crap they get away with marketing to tiny children is horrendous. Mermaids, ponies and sexualised (or nurturing) dolls for girls. Action toys, cars, tools and guns for boys. Very few adverts (if any) showing boys and girls playing together.

So we stick to CBeebies. Advert-free, CBeebies does - in my opinion, and speaking from the perspective of an able-bodied white person - an excellent job in promoting diversity when it comes to disability and race.

Unfortunately, I think it misses the mark very often on gender equality. Which is, to be honest, very disappointing as it's so easy to get right. We watch a lot of CBeebies. Here are some of my thoughts.

Firstly - those that get it right:

Katie Morag

I love this. Katie Morag is a surly, angry little girl who stomps around in boots. Mum and Dad both work, and her best friend seems to be her tractor-driving grandma.


Sarah and Duck

One girl (Sarah), one boy (Duck), with a seemingly gender-balanced cast of extras. This cartoon is surreal, funny and whimsical. Admittedly, I seem to enjoy it a lot more than the baby does.


Charlie and Lola

Like Katie Morag, this is based on books, and the (e)quality shines though.


Melody

Whilst the theme tune to this will get stuck in your head for at least twelve years, Melody features a partially-sighted little girl and her (stay-at-home? Perhaps I'm being picky) mother who listen to classical music each episode and imagine what might be happening.


Swashbuckle

Not the most educational show going, but the "goodie" and "baddie" are both women. The imbeciles are both played by men. Splitting hairs, perhaps the two silly pirates should be one male, one female, but really this show gets it right most of the time.


Now onto those that get it wrong:

Mike the Knight

"Mike the Knight, he's a brave young hero". No, he's a smug, sexist little twat. His closest friends are his two dragons (both male), Trollee (male) and his horse (male). He has a sister and a mother; his mother's role seems to be mostly the preparation of feasts and telling her useless dogs (both male) to be quiet. His sister is a trainee witch. Out of seven main characters, just two are female, and one of those is heavily stereotypical.


Peter Rabbit

Beautifully animated and based on the Beatrix Potter books, CBeebies have decided to introduce a female rabbit to keep Peter and his male friend company. To illustrate the fact that she's a girl, she has been kitted out in a pink cardigan and matching headband. Vom.


Topsy and Tim

Topsy (the girl twin) stays inside with Mummy whilst Tim (boy twin) goes into the garden to help Daddy with the car. Welcome to 2014, folks.


Octonauts

I feel bad including this one, as it's mostly an educational show about marine biology. But out of 8 Octonauts, only two are female - a recruitment statistic that the actual Navy should feel embarrassed about. Admittedly, one of them is an engineer - but the other one has a bright pink bedroom. So that you know she's a girl.


Everything's Rosie

Vomit-inducing from start to finish. Clearly marketed at girls (the eponymous Rosie lives in a pink helterskelter), all bar two of her friends are male - because God forbid a programme should exist where females make up the majority of the cast; of the two females, one of them is bossy. See also Tilly and her Friends; only one of said friends is female, and is a self-absorbed and bossy hen.


Baby Jake

Baby Jake has nine brothers and sisters. But he only interacts with his brother Isaac. Also the Hamsternauts (all male), Nibbles the rabbit (male), Pengy Gwyn (male) and Sydney the monkey - who is female. So, one out of about 20 characters there is female. And has a pink ribbon on her head, just in case you were in any doubt.


Grandpa in my Pocket

Jason Mason (whose parents need a slap for that name) has a secret with his Grandpa that he's not allowed to tell anyone. In the wake of Yewtree, if that doesn't send shivers down your spine, nothing will. Revoltingly, his sister is excluded from the knowledge that her grandfather can (improbably) shrink himself down, plus all of the adventures they have together. Because it's better that "us boys" play together.


***

I know this does sound like I'm over-analysing what is intended to be entertainment for children; but if every girl child grows up thinking that she is a minority figure or supporting character, it's so much more difficult for her to be a pioneer in the story of her own life. These children are starting life with a totally unnecessary disadvantage. Even where a TV programme has a female main character, it seems necessary to surround them with male characters "to compensate" in a way that just doesn't happen when the programme's lead character is male.

There is a myth - at least, I hope it's a myth - that girls will watch or read stories where the protagonist is male, but boys won't watch stories where the lead character is a girl. I would have hoped that Buffy the Vampire Slayer would have dispelled this at least ten years ago. Why haven't we moved forwards?

Apologies for the lack of humour in this Plog, but really - should it be this difficult to find gender equality on the BBC in 2014?

I mean, yes, of course I could turn the TV off and do something more interesting instead*, but frankly, life is too short to try to do enriching activities like this. Besides which, where's the pink spaghetti? How will my daughter know she's a girl?

I have made a handy cut-out-and-keep flow-chart for CBeebies executives, should they wish to improve.


* Yes, I'm a child of the 80s.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Dial M for Martens

When I was about 15, my school ran a babysitting course at lunchtimes. This covered precisely nothing about what it was like to actually look after a baby, but essentially provided a very high-level overview of first aid, and an awful lot of practise folding cloth nappies. To this day, I have never needed to fold a cloth nappy other than when on some sort of training course.

Most importantly, completion of the course came with a certificate which "qualified" you as a babysitter.

Off I raced to our local cornershop, which was either called Lateshopper or Tateshopper. The logo was confusing and nobody cared enough to actually find out. We always called it Lateshopper. Until it changed to Spar. Then we continued to call it Lateshopper.

I put a card up in the window. "Qualified babysitter available. £3 per hour", plus our phone number. I underlined "qualified" twice.

I sat back and waited for the phone to ring. I had done the same the summer previously when I had advertised piano lessons for children, despite only having Grade 6 myself, and not really liking children. I also failed to factor the second part of that into my babysitting advert. No-one wanted piano lessons.

However, against all odds, a couple of weeks later, the phone rang. Someone wanted a babysitter! Remembering my babysitting course, I asked for full details of the child. Not child. Children. Five of the little fuckers. All girls. Their names? Mary, May, Mandy, Molly and Megan*. And their parents Michael and Marnie Morrison.

Their ages ranged from 7-13. In for a penny, in for a pound. I said that because there were so many children, I would have to charge £4 per hour instead of my advertised £3. This didn't seem to be a deal breaker.

On the designated date, Mrs Nunn walked me to the Morrisons' house. In I went to meet the children. The parents left. Little Molly brought her colouring book into the living room, "because I might not want to talk to you". This was a good start.

"Anyway," May said, "you probably won't stay very long. The last babysitter we had, we tied her to a chair and left her in the middle of the road." This didn't sound very likely, but I didn't want to call bullshit on a ten year-old.

Turns out, babysitting is the easiest job ever. 13 year-old Mary put the youngest to bed, and then kept bringing me lemonade and pizza. She then insisted we watched an 18-rated vampire film, and told me - on her life - that the younger children were allowed to watch it, so long as we fast-forwarded through the sex bits.

Four very easy hours later, after a fair amount of blood and gore, home came Michael and Marnie, and massively overpaid me. I pointed this out - but they said it was fine - it was difficult to find a good babysitter. (Skillsets utilised: pizza eating, not getting tied to a chair, allowing underage children to watch horror films.). The part that confused me was when both the adults walked me home, thus leaving an entire household of children by themselves, completely undermining the need for a babysitter in the first place.

A few days later, I bought my first pair of Doc Martens. I had money. It was brilliant.

*Names have been changed very slightly, but I swear, they all started with the same letter. It must have been an absolute bastard when post arrived for M Morrison.

Thursday, January 02, 2014

Evolving thoughts

I don't believe in evolution.

I had to come out and say it. My name is Laura and I don't believe in evolution.

No, don't worry, I haven't been captured and brainwashed by some cult. I just don't see how it works. Regular readers will be aware that I'm an evangelical atheist; I believe what I can see, what can be proved, what can be understood. Where something (such as quantum physics) is beyond my understanding, my "faith" - for want of a better word - is directed towards scientists, for whom peer reviews and scientific scrutiny should mean that I can trust that their work is rigorously reviewed.

So far, so good.

I have read The Selfish Gene. I have read other books that attempt to explain to a novice how evolution works. And I still think it must be rubbish.

I have no issue with survival of the fittest - that is to say, that which is most adapted to its environment. It makes much more sense if a bird can fly away from its predators, that those who are able to fly are much more likely to survive, to breed successfully and to pass on their genes. Agreed. Tick.

I also understand that these changes happen not overnight, but over literally millions of years. So a bird probably didn't develop wings in a day, and all the other wingless birds weren't immediately eaten. I get that too. (But wonder a bit how the "stubby wings" stage they presumably went through provided any help whatsoever. Though am willing to accept they must have.)

I also understand that "evolution" happens as the result of (for want of a better word) a faulty gene, a mutated gene which contributes an extra feature that its parents and previous generations didn't have.

What I don't understand is this: how these slight mutations become the "norm". Let's take for example pruney fingers. You know what I'm talking about, when you've stayed in the bath a bit too long and your fingers go all wrinkly.

Now, recent research has suggested that this might have happened because wrinkly fingers improve our grip in water, thus giving an evolutionary advantage, as our ancestors foraged for food in wet conditions. OK.

So several million years ago, Jonny Ugg was born with the freaky mutation that no-one had ever seen before, which caused his fingers to go all wrinkly when he got them wet. Brilliantly, this actually afforded him an advantage because it meant he could catch more fish than Timmy Igg. Timmy Igg's family starved, and Jonny Ugg passed on his wrinkly fingers, and the world rejoiced.

Right?

No. STUPID. Firstly, a genetic mutation is surely likely to be a recessive rather than a dominant gene. I may be wrong about this, but my understanding is that that would mean it's fairly unlikely that future generations would also inherit the wrinkliness.

Even if I'm wrong and genetic mutations can be dominant genes, so far we have ONE wrinkly-fingered freak in a whole population of smooth-fingered humans. And yes, he does OK and gets enough food - but that doesn't in itself mean that everyone else is going to starve immediately. Equally, I can't imagine Jane Grunt refusing to shag Timmy Igg from now on because of his disgustingly smooth fingers, thus preventing his unwrinkly fingers getting passed on. It makes no sense.

And what about things that are likely to have no effect on reproduction at all? For example, I have a weird allergy to sunlight, meaning I break out in awful itchy red bumps if I overdo it. It hasn't stopped me reproducing. No man has ever said to me, "Laura, you are my perfect woman, but your strange allergy to your own melanin makes me feel sick and I could never impregnate you." (they may have said the last ten words or so, but that's a separate story).

I would argue that the vast majority of "mutations" that we call evolution are not drastic enough to actually impact reproduction or survival. Even going back millions of years, are we really arguing that someone's slightly wrinkly fingers meant that the whole of the rest of the human race died out?

Don't even get me started on the peacock. To be honest, if you were a peahen, and all your peacock friends had normal-looking tails, and then suddenly Simon ShowoffPeacock turns up with a massive fucking turquoise train that he's just evolved, you aren't going to think, "I'd fuck that," you'd probably think, "What a twat."

So yes, I don't believe in evolution (but would be genuinely interested to hear from anyone who could explain the logic flaws above). I don't believe in a god either, so I'm in a spiritual and intellectual vacuum. Send help.