Questionable Advertising Monday: Pedo Sun

This week's questionable advertising is for Roc sun screen and comes from the advertisement agency DDB in Milan, Italy.

It's not the usual questionable depiction one is used to in advertisements where ad agencies seem to have forgotten it is not still 1953. No, this one is...





apparently implying that the sun is some kind of child molester.

There is really no other way to look at it. This isn't a depiction where the sun is physically harming children or acting like some kind of bully. No, these ads depict a rather predatory looking sun offering two children toys as some kind of incentive to get closer.

But the toys alone aren't really enough to ruin this ad for me. Rather, it's the way the sun looks at the audience with a sort of knowing grin. It's just unsettling.

I suppose the ad is successful in that it depicts how a sunny day can tempt children outside regardless of the possible harm of UV rays, but I'd rather not imagine the sun then trying to play a game of "hide the pickle" afterwards.

The ad's slogan is “protect them from sun,” but god if I don't read it as "never let them outside again."

Awesome Book Review Friday: Fun Home (A Family Tragicomic)

This week's book is Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. It's a graphic novel, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a worthwhile read.



Alison Bechdel, the writer and illustrator of "Dyke's to Watch Out For," paints the story of her childhood, more specifically the relationship between herself and her father, while using her childhood home as a frame. She writes in a liner and yet non-liner fashion. Some chapters start at the beginning of one point and then end, while other are turned inside out starting at the end, returning to the beginning and then continuing on back to the end. The result is a beautiful, honest and painful autobiography.

Alison narrates the story as an adult giving new insight into her childhood relationships. It is by no means a fun or easy story to read, as there are clear and painful scars that she carries, but it is an insightful tale of a girl growing up with a closeted and abusive father and becoming a woman who comes to terms with her own sexuality.

It is an important book because it unflinchingly looks at issues many wish childhood didn't include such as sexuality, gender restraints, masturbation, abuse and suicide. Even more importantly it examins the ways we begin to realise as we grow up that our parents are people and have lives and feelings we can not comprehend. Alison Bechdel exposes her difficult childhood and it is a potent reminder that childhood isn't anything like how we depict it. That it is a difficult and scary time, but it is also the time that helped us to become who we are.

This book is a definite read, despite all the sadness it leaves you with the positive message that you will overcome all this, and you will be better for it.

Questionable Advertising Monday: Gender Status Quo

Ah, advertising. It permeates every part of almost every society, from food to politics. We can't get away from it. It also happens to be one of the greatest perpetrators of racism and sexism. Unfortunately even in the twenty-first century still many a good advertising company has created one or two questionable ads.

This week’s ad is “Growing Up Is...” for Nesquik and it comes from the McCann Erickson agency in Portugal.

It’s a rather banal ad for the Nestlé product, but it's…

Well, see for yourself.






There is nothing obviously offensive about the ad, which makes sense as it is aimed at parents, but then there's nothing contemporary about it either. At best it is a lazy attempt to portray male and female children. At worst it is another reinforcement of the same old gender roles. Not only is the imagery sexist, but in the bottom corner of each ad is a list of what “Growing Up Is…” for each sex. Girls get the usual princessy type stuff: caring for animals, kissing, and cake while boys get the usual manly type stuff: space ships, aliens, and …eating dog food? So according to this ad girls are princesses and boys are “special.”

I find it exasperating that this agency couldn’t move beyond breaking children down into their pre-assigned gender roles. Maybe they would have been better off sticking with the bunny.

Awesome Book Review Friday: Pink Brain, Blue Brain

Because a little literature can go a long way I will be posting a review of an awesome book every Friday.



This week's book is "Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps And What We Can Do About It" by neuroscientist Lise Eliot.

It's a non-fiction book that explores, and disproves, the science of proving gender exists naturally. The chapters are separated by childhood development, starting at birth and finishing at teenage hood.

It would have been enough for Eliot to simply disprove the studies or expose the misinformation, but she takes it a step further. At the end of every chapter is a break-down of how you as a parent or teacher can actually work to help children develop without the constraints of genderization.

My favorite example of this is in the beginning chapters of the book where Eliot exposes the myth that gender can be effected through superficial means, such as toys or clothes. She gives the example of giving dolls to boys and trucks to girls. She points out that this method is doomed from the start because it doesn't address the real problem. Worst it often leads parents to believe that gender is natural.

Instead of simply swapping genderized items, Eliot suggests that parents should first focus on what each sex lacks due to gender constraints. For example she points out that girls rarely get to develop their spacial abilities while boys rarely get to develop their nurturing abilities. If a parent really wanted to help their children overcome gender barriers they would instead give their girls building toys, like Lego or K'Nex, and allow their boys to care for a small animal.

At times with Eliot's scientific approach to the source material the chapters can seem overwhelming. However, it is well worth giving this book a read through. I found that while I may not always understand the studies she discuses in the chapters, there is more than enough information and instruction at the end of each chapter to make up for it.

If you are a parent, teacher, gender studies student, or you just care about breaking gender barriers, Lise Eliot's "Pink Brain, Blue Brain" is read worth picking up.

I Loved My Barbie (And My Parent's Didn't Get It)

NOTE: does not depict typical use (image: Mark Ryden)

I loved my barbies growing up.

Well, let me clarify that. I loved my army of mohawked, tattooed amazons created from the many Barbie dolls I received as gifts.

But there was always a sort of contention surrounding the doll. I didn't know what the problem was until I was much older, but it always seemed like my parent's would have been happier if I had never touched the things in the first place.

At first they worried that I would get the wrong message from playing with the dolls. That somehow, from being exposed to the doll, I would come to believe that I should make myself look like her. Then, when I started to modify my barbies, they worried that I was going to treat people as badly as I treated my dolls. As if a child breaking a toy was unusual.

But really what did they know? Was it simply because of her vaguely human shape? Rainbow Bright is human shaped, but no one worries that their child will grow up to be a raver. As a child I never viewed Barbie as an example of femine beauty. I didn't dress like her because none of the women in my life were like that and she was a toy. Who wants to dress like their toys?

What I liked about Barbie was I could edit the hell out of her. I was free to change her however I wanted because she was designed so badly that her head would pop off after only a few brushes. I would hardly call that abusive. Besides, how did my parents know that she didn't want that tattoo of a giant eagle on her chest?

Ask any girl out there what she did with her barbies and I bet you anything she'll talk about cutting her hair, giving her tattoos or making her clothes with scraps and pipe cleaners.
But that's not what adults and parents think of when they see Barbie. They see a child playing with a Barbie and they think either, "That child is buying in to cultural femine norms." or inversely, "that child hates the cultural femine norms Barbie represents."

We really don't give credit to children at all. Worse this is basically Evolutionary Psychology at it's worst. There is no actual proof in any of these articles that girls "mutilate" a barbie doll because they are rejecting a stereotype. They "mutilate" these dolls because they fall apart easily. An adult may look at a Barbie and object to her underlying message, but a child looks at a Barbie and sees a blank canvas.

That's not to say that Barbie dolls don't carry dangerous baggage about feminity. They do, but then so do a lot of things in our society. It's a toy people! It only carries damaging baggage when parents encourage their girls to act like Barbie. It's more important that children have healthy and living role models and that they are allowed to treat a Barbie for what it is, a toy. Too often I hear about parents worrying over what it means when their child rips up and "mutilates" a Barbie doll. They feel like they should punish their girls for treating the doll badly. Like the doll is an actual person and they fear that this means that their girls will be violent against real people.

It's outrageous. If your child knowingly harms an animal that is an indicator that they will probably harm people. If your child modifies a toy because it fell apart that is healthy creative play. You know, the thing that makes them more likely to work out tough problems in adulthood? It also means that they won't hold up Barbie as any sort of ideal or model. If they did they would probably have never taken the toy out of the box to begin with.

Children are destructive. They like to take things apart to see how they work. They like to put their personal stamp on the things they own. To demand that a girl not treat her barbies like the toys they are only reinforces the concept that the Barbie model is somehow important. Which as so many adults like to point out, it's not.