Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes - Softcover

Lamb, Sharon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312370059 ISBN 13: 9780312370053

Verlag: St. Martin's Griffin, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Winner of the Books for a Better Life Award

Every parent who cares about empowering her daughter should own a copy."
- Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls

"...a must-read for parents and teachers who want to steer girls away from marketing schemes that distort female power and authority and toward true self-acceptance and authentic empowerment."
-- Polly Young Eisendrath, author of Women and Desire and The Resilient Spirit

The image of girls and girlhood that is being packaged and sold to your daughter isn't pretty in pink. It is stereotypical, demeaning, limiting, and alarming. Girls are besieged by images in the media that encourage accessorizing over academics; sex appeal over sports; fashion over friendship.
Packaging Girlhood exposes these stereotypes and gives you guidance on how to talk with your daughters about these negative images and provides you with tools and information on how to help your girls make more positive choices.

"A tour de force of excellent scholarship put in a very readable context and chockfull of practical suggestions for parents for change!"
-- William S. Pollack, Ph.D., author of Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood

"Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown have that rare gift of translating cutting-edge research and analysis into strategies and information that every parent (and every girl) can use in daily life."
-- Joe Kelly, president of Dads and Daughters (DADs)

"With compassion, insight, and humor [Lamb and Brown] unravel and demystify the messages girls confront throughout their development, and they offer adults useful tools to help girls resist their powerful pull."
-- Lynn M. Phillips, Ph.D., Department of Communications, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown's sharp analysis and patiently pragmatic advice is just what we need to sustain our daughter's quests for healthy identities."
-Michael Kimmel, author Manhood in America, Professor, SUNY Stony Brook

Sharon Lamb, author of The Secret Lives of Girls, is professor of Psychology at Saint Michael's College in Vermont. Her research on girls' and teens' development is widely cited. Additionally, she listens to their struggles and strengths in her private practice.

Lyn Mikel Brown, professor of Education at Colby College in Maine, is the author of three books on girls' development, including Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development (with Carol Gilligan). She creates programs for girls at her nonprofit Hardy Girls Healthy Women (www.hghw.org).

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sharon Lamb is professor of psychology at Saint Michael's College in Vermont and the author of four books, including The Secret Lives of Girls. Her research on girls' development, teenagers and sex, and abuse and victimization is widely cited. As a clinical psychologist, she often works with girls, listening to their struggles and hearing their strengths, in her private practice in Shelburne, Vermont.

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Advance praise for "Packaging Girlhood"
"Be prepared to be shocked and saddened as you come to see the world of sex, shopping, media, body-fat, and self-esteem through the wide eyes of today's American girls. Be prepared, also, to find invaluable guidance and insight from authors Sharon Lamb and Lyn Brown who know our daughters from inside out. This is a must-read for parents and teachers who want to steer girls away from marketing schemes that distort female power and authority, and towards true self-acceptance and authentic empowerment."
-Polly Young-Eisendrath, author of "Women and Desire" and "The Resilient Spirit"
"Lyn Mikel Brown and Sharon Lamb have that rare gift of translating cutting edge research and analysis into strategies and information that every parent (and every girl) can use in daily life. In "Packaging Girlhood," they provide solid ways for families to help girls stay rooted in reality while buffeted by the powerful winds of commercialism. In the process, we parents learn more than a little about staying rooted in reality ourselves. This is the kind of guidance that families need, especially if they think they are immune from marketers' schemes."
-Joe Kelly, President, Dads and Daughters
"With compassion, insight, and humor, ÝLamb and Brown¨ unravel and demystify the messages girls confront throughout their development, and they offer adults useful tools to help girls resist their powerful pull. "Packaging Girlhood" is filled with useful information and practical suggestions for adults wishing to help girls critique and rewrite consumer culture's narrow and toxic portrayals of girls. Never judgmental and always illuminating, "PackagingGirlhood" reflects Lamb and Brown's deep respect for girls and their first-hand understanding of the dilemmas of parenting."
-Lynn M. Phillips, Ph.D., Department of Communications, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
"A tour de force of excellent scholarship put in a very readable context and chock full of practical suggestions to parents for change! In "Packaging Girlhood, "Lamb and Brown expose the manner in which our daughters whom we believed had been newly reinforced with "girl power" actually remain enslaved in the gender straitjacket of a narrow and distorted set of messages about what being a "real girl "or young adult female is all about.
A must read for anyone who teaches, works with or wishes to support girls (from tots to teens) in our society and for every parent of a daughter who wants to give her child a legacy of meaningful possibilities instead of a prepackaged world of inhibiting stereotypes."
-William S. Pollack, Ph.D., author of "Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood"

Aus dem Klappentext

""Packaging Girlhood" is a must read for anyone who cares about the health and well-being of girls. It exposes the marketing industry's assault on pre-teens and is filled with helpful suggestions for beleaguered parents."
"-"Susan Linn, Associate Director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children's Center and Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Sexy. Diva. Boy-crazy. Shopper.
The image of girls and girlhood that is being packaged and sold to your daughter isn't pretty in pink. It is stereotypical, demeaning, limiting, and alarming. Girl Power has been co-opted by marketers of music, fashion, books, and television to mean the power to shop and attract boys. Girls are besieged by images in the media that encourage accessorizing over academics; sex appeal over sports; fashion over friendship. These stereotypes are everywhere, from Disney movies to Hip Hop lyrics, Nickelodeon cartoons to "Seventeen Magazine."
Girls are consistently portrayed as a series of stereotypes: Little girls are "perfect little angels," sometimes with a sassy twist; elementary school-aged girls are boy-crazy "tweens," ready to be sold a version of mini-teendom that eclipses the wonderful years of childhood that truly belongs to them; middle school girls are full-fledged teenagers or at least teen-age wannabes and eager to conform to that CosmoGirl lifestyle . And high school girls? They're sold an image of the sexually free model-diva-rock star that the younger girls are supposed to look up to.
"Packaging Girlhood" exposes these stereotypes and the very limited choices presented of who girls are and what they can be. Lamb and Brown give you guidance on how to talk with your daughtersabout these negative images and provide you with tools and information on how to help your girls make more positive choices about the way they are in the world.
"Parents constantly complain that they have only a small shovel to hold back the avalanche of products and messages that erode children's resilience and sap their self-esteem. Now they have this book. Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown's sharp analysis and patiently pragmatic advice is just what we need to sustain our daughter's quests for healthy identities."
-Michael Kimmel, author "Manhood in America," Professor, SUNY Stony Brook

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Chapter One

Pretty in Pink: What Girls Wear

Girl or boy?" is almost always the first question people ask when they hear about the birth of a baby. They don't need to ask, however, when they see a newborn in her carriage on the street--the clothes and accessories provide the answer. Typically, a little girl will be dressed in pink and frills, and a boy in blue with a sporty theme. Lots of parents go to great lengths in this first year to distinguish gender for other people. They tie ribbons around bald heads and plant barrettes in bare wisps of hair; they put tough-looking Nikes or patent leather Mary Janes on little feet that don't yet walk. Clearly gender is a parents' issue long before it's a child's concern.

But there's a grace period--a timeout, if you will--between ages one and three when smart moms puts their children in comfy pants or overalls for the tumbling, crawling, and cruising that they do. Clothes and diapers may still be color coded, but styles match the developmental needs of little ones and provide optimal comfort and movement. Who would want to restrict a little girl from learning how to walk by putting her in slippery, too-tight shoes or in a dress that doesn't protect her knees from falls? But funnily enough, once toddlerhood is behind them, developmental needs seem less important and, alas, clothing for girls becomes "fashion." And that's the beginning of a lifelong lesson.

Who is pushing fashion to your preschooler? Little girls are likely to wear what their parents suggest or choose for them. Six- and seven-year-olds, even those with cool older sisters, are still more influenced by parents than are girls in the preteen or tween years. Knowing this, marketers have been much more interested in selling your young daughter toys and sugary cereal than a specific brand of jeans. But that's changing. It used to be that clothing for five-year-olds was different from clothing for ten- or twelve-year-olds. Not anymore. Many brands now market clothing in sizes 4 to 16, which means your little girl can be very much the big girl when it comes to that halter, camisole, or denim mini-skirt. She can go from diapers to the cute little briefs that have replaced thongs. They make them that small.

Dressing for fashion à la Barbie or Lil' Bratz dolls and dressing for physical play are completely different things. So what does that suggest to your daughter when you dress her in the latest fashions, such as low-rise jeans or belly shirts? It suggests that her play clothes no longer work for school as boys' play clothes do, that play is a circumscribed area of her life and no longer her raison d'être. It says school clothes need to impress, to say something about you. This differentiation between clothes and play clothes may be okay for older adolescents and adults (when school sports teams replace the free play of the younger years and exercise is something you buy clothes for and do at set periods of the day), but it is completely wrong for children.

Following a trend that researchers have observed, your daughter may be spending less time at play than girls of earlier decades. This is very unfortunate and unhealthy. Play is the substance, the foundation of childhood. Girls live and breathe active play for a reason. They need to be physical; they need to run and jump and test their limits. According to philosopher Iris Marion Young, this kind of physical testing is intimately connected to how girls grow up to approach and experience the world. She writes that girls need to feel their bodies as "strong, active subjects moving out to meet the world's risks." Physical challenges prepare them for both social and intellectual challenges to come. So those crop tops and tight low-rise jeans do more than discourage movement. They tell your daughter--at an age when she needs to feel big, try new things, and widen her reach--that how she looks is more important than what she can do and more important than racing to the corner or rolling down the grassy hill as fast as she can. She may look cute in the moment as a mini Barbie or a corseted Cinderella, but the hill she forgoes or the race she doesn't run will impact how she interacts with the world for a long time. It is a great loss to the preteen and the teen. What have they exchanged play for? A world of glamour, playing at dressing up, and doing makeovers?

We show how clothing for little girls, preteens, and teens announces the type of girl she can be and then extends this type into everything about her. Some of this dressing up is fun, but as we will say over and over, our problem is primarily with the lack of choice or, rather, the false idea that girls have lots of choices when these types are closing out other options. Parents can help create these options. Offering your daughter a wide-open view of the world and promising her she can be anything has to begin early and extend over time. One of the first way is to offer her all the colors of the rainbow and give her the clothes needed for full movement in play.

Pretty (Sexy) in Pink: Your Perfect Little Angels

P --perfect

O --off the hook

P --princess

S --stylin'

T --too cool for you

A --angel

R --rockin'

(Written on a bikini underwear set for sizes 4 and up)

Walk into J. C. Penney, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Old Navy, or any similar department or clothing store and try to find a regular T-shirt for your daughter. You remember the kind--no clingy, Lycra-enhanced material; no Bratz or Barbie or Disney faces; no rhinestones; no fashion accessories attached; no slogans or funny sayings that announce the particular tribe she identifies with, such as princesses, cuties, shoppers, cat or monkey lovers; no fake pink sports team logos. Just a basic brightly colored cotton T-shirt that she can wear with jeans. It's next to impossible. Once common, they're now specialty items found in expensive children's clothing stores, in sporting goods stores (although there's lots of pink there, too), and in L. L. Bean catalogs. When we asked for them in J. C. Penney, the helpful saleswoman pointed to a section and told us there might be a few left. Sure enough, tucked between racks of glittery fairies, rhinestone-emblazoned "Born to Shop" slogans, and pink "Angels Varsity Track Champs" shirts, we found one lone red T-shirt stylishly fitted in its own plain way. One left? If this is supply and demand, wouldn't it be the other way around?

The commercialization of girlhood hits hard. Sexy clothing for four- and five-year-olds is all the rage, and if you read T-shirt slogans, you know how girlhood is marketed. Your daughter can choose her identity, but the choices are frightfully limited: Professional Drama Queen, Paradise Princess, or Pretty Princess Beauty Queen. (That covers all the options!) There is also Extra Fancy & Delicious/Quality Guaranteed, Spoiled, Princess Soccer Club, 100% Angel, Hollywood Superstar Film Crew, and Cheer Bunny. These shirts are all in sizes 4 to 16. Isn't that an awfully broad age range? There used to be a distinction between little girl and preteen. No more.

In our review of clothing for younger girls, we were continuously surprised by the ways little girls are enticed to look older. A few stores sell sizes 4 to 6x, but even these had a much older look. Penney's Total Girl brand touted tight, hip-hugging, flair-legged jeans with little purses attached in red, pink, or a pink-and-black leopard pattern. (Purses for four-year-olds?) The little embroidered hearts, flowers, and butterflies on the legs suggested little girl, but the style said sassy teen. How do five-year-olds play in these pants? What do they put in the purses? Probably marbles, candy, or little plastic animals, unless they've been to Toys "R" Us and bought...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St. Martin's Griffin
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312370059
• ISBN 13: 9780312370053
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland