Books Mar 14, 2012 at 4:00 am

A New Book Explains How Dora the Explorer Sold Out

Comments

1
Everything I read about being a young female today depresses the hell out of me. I just finished "Female Chauvanist Pigs" by Ariel Levy, which is about women embracing raunch culture and objectifying themselves and other women in the name of sexual liberation and empowerment. There's a chapter on teenage girls that is horrifying and makes me feel very lucky to have grown up with a second wave mom.
2
Hold on.

She wants girls to avoid gender stereotypes, and she named her daughter Daisy?

Was there ever a more "pink ponies and fields of rainbows" name than Daisy, for crying out loud?
3
"Cinderella could surely continue for an additional 50 pages analyzing the effect of girly-girl culture on growing boys."

Yeah... but that would require making the gender playing field fair. Let's leave it to men to (not) confront this (perfectly valid) issue, and focus on men seeing women's (perfectly valid) views on women's issues. Sadly, supremacism, not egalitarianism, is the order of the day.

When a woman writes that book -- finally acknowledging that alongside all the very real barriers faced by women, men face many, many also very real social and other barriers that, because they are not the *same* barriers as those of women, are routinely ignored, mocked, and even frequently reinforced by the gender "equality" crowd -- then we will finally be on the correct road.
4
"Peggy Orenstein originally thought that tomboy cartoon character Dora the Explorer was a different kind of role model for girls."

Catherine, I do not see how Dora can possibly be a "tomboy", without conceding that there are roles, items, and activities, that are firmly for boys and outside of a girl's sphere. In short, you and possibly Peggy, helped put her in that dress with that label.
5
There's one glaring point that doesn't show up in this review, and I wonder if it was mentioned in "Cinderella Ate My Daughter": Virtually all of this harmful gender indoctrination is committed by grown women, not men.

It is the Mom (not Dad) who tells her son, "She doesn't want a toy truck for her birthday, get her another Sparkle Barbie." It is the Aunt (not the Uncle) who announces, on behalf of her niece, "We don't want to watch some dorky science show, we want to watch American Idol." It will be Grandma (not Grandpa) who barks, "Leave that girl alone, she doesn't want to help you rotate the tires."

Until feminists and well-intentioned authors admit this basic fact of gender psychology, nothing will change.
6
Until, @5, feminists admit this basic fact of gender psychology? You're kidding me, right? Feminists talk about this all the time. ALL THE DAMN TIME. The fact that it's the mothers and grandmothers who perform clitorectomies on their own offspring in cultures that such require barbaric nonsense? MUCH DISCUSSED BY FEMINISTS. We are aware of this. It's why we write books and other shit about it pretty regularly.

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