“The Smurfette Principle [1991]”
“the Smurfette principle: a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined. In the worst cartoons — the ones that blend seamlessly into the animated cereal commercials — the female is usually a little-sister type, a bunny in a pink dress and hair ribbons who tags along with the adventurous bears and badgers. But the Smurfette principle rules the more carefully made shows, too. Thus, Kanga, the only female in “Winnie-the-Pooh,” is a mother. Piggy, of “Muppet Babies,” is a pint-size version of Miss Piggy, the camp glamour queen of the Muppet movies. April, of the wildly popular “Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles,” functions as a girl Friday to a quartet of male superheroes. The message is clear. Boys are the norm, girls the variation; boys are central, girls peripheral; boys are individuals, girls types. Boys define the group, its story and its code of values. Girls exist only in relation to boys…
Do kids pick up on the sexism in children’s culture? You bet. Preschoolers are like medieval philosophers: the text — a book, a movie, a TV show — is more authoritative than the evidence of their own eyes. “Let’s play weddings,” says my little niece. We grownups roll our eyes, but face it: it’s still the one scenario in which the girl is the central figure. “Women are nurses ,” my friend Anna, a doctor, was informed by her then 4-year-old, Molly. Even my Sophie is beginning to notice the back-seat role played by girls in some of her favorite books. “Who’s that?” she asks every time we reread “The Cat in the Hat.” It’s Sally, the timid little sister of the resourceful boy narrator. She wants Sally to matter, I think, and since Sally is really just a name and a hair ribbon, we have to say her name again and again…
Little girls learn to split their consciousness, filtering their dreams and ambitions through boy characters while admiring the clothes of the princess. The more privileged and daring can dream of becoming exceptional women in a man’s world — Smurfettes.”
Aaaah, this was written in 1991 and the analysis still feels so real. Or, I guess, this is a direct glimpse into the cultural climate when I was at the age of first absorbing understandings of the world.
Related: “GEENA DAVIS’ TWO EASY STEPS TO MAKE HOLLYWOOD LESS SEXIST”; the essay by a parent reacting to the Minions movie where I found this NYT op-ed
