Noticing Stereotypes

The above drawing was done in 2008. In my head, I just reversed it: I wonder if the girl could be saying to him, while holding a doll, that playing with dolls is not a “girl thing,” it’s a “playing with dolls” thing. She might. But these two kids will go into their childhood with assumptions all around them, peer pressure and adult influence—not to mention ever-present advertising— that is hard to shake.

Our culture loves to stereotype people by gender. There’s a good article in The Atlantic today about that, by Stephanie Thomson. It’s just amazing to me that we (not all of us) are still thinking that girls should wear pink and boys blue, or that boys play with trucks and girls with dolls. This is fed to us by the advertising industry and tangentially, Hollywood.

Today, I was doing research for my script, and I watched the openings of a few female-centric sitcoms from the last ten years. There were and are some good ones, we are making progress (30 Rock is one of my favorites) . Yes, of course they will now write characters as working women, independent women, but many of these shows still portray women as clothing obsessed, man crazy, only interested in dating and getting married.

The drawing below was actually from pre-MeToo times. I drew it thinking about how difficult it is for women to be successful creators in Hollywood. There’s progress, but not enough.

Here’s an old cartoon by a New Yorker cartoonist, Roberta MacDonald from the 40’s. This artist was a good cartoonist, but as was true of her time, she fell for the stereotype. This drawing is a perfect example of the persistent dicotmy: showing strong, working women (in the military), yet, what they do when not working is powder their nose. Readers probably laughed at this because of the contrast. But it promotes a stereotype.

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