The Banal, Insidious Sexism of Smurfette

Aug 14, 2013 00:19

In The Smurfs 2, men are identified by their abilities, while women are known for their femininity.


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fashion/modeling, children

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Comments 11

kanimaki August 14 2013, 09:49:50 UTC
1. This is why I don't watch the Smurfs and roll my eyes when people my age keep posting about them.

2. I fucking hate the way people ask if it's a boy or girl before giving them toys. And I hate that most people I know IRL are against the idea of boys playing girl toys but don't mind girls playing boy toys (because I said I played with toy guns too when I was young and they immediately said OHHHH IT'S DIFFERENT GIRLS CAN PLAY BOY TOYS BUT BOYS PLAYING GIRL TOYS IS JUST WRONGGGGGGGGGG). Fuck gender roles.

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nextdrinksonme August 14 2013, 13:31:44 UTC
((Comment try 2--my first comment was marked as Spam and I don't want to delete it if that's against the rules. I guess cos I had a link to the lyrics of the song I mentioned?))

Every time I hear someone going on that kind of rant, I want to forward them "William Wants a Doll" from Free to Be, You and Me

Either way, toys are toys are toys. There's no such thing as a girl toy or a boy toy. They're just toys.

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flake_sake August 14 2013, 12:00:30 UTC
This bugged me, ever since I was seven years old.

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idemandjustice August 14 2013, 13:02:05 UTC
Yup, you're right about everything. Except with the McDonald's toys. They're giving out whatever to whoever. Same with the previous toys, which were Minions from Despicable Me 2. I take my kids there about once a week for the air conditioned play area. They do generally separate a lot of their toys by gender when not promoting a movie, which doesn't sit right with me. A couple of months ago, they had Transformers and Hello Kitty. I wound up requesting girl and boy Happy Meals. My son prefers the Hello Kitty toys, and my daughter likes the Transformers. So, I guess I'm glad that they have a couple of options, but clearly assigning gender to them is stupid.

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wrestlingdog August 14 2013, 13:17:12 UTC
This has always pissed me off to no end.

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nextdrinksonme August 14 2013, 13:25:12 UTC
For some reason I remember Smurfette being the smartest out of the smurfs. I haven't seen any of the movies, nor have I watched the cartoon since I was really little, but I have it in my memory that she was the one who was able to get other smurfs out of trouble because she was able to think/do beyond a set role.

Though I may have completely made all of this up based on how I played with my toys vs how the cartoon was written.

At any rate, the girl/boy toys thing annoyed me even when I was a kid. Especially since the boy toys were usually more fun than the girls--it was usually plastic molded Barbies, where even the hair was plastic and unmovable, or, like, a little Transformer with a few moving parts that could shoot a little plastic missile. It always felt like static toy vs dynamic toy, which even as a kid I knew was bullshit. They never had boys vs girls in the same line, though--it was always two different sets of toys.

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maynardsong August 14 2013, 14:13:26 UTC
Eh, that's not necessarily a good thing. Girls being closer to earth while boys having the monopoly on ridiculous shenanigans is rather limiting too. That's why I like It's Always Sunny - Dee's not left out of their horrible antics, she's just as execrable as the guys.

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yelena_r0ssini August 15 2013, 17:09:45 UTC
ITA about Always Sunny.

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