Gender stereotyping and sexism: it's engrained from a young age
Sexist humour isn’t just an adult problem
Occasionally I’m hired to take photos at kids' birthday parties. These aren’t the backyard birthdays I remember as a kid, with a few mates from school, Domino’s pizza and a homemade Barbie cake. These birthdays are epic affairs. Party planners, florists and stationery specialists are involved. On the day there are face-painters, entertainers and caterers, as well as professionally-made cakes that look like offerings to the god of fondant. And there is me, the photographer.
I’m not criticising these parties or the parents that host them. Sure, they can be extravagant, but the industry around kid’s birthdays in Melbourne is a great one that involves a lot of creative and interesting people. However, as a young woman without any kids of my own, these parties happen to be my only insight into something I do have a problem with: how we still treat young girls.
This weekend I photographed a fifth birthday party. The kid was a boy; the theme was ‘race cars’. As I was busily clicking away the entertainer divided the kids into two teams - the boy team and the girl team.
“The girls team has to have a really pretty name,” the entertainer says. My inner feminist rolls her eyes but I continue to click away.
A few girls throw out some suggestion like ‘the Princesses!’ or ‘the Fairies!’
“How about,” the entertainer continues, laughing, now talking to the boys, “We call them ‘the Champions?’”
The boys groan and laugh on cue. I have mixed emotions. Maybe he’s actually trying to escape gender stereotypes? But it certainly sounds like he’s encouraging everyone to find it hilarious that the girls would be called ‘the Champions’. Maybe I’m reading too much into this and should just do my job.
He goes on, still talking to the boys, “And then we can call the boys team the ‘Fairy Princesses!’”
Buoyed by laughter, he continues.
“The Pink Fairies!”
“The Twirly Swirly Skirts!”
He continues for a time through a list of girly stereotypes and the five-year-old boys cackle like only five-year-old boys can. The girls, aware that they’re not really part of the joke now but the butt of one, giggle uncomfortably and look sideways at one another. As they will at sexist jokes for the rest of their lives. As I will do later that night, when my boxing instructor makes yet another joke because I earn more money than my partner.
Let’s not kid ourselves - this is a sexist joke. The joke is that a male would like ‘girl things’. The joke is that liking girl things is shameful. The joke is that being a girl is shameful. I know it’s sexist because if the roles were reversed nobody would think it was funny, because no one would recognise it as a joke.
“Let’s call the girls team ‘the Red Matchbox Cars’, ‘the Superheroes!’, ‘the Denim Jeans!’”
It’s not funny, because it doesn’t make sense. Because there is nothing embarrassing about being male.
These jokes aren’t innocent because they’re delivered by a children’s entertainer at a child’s birthday party. In my opinion, they’re more insidious because of it. They’re insidious, because at an age where the difference between a girl and a boy is essentially a haircut, we’re already told we’re different. We like silly things, we wear silly things and we say silly things.
We’re the butt of the joke and the boys are taught to laugh.
What do you think about children being exposed to gender stereotypes like this? Do you think these sorts of jokes are innocent, or do they have an impact?
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