I've been hesitant . . .

to blog about Rihanna and Chris Brown. Virtually all of the coverage of this "incident" has been distasteful, stereotypical, and all-around disheartening. Rihanna is caught in the double bind of having to either forgive Brown or demonstrate her strength and independence by rejecting him. Brown is often constructed as having been exposed to negative, violent, hypermasculine influences that tacitly pushed him to commit abuse.

I do think this issue is salient, especially as it exists at a nexus of cultural complexities, including abusive intimate partnerships, gender representations in mass media, and expectations of public figures who exist in a popular cult(ure) of celebrity, but I have no interest in perpetuating the "bad" discussions surrounding it. I was intrigued, then, when I saw this article in the New York Times, entitled "Teenage Girls Stand By Their Man."* This article is full of assumptions about 'how girls think,' as individuals and members of a collective girl culture, but it raises a lot of great points for further, more productive discussion about intimate partner violence and the reality of this particular example as spectacle. It's a piece that might be fruitful for discussion in the college classroom, especially.

*See if you can spot the nod to "girls' bedroom culture" (I concede the high nerd-factor in this asterisk point).

Dora Update

I previously posted about the changes to Dora's "little girl" image. The new Dora has been revealed, and particularly like this sarcastic discussion of the changes (the image can be found there, as well). She may not be all that sexed up, but the makeover is rather drastic, I think. One blogger noted that she was pleased Nickelodeon and Mattel did not lighten Dora's skin color. I'll say cheers to that, but I'm most displeased that Dora's lost her tomboy qualities. I read this image as a little heavy on the message, "I'm attracted to boys, and boys are attracted to me."

Gender Segregation in the Classroom

I'm not talking about girls or boys only schools here. This NYT article discusses the move to separate girls and boys in coeducational institutions. One of the motivators seems to be improving test scores, but I must press for more. Certainly, there were/are arguments to be made about the ways in which children and young adults are treated differently in the classroom due to gender/gendered performances, but this move to segregated learning environs seems much less critical in terms of addressing issues with teacher training and gender socialization. I'm not sold on the reification of heteronormativity or the ever-present gendered norms, either.

Save Dora!

I'm not really one for children's shows, but I do love me some Dora the Explorer. I was disheartened (as apparently a lot of folks were) when I learned that my girl with the backpack is likely going to be subject to an extreme makeover of sorts, due to her corporate owners' needs to sell more Dora. Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown explain the "terms and conditions," so to speak, of Dora's makeover fate on their blog Packaging Girlhood (sound familiar? it's also the title of their co-authored book), and also provide a nice critique of the move to make Dora in the image of the 'tween' set. Also linked on the blog is a petition that you can sign to protest the transformation.

This should be an interesting case study (although extremely limited) in Internet activism and girl culture. I do encourage petition-signing!

Girls & Video Games: A MetaBlog(?)

This post is more about another blog post I bumped into on feministing.com than what knowledge or experience I have with gaming. I do think the questions in the video of Brenda Laurel's TED talk speak directly to those underlying the study of girlhoods - namely, "Why not girls?," "Where are the girls?," and "What do girls have to say?" Further, let's be clear that envisioning games for girls does not mean defaulting to pink packaging and slumber party premises.

In related news, the only video game that has my heart (and puzzle pieces of my girlhood) to this day: Tetris.