Stakes is High*

There have been cases of suspected gas poisoning at three girls' schools in Afghanistan. Earlier this year, Afghani girls attending school were sprayed with acid, resulting in scarring and discoloration on their faces, as well as damage to their eyesight.

Globally, it's not always easy for girls to go to school (not only in 'developing' nations but also those that get classified as 'developed'), and that is why I'll link back here to the United Nations Girls Education Initiative (UNGEI). I posted about this initiative a few months ago, and while I still want to press a bit more on the concept of education and what it is to engage in intervention, I have a vested interest as an educator and long-time student in emphasizing the seriousness of gender differences and disparities in diverse kinds of educational processes. What is at stake for girls who desire education?

*Unfortunately, I can't claim the title - credit to De La Soul.

The Lost Boys of Disney

How does one address issues of girlhood and girl culture without considering everyone's favorite youth empire: Disney? I must confront the Disney fates now, as a particularly salient point about the conglomerate's television network and marketing appeared in the New York Times online a couple days ago. This article sets up yet another "crisis of boyhood" scenario, however, it is Disney Channel that is most put out by this crisis. That is, with programs like Hannah Montana driving the sales of related merchandise, girls are literally investing in the brand, but boys are not (although, interestingly enough, males make up 40% of the audience tuning into Disney Channel).

The most frustrating component of the article is the way in which Disney Channel relies on scientific experts to decode the complex psychological terrain that is boys' brains. Girls are easy and transparent, so to speak, and so they become devoted to a program and its related products much quicker than savvy and capable boys with multiple interests:

"The guys are trickier to pin down for a host of reasons. They hop more quickly than their female counterparts from sporting activities to television to video games during leisure time. They can also be harder to understand: the cliché that girls are more willing to chitchat about their feelings is often true."

Boiling viewers and consumers down to demographics communicates media reliance on the false, yet persistent, dualism that girls are superficial and boys are complex. Clearly, gendered expectations contribute to rubrics that girls and boys must live up to, lest they perform "abnormally." What's more transparent than their female viewers, I'm inclined to argue, are Disney's marketing strategies.

Girls and Reproductive Rights

Very recently, a judge ruled that over the counter emergency contraception should be made available to customers 17 and older (the age requirement was previously 18). Not a month later, a teenager in Fairfax, VA received a two week suspension and a recommendation for expulsion when she was seen taking her daily birth control pill during lunchtime. These are not unrelated stories in the contemporary context of reproductive rights discourses, and specific to this blog, as they are related to questions of girls' rights. Both instances raise concerns about girls' bodies and to what extent they are capable of making decisions regarding their individual bodies - especially as those decisions affect the capacity for reproduction (which is certainly highly classed and racialized - although the Fairfax teen's identity was not revealed, is it not fair to ask the question, "Would a black or Latina teenager have been condemned similarly for essentially preventing a possible pregnancy?"). Now, it seems that all instances of students popping pills, be they aspirin or Ecstasy tabs, are grounds for punishment, but the significant element in the case of a female student taking birth control pills is that this medication is related to reproduction and (hetero)sexualized, warranted or not. Interestingly, the Washington Post reports that the suspended teen spent her time away from school poring over the Student Responsibilities and Rights handbook that indicated her fate. Her close reading indicated the following:

"If she had been caught high on LSD, heroin or another illegal drug, she found, she would have been suspended for five days. Taking her prescribed birth-control pill on campus drew the same punishment as bringing a gun to school would have."

Indeed, is birth control - in the broadest sense - akin to gun control? Is emergency contraception in the hands of a 17 year old somehow reminiscent of Columbine? I have a bit more confidence in girls than these strange discursive relationships indicate we should/might. What are reproductive rights to girls (in the U.S., at least), and who knows "best" in terms of upholding those rights?

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!