Feminist Children's Book

By Alex in Baby & Kids on Dec 5, 2009 at 12:22 pm

Once upon a time, little girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice and little boys are made of frogs and snails and puppy-dog tails … but no more!

Enter the feminist book for children:

Bring on Jacinta Bunnell’s colouring book Girls Are Not Chicks, published in the UK this week. The New York-based author first had the idea for feminist books for children when reading bedtime stories as a nanny. "I found myself editing the words so as not to pass on a sexist message," she says. "In most children’s books the girls have pretty frocks and bows in their hair, so I would turn it around – call the boys by girls’ names and vice versa."

In the US "anti-princess reading lists" have appeared, pioneered by the websites Mommytracked.com and Bitchmagazine.org. There are now books for three- to eight-year-olds with a specifically feminist agenda: Call me Madame President, Girls Think of Everything, Girls Will Be Boys Will Be Girls.

Viv Groskop of The Guardian has the run down of books that’ll turn your little princesses into Betty Friedans in no time flat: Link

Tags: anti-princess reading list, Book & Literature, children's book, feminism, feminist

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nono
Dec 5th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Just what the world needs... more Rachel Maddow type bull dykes.
CE
Dec 5th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Most little girls like to dress up in pretty dresses and play with dollhouses. Most little boys like to play with guns and get dirty. That's just human nature. They can both grow up to be whatever they want.
DRob
Dec 5th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I liked to climb trees and catch toads (not at the same time). Never been one for pretty frocks and hair bows. But I'd much rather be called a chick than a broad.
zavatone
Dec 5th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
IMHO, they are missing the point. We do not want to teach little girls to think they are princesses where everything must get handed to them and we do not want to oversexualize them by dolling them up in beauty pageants. We do not want to dumb down life with an overfeminist message. Girls like to feel pretty. Nothing wrong with that. Kids like to explore and be rewarded with discovery. Nothing wrong with that either. Disney style princesses are not what is good for a child, neither is oversexualizing them or making them defensive feminists, afraid of every term that might describe them.

Let them be KIDS, let them play, wonder, explore, learn and feel pretty. Let them play in the mud and then clean up and dress up in pink. Let them be girls.
Cola
Dec 5th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
CE, I would buy that if children weren't gendered from the day they were born. Hearing people say their two year old girl refuses to wear anything but pink dresses always gives me a headache. Yeah, your two year old. She's a real diva. I'm sure.

Anyway, this is actually quite great. It isn't about getting rid of princesses, which I'm sure several more commenters are going to assume, but just about giving girls more role models that might be more relevant to them than Barbie Sleeping Beauty and her army of similarly white women who need to be rescued by a prince, which was pretty much all I had growing up. I also whittled sticks, built forts, climbed trees, loved legos and video games (still do) and asked for things like swiss army knives (which my male cousins got), but every christmas brought nothing but more barbies and pink castles, because people like CE assume it's human nature and that that's what I wanted.

I don't think there's an "overfeminist" message here, since the massive majority of our culture is still princessified. Seriously, go to a freaking Toys 'R' Us and tell me it's "overfeminist". http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/06/24/what-kids-learn-at-toys-r-us/
Skipweasel
Dec 5th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Our twelve year old son has hair down to his waist and our seven year old daughter has thrown out all her fairy books and pink clothes and wears mostly cammo and sturdy boots.

It's quite likely they'll swap their tastes several times in the next decade or two - and good luck to them. The only problem we have with it is the extra work telling them that they don't have to be upset when their school mates can't handle their non-conformity. We've managed to convince friends and family not to buy "inappropriate" presents - they've learned now to ask each kid what's in favour that year.
Jeni Goparian
Dec 6th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Oh come...What is wrong with allowing children to choose for themselves who they are? Even if he wants to be a truckdriver and she wants to be a princess. The future is their own.
halieus
Dec 6th, 2009 at 4:59 am
What little girl doesn't want to be a princess? It's not about anything sexual or getting stuff handed to them.
James Tracy
Dec 6th, 2009 at 10:34 am
And none of these girls will ever have a boyfriend or husband because they'll have learned by 8 to hate men.

HOORAY! You've now ostracized your child!
Skipweasel
Dec 6th, 2009 at 11:53 am
I know plenty of women who would have been happier without husbands!
Bum Chum
Dec 6th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
"Little girls are made of sugar and spice".

This is originally a very dirty and criminal limerick.

Get educated Peeps!!!
namowal
Dec 6th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
In the 1970s, when my brother and I were kids, my parents tried not to stereotype with the toys. If I got a doll, so did my brother. If he got a ball, so did I.
Did it work? To an extent. He did play with the doll for awhile. Then he got bored, tore it apart and threw it over the fence.
Alex
Dec 6th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
@Bum Chum - no, actually it's part of an 19th century poem "What Folks Are Made Of" by Robert Southey.
Dervid
Dec 6th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Wait a minute: hasn't a woman already succumbed to male domination by submitting to the rape (all heterosexual sex is rape) and bearing the children? Isn't bearing a male child sexist? What about the guy who drives the trucks in which these books will be delivered? Shouldn't he be mutilated for being born with a penis? OMG, I almost didn't notice: those kids are WHITE! Isn't it a racist hate crime for women to bear white children anyway? I thought we got rid of all of those! I'm appalled. This is racist. Racist.
Gauldar
Dec 7th, 2009 at 9:42 am
I don't see a problem with this. Doesn't matter anyways, you have to expect there's the chance your kid will hate your guts and do the complete opposite of what they are told. That won't stop parents from conditioning their kids they way they feel is best, or what they feel kids "should" learn, especially those that try to live the life they had (or didn't have) through their children. I say the hell with this book and the traditional ones, and read them Dr Suess. Give them the options, and then let them decide.
ted
Dec 7th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Girls will be Boys will be Girls? Great for the budding young transsexual.

I'm not sure why 3-8 year old children of either gender need propaganda of either sort.
Mac-attack
Dec 7th, 2009 at 11:11 am
The problem is that children can't make up their own minds, but rather adopt behavioral patterns from their peers and their parents.
You who claim that your daughters would rather dress in pink and play with dolls, and sons that would rather play cowboys and indians, well why do you think this is? It's not because of a congenital need to do so, but rather a mirror image of our society.
Unfortunately (I wish it weren't true) I think that these patterns will never disappear completely. It's too ingrained in our daily lives and because of that simple fact it will continue onwards.
Choiseul
Dec 7th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
So this is just great. Another typical idealistic "agenda" for more political correctness. I am getting a little tired of it the "pc" because it is really starting to ruin things.
If I ever have kids in the future, or am around kids of that age I will be sure never to get a feminists' children's book. I just hope I have all my children books from the past, then no worries. Heh, can't wait for them to butch up dora the explorer or barbie.

And as for the lil beauty queens and whatnot, it isn't because you read them books, it is because of how the parents raise them.
Ron
Dec 7th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
First thing I thought of was that this lady found a niche to exploit to make some $$... Our children are supposed to have a time in their lives when they are just kids...

Originally a poem from 1820 England... not a dirty limerick... Get educated?

Alot of women grew up reading these stories, and turned out just fine...
Minerva
Dec 15th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
"What little girl doesn't want to be a princess?" LOTS.
- this statement proves the need for an alternative message. "What little boy doesn't want to be a prince?" doesn't have quite the same ring, does it - because you can immediately picture some boys wanting to be firefighters or action heroes or whatever else.

Because we show boys from birth that they have many options.

Funny if all you offer - and all you approve of - is princesses and pink, that many girls will "want" that. I'm interested in the fear underlying those who want to insist that it's 'natural' for girls to only want those things. What do YOU lose if girls are taught that blue's a girl's colour too?

If you offer alternatives like in these books, as well as Disney, all kids will have a real choice. Not until then though.
Jane C
Apr 26th, 2010 at 3:18 am
Wow. It's amazing how few people seem to get that feminism has progressed since the 1970s. All nice and cozy with our bra burning stereotypes, are we?

I don't see why the idea that there are multiple ways to be a girl, and that they don't all involve tiaras and pink frilly dresses is so threatening to people? I can't understand why the idea of wanting to challenge very limiting notions of femininity provokes quite so much, frankly ill informed, anti-feminist ire.

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