Soupy Sundays: On Children, Cartoons and Gender (6)

children and cartoons

Soupy Sundays is a discussion post at Geeky Chiquitas in which we talk about our opinions on certain topics.

This week's topic is on children, cartoons and gender.


When I was a child, my favorite cartoon was Power Rangers. I loved it so much I would actually wake up early to watch it on TV and would buy every single paraphernalia associated with it. Some of my other favorite shows were Yuyu Hakusho, which is an anime about fighting demons, and Pokemon, another anime (and I don't have to explain what that is because I'm sure EVERYONE has seen it at one point of their lives). Because of my cartoon choices, I was always branded as a 'tomboy' because I loved these things which people labeled as 'for boys.' But then again, when I was a kid I also LOVED wearing dresses and playing with dolls. So what does that say about me? Does that make me a girly girl or a tomboy? Or can I be a little bit of both?

In society, children are told what to do in a gender binary perspective. Boys cannot cry. Girls have to wear dresses. Boys should like blue, and girls should like pink. Girls should like Barbie, while boys should like cars. That's why people keep shoving it in their faces, and target certain 'boyish' things to boys and 'girly' things to girls. But the thing is, who is this almighty being that dictates what is considered boyish and girly? 

I did a little surveying and asked my little cousins. I found out that they didn't actually care. These children had no concept of gender, and they didn't care whether or not the main character of a show is a girl or a boy. My cousin James loves Elsa from Frozen as much as my other cousin Nica does. He loves Tinkerbell too and does not even care if it's a movie about fairies and pixie dust, and that the majority of the characters are female. Nica doesn't care that Power Rangers is a show that is targeted to boys; she watches it anyway. So who is this person that thinks that certain shows are just for boys or just for girls? Because the children don't actually give a damn - they watch these cartoons because they think the shows are funny, engaging, heartwarming or just plain awesome. They don't watch these shows because they're for boys or for girls. 

Children are pretty innocent beings, and the only reason why certain double standards exist is because children at such a young age are already being fed with close-minded thoughts by the people around them. The moment you scold a boy for watching Barbie and calling him gay for it, this etches into his mind and he grows up with the mentality that boys are not allowed to like Barbie, and that liking Barbie is a sign of homosexuality, when in fact it is not. The moment you tell a girl that she cannot like watching Yu-Gi-Oh or playing with cars, this gives her the false belief that a girl should only be capable of playing with dolls and watching shows about fairies. You restrict these children from developing and discovering who they are and what they want to do. You teach them to think in black and white, and tell them to ignore the grey areas in life. You turn them into drones, always playing by the rules dictated  by society - rules that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

If you leave children to like what they like, then wouldn't that lead to a more open and less judgmental society?

The Gift Wrapping Curse

activity
DISCLAIMER: Not generalizing that all men and women are like this. Just what I observed from the men and women in my family.


Gift wrapping is a sexist activity (at least in my family).

It pretty much saddens me to realize how something as innocent as gift wrapping could be sexist.

I was doing what I normally do during Christmas break: lying in bed while watching a movie (Coraline was my movie of choice for that day) when my aunt called me and my other cousins to go out to help her with something.

When we got out of the room we were amazed and shocked to find heaps of toys everywhere yet to be giftwrapped, even with just 2 days left til Christmas. This was how the assignments went: Beryl was the human tape dispenser; and me and Audrey were the gift wrappers (as in people who wrap the gift not the gift wrapper as in the wrapper paper object). 

Anyway, we pretty much sucked at it as we never really had any formal gift wrapping training aside from those stupid Christmas projects in school which were one-time things. And we never really had the chance to wrap things at home because... Well mostly because our parents didn't want us to meddle with their stuff and destroy them 'cause we were rowdy kids who couldn't do anything right. 

So let's just say that that was pretty much the first time we had to really wrap a gift.



Our aunt found us laughable and ignorant and maybe even stupid for not knowing how to wrap. It felt like gift wrapping was this skill you HAD to know and be good at just because. It was like gift wrapping was supposed to be something natural or innate just... Because. But I guess we just weren't blessed enough by the gift wrapping gods.

5 minutes into our gift wrapping racket, we found out those gifts were my aunt's husband's gifts for his godchildren. I unconsciously commented:

"That's the wife's curse. You have to buy and wrap your husbands gifts."

I pondered over what I said and then I remembered. I remembered the countless times I accompanied my mom to buy gifts for people, not just her gifts but my FATHER'S gifts. I remembered helping her wrap each one of them (tho I was just the human tape dispenser back then) for my father. My aunt told us how she learned about gift wrapping because of the many times she had to help my grandmother wrap gifts back when they were younger. They weren't even just joint couple gifts; there were individual gifts too. Then I looked around me and realized - we were all women.

Why are we the ones cursed to wrap gifts? It's because the MEN can't be bothered to buy and wrap their OWN gifts. Why is it so difficult for men to stop letting women do their shit and actually step up and do their own gift wrapping shit? 

Why are they born in life believing that they are superior human beings just because they own a penis? Why can't they be bothered to do something as simple and easy (yes it's actually pretty easy) as gift wrapping? 

And then it dawned on me that gift wrapping wasn't something expected of everyone. My aunt's disappointment wasn't on how we didn't know how to giftwrap - and we all know everyone should know how to giftwrap. It was more because we were GIRLS who didn't know how to giftwrap - and what kind of women are we to not know how to giftwrap? How will our future husbands deal with christmas then, if we didn't know how to buy gifts for them and giftwrap the gifts for them?

My grandfather cannot be bothered to gift wrap. My father as well. And my brother, at this rate, won't probably ever have to wrap his own gifts too in the future.

So they will never, ever learn the art of giftwrapping. But it's okay, because they'll get married and have wives who'll do stuff for them, even wrap their gifts FOR THEM because that's what wives do right? Right?

After that incident, I had a headache and excused myself from giftwrapping duties, told my brother to freaking help, and vowed to myself that I will never buy or wrap gifts for my future spouse. 

It's a doggy dog world, man.

-K :)