In defence of “Boy Power”

I have just watched another “viral” ad aimed at telling girls how awesome they are. Watch it when you have time. It’s clever

If you can’t watch it right now it’s an ad for toy company GoldieBlox, which has developed toys and games to “disrupt the pink aisle and inspire the future generation of female engineers.” Debbie Sterling, the company’s CEO studied engineering and was dismayed by the lack of women in her classes (only 11 percent of the world’s engineers are female).  The ad basically shows some little girls tossing away the idea of princesses and dolls using toys and household items to create a Rube Goldberg machine.

But as I watched it and started humming along to the Beastie Boys melody they used, I started to wonder about the boys. Where is the ad telling boys that they can be hairdressers and nurses and teachers, primary caregivers and personal assistants? Where are the ads displaying boys that aren’t playing sport, video games or watching TV?

Now stick with me here. Don’t think for a second that I am crying about the “poor middle class white boy”, I’m not. I just want you to think about this.

I know that the fight for gender equality is right and fair. I fully support, and am part of, the feminist movement and believe that women should have equal pay, equal access to jobs, equal treatment across the board.

I don’t think little girls should be marketed to as inferior and of course I don’t think they should just be given pink dolls and princess outfits to play with when they are young. Nor only sparkly nail polish and make-up as they get older.

In much the same way I believe little boys shouldn’t be marketed to as if their only interests are building, driving and fighting. I don’t think we should market only blue toys, guns, swords, building equipment and cars to young boys. Nor only video games and sports equipment as they get older.

There is often an outcry when pink hairdryers (for want of a better example) are aimed at girls. Less of an outcry when toy trucks are marketed to boys.

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And we should continue to reinforce that message. It’s a good one.

But we shouldn’t forget to reinforce strong messages for our boys. That THEY can be anything they want – they can be gentle and kind and emotional and display their feelings. That they don’t HAVE to like sport and violence and drinking games. That they can do anything that girls can do.

And this message gets even more important as our boys enter their teens and grow into the socially accepted steretypes that we normalise through the way teenage boys are displayed in the media.

On the weekend Wendy Tuhoy wrote a column I loved, entitled Do not demonise our boys, she writes:

…there are themes emerging from the latest debate about what is now known as “rape culture” that some parents of boys are finding disturbing, with good reason. The subtext of some of the discussion is that teen boys are such forces of nature as to be potential sexual predators just waiting to happen.

The sense that inside every sweet-faced teenaged boy there is a sex offender waiting to get out is real enough to being discussed among some parents.

…The suggestion that ‘boys are second class now’, even though it arises from the awful crimes in New Zealand and Maryville, Mississippi (where a 14 year-old girl was lured into a basement by older boys, given pure alcohol and raped, along with her 13 year-old friend) makes me angry.
I don’t want my girl growing up feeling threatened by the idea of boys and I don’t want my boys thinking they should fear some potential demon within themselves that they cannot control.

I’m all for Girl Power, but as the mother of a son I’m also keen for him to know that I believe in equality of the sexes. As much as I want him to respect women, to be caring, compassionate, kind and generous, to be happy and fulfilled in all his decisions, I want him to be proud of being a boy, proud to grow into a man. Just as I am proud of the man that he is growing to be.

We don’t have to choose one or the other. Everyone can aspire to be an engineer.