I do confess to watching a few kids’ shows. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a regular viewer of Grim Adventures; I’ve also found Foster’s Home to be entertaining (though Bloo can truly get to be too much to take sometimes) and I’m familiar with Avatar, SpongeBob, Jimmy Neutron and Ben 10.
Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon offer different flavors of programming. The stuff on CN seems, at times, to be a lot more edgy, intended perhaps to appeal to an older, more mature or “developed” audience,* at least once it gets into the later-evening fare, while a lot of the later lineup on Nickelodeon seems to be inane teen-centric comedy that is as derivative as it is tired. So I generally gravitate to CN more than Nick.
This means, however, that I get subjected to {shudder} commercials aimed at children … and Mattel done went and pushed one of my buttons.
It’s long been my contention that if I ever had a daughter, she would be weird. She’d have a full complement of Legos, probably a lot of Capsela, no EZ-Bake ovens, no insipid little dollies that pee or poop or cry, and no — absolutely no — inadequacy-implanting Barbies. The Barbies she would have would include Nuclear Physicist Barbie, Radio Astronomer Barbie and the ever-popular Lesbian Activist Barbie.
Lately, it seems that Bratz have rattled Barbie a little. Mattel is cranking out Diva Barbies now — which are more or less what you’d expect them to be, sans the exclusively-gay-male fan base (uness one includes the occasional boy who prefers Barbies). The inanity is sufficient to make almost anyone queasy, but what really got me nauseated was the Pom-Pom Diva line.
I shit you not — and the commercial run is just revolting. They’ve borrowed from iPod’s animated-dancer silhouette look to open the ad, whereupon you see the typical scenes of girls playing joyously with Barbies — everyone visible done up in pom-line outfits — along with a sung chorus that reminds us, repeatedly, that “it’s fun to be a pom-pom diva!”**
Now I’m sure there’s got to be some sort of protest to the effect that pom girls serve a purpose, namely flipping, flying and looking spunky for various sports events. But let’s consider a couple of anecdotes.
1. The Pop Warner crowd here features, of course, a dozen or so different teams — and each team has its own pom section. In some cases, there are more pom girls than players.
2. Last year the high school band was performing superbly, and I went to see a few of their acts. One was preceded by a demonstration from the cheerleaders, who used cards with letters on them to spell the school’s initials. The final girl, who was holding the S (for school), was proudly displaying the card … turned sideways.
In the first anecdote, the solution is obvious. Form a girls’ athletic league. It doesn’t have to be football; it can be soccer, if there are too many concerns about tackling and such.
In the second anecdote, there is no solution; we’re simply seeing the natural result of a girl being told, for years, that things such as brainz and book-larnin don’t amount to anything as long as you got the lookz and the moovz.
Which is great until you hit 30 and your ass drops and your tits start to sag.
My point here is that pom-pom girls might indeed serve a purpose — however, no girl should ever grow up thinking that her purpose is to be a pom-pom girl. That is a shallow, pointless goal, since there are considerably more fulfilling ends to pursue, and much longer-term plans that generally have to be made in order to have a genuinely pleasing life. And the problem that I have should be transparent: By marketing, glorifying and commercializing the vapid obsession with cheerleading, Mattel is doing nothing but helping create yet another generation of mindless bimbos.
One can respond, accurately, that Mattel is simply responding to what the consumers want. The rejoinder is that doesn’t make it right. Thousands — dare I suggest millions — of parents are perfectly happy raising girls who want to be in a fluffy gown just like Bridal Dress Barbie, who dream of being onstage performing like Diva Barbie, and who aspire to nothing more than being on the cheerleading squad like Pom-Pom Barbie.
Shame on them. Shame on every single one of them.
The factors here are all the same: They make women out to be, in essence, worth only what their attractiveness (as defined by narrow and more-or-less male-centric norms) can manage.
With Bridal Barbie, girls are taught that the only reason they exist is to marry a man and therefore Become Fulfilled As A Woman. With Diva Barbie, girls learn that chanting insipid lyrics to cynically-written formulaic beats while dressing provocatively onstage is the Path to Happiness.
And with Pom-Pom Barbie, girls learn that the place for them is on the sidelines, staying right the hell away from any competitive behavior … lest they decide, later in life, to Challenge the Phallocracy.
If this is life in Barbie Heaven, then I’m afraid Lucifer and I agree on this one: Non serviam.
And boys, if I ever do have a daughter, you can be absolutely certain she’ll be bright, self-assured, physically capable … and possessed of a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. You’re welcome to date her in between her physics and calculus classes, and maybe even cheer her on at the hockey games.
But be assured that the first moment she gets a sense from you that her position is to walk two steps behind you or say yes, dear to your every whim, she’s gonna toss your ass right where it belongs: In the garbage, with all the Barbies.
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* I’m very familiar with [adult swim] — I have complete ATHF, Harvey Birdman, Robot Chicken and Venture Brothers DVD collections — but am not referring to their programming here.
** UPDATE: The line is actually “It’s cool to be a pom-pom diva.” That is not an improvement.
