Come on CBeebies, where are the positive female role models? Rachel Bell reports on the case of the disappearing girls.
Since having two sons, still both pre-school age, I always notice when CBeebies commission a new programme. The programmes I remember being launched since my first son and I started watching are: Little Charlie Bear, Mr Bloom's Nursery, Baby Jake, Raa Raa the Noisy Lion, Rastamouse, Iconicles (fronted by nice man Nat), The Adventures of Abney and Teal, Justin's House, Gigglebiz (fronted by said Justin), Mike the Knight; Tommy Zoom, Andy's Wild Adventures and Tree Fu Tom. In case you don't know, Rastamouse is male. Spot the connection? All but one show is male-led. In CBeebies, the females appear to be locked indoors. Maybe these unwanted girlchildren were aborted in the womb. Has Islamic Fundamentalism taken a hold? They're just not there. OK, I'm exaggerating, but they're not there much at all and if they do make an appearance, they are all too often pink and giddy. Imaginative that. The pink and giddy stereotype is led of course by Oopsy Daisy from In The Night Garden and De-Li from Waybuloo. Then there's the pink and purple girls in Zingzillas, the ape band headed by frontman Zak, naturally. There's the token girl, Dashi in Octonauts, who likes to comb her hair in front of a mirror. Oh, silly voiced Sweetie from Driver Dan was making cookies tonight. She's not pink I suppose. The only girl protagonist amongst recent new commissions is Teal, who is adventurous and imaginative. THANK YOU! Tommy Zoom, Mike the Knight and Tree Fu Tom are as bad as the pink and giddy girls, dull stereotypes of the superhero, barking orders and being all alpha male. I can't argue with Mr Bloom, he's a softie, he's into plants, is funny and brilliant with kids and he's different to most men the entertainment industry exposes us to. Same goes for Justin Fletcher aka Mr Tumble. Apart from Teal, none of the new commissions acknowledge girls as humans who lead full lives and lead their own stories. It doesn't feel like we've moved that far forward since the creepy world of The Smurfs. Is the controller on a quest to wipe out the female species from public view?
Look more closely, peek behind the curtains so to speak, and you can find the non pink girls of course, doing something more than caring, cooking and smiling, doing more than playing second fiddle. There's Charlie and Lola, which is hands-down cool, there's Come Outside, which is hands-down cool too. Not only is the central character a woman, she's old by telly standards and she's a pilot. Brilliant. Balamory has a woman bus driver, then there's dirtgirlworld, Nina and the Neurons and Everything's Rosie. The last three all have their own shows named after them. WOW. But everything is not rosie at CBeebies. The girls aren't centre stage in the way that the boys like Tree Fu Tom are. An older woman pilot and a scientist do not make up for the dearth of positive and diverse and more accurate female role models for girls and, just as importantly, for boys to see too.
With Postman Pat, Bob the Builder, Koala Brothers, Timmy Time, Driver Dan, Chuggington and Octonauts being flagship shows, there's too much that's predictable. Males in charge of vehicles, and male vehicles, are overwhelming themes. Where is the diversity for the boys?
This is all important stuff. It's about girls and boys learning about gender roles in the media and wider world for the first time. It's about arming them with the knowledge that girls CAN DO STUFF. And boys don't have to be all SUPER. Last month CBeebies was ten years old. Since its launch in 2002 it has doubled its audience and is now watched by around half the UK's 0-6s every week (2.3 million). Clearly it does a good job of making education fun.
But you know what? Boys will watch girls. Cavegirl Igam Ogam on Channel Five was one of the best discoveries my partner made cos my three year old son loves it. It's brilliant on every level. And thank you to Channel Five for the risk-taking Little Princess, and to Tiny Pop for the charming, innocent and calming cartoons at bedtime headed by best friends Milly and Molly. If we expose boys to the female experience at pre school age, they will accept it as the norm, rather than writing it off as 'girly'.
With 'sexualisation' – it's sexism we're talking about here – hitting the headlines again following a report by the French government (read more here) we need to align all our media to represent females and males in a balanced way. Children's film and television is the start of it all, and actor and activist Geena Davis has already done the figures. She was so outraged by the lack of female presence, never mind positive presence, in kids' film that she did the research and found that for every one female, there are three males. In every group scene 17% is female. Nothing has changed since 1946. When she presented her findings to the film industry, they professed to be shocked. As is the case with most people, the male dominated world is 'the norm'. They simply don't notice. Ask any man why the The Smurfs was weird.
Geena Davis has set up The Geena Davis Institute to combat the lack of positive role models for girls. Why? Because Paris Hilton, Jordan, Rhianna, Kardashian, model, pole dancer, stripper, whatever you want to call them, they all do the same thing, is not all a girl can be. She can be Commander in Chief!!
Why does pink stink? It's not much to do with the colour. Like Disney Princess, it's about where it signposts girls to… Find out about the Pink Stinks campaign.
Read Zooey Deschanel talking about better roles for women in the Guardian here.
