Cartoons- A hotbed of gender stereotypes

When a child plops down to watch cartoons, they’re not just absorbing entertainment, they’re soaking up values, expectations, and ideas about the world.  And, when it comes to gender, many kids’ cartoons still live in a time warp, recycling outdated stereotypes about what boys and girls should be. This often means that the girls are portrayed as all glittery princess types and the boys are all swaggering alpha males. The damage? Subtle, cumulative, and far-reaching.

In many mainstream cartoons, boys are:

• Brave and bold (think Ben 10, The Bravest Kight, and PAW Patrol)

• Silly troublemakers (SpongeBob SquarePants, Johnny Test)

• Action-oriented (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers)

While girls are:

• Sweet, nurturing, or overly polite (Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony)

• Dressed in pink or sparkles

• Supporting characters, not protagonists, unless it’s a “girl-centered” show, in which case male characters are often reduced to comic relief.

  
  

Even in ensemble casts, the females play a subordinate role.  In Scooby-Doo, Daphne is the fashion-conscious one, Velma is the brains, and Fred is… well, the guy in charge.

This gender bias even exists in cartoons when the characters aren’t human. In many  animated shows (Tom & Jerry, The Lion King, Looney Tunes), gender roles are assigned to animals. The male leads dominate the action, while female characters are hypersexualized or underdeveloped.

These biases affect kids as they begin to associate power, fun, and humor with being male, and passivity, beauty, and emotion with being female. The male characters don’t cry and the female ones don’t engage in activities that might ruin their perfect outfits.

A 2017 report by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found that male characters in family films outnumber females 2 to 1. Another study published in Science (Bian, Leslie, & Cimpian, 2017) revealed that by age 6, girls are already less likely than boys to describe themselves as “really, really smart.” Apparently, gendered notions of brilliance are acquired early and often perpetuate outdated gender roles. This isn’t just about fairness, it’s about shaping children’s sense of self-worth and future potential.

Some modern cartoons are breaking the mold and should be lauded for rejecting gender stereotyping. Here’s a few:

• Steven Universe: A groundbreaking show with emotionally expressive male leads. Themes of empathy and vulnerability take center stage.

• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power : Female characters dominate in complexity, leadership, and strength, without relying on tired beauty tropes.

• Bluey: Shows an involved, caring father and playful parenting that breaks traditional roles.

• Doc McStuffins: A Black girl as a doctor, taking care of her stuffed animals, and inspiring a new generation of young viewers to dream beyond stereotypes.

• Ridley Jones and Ada Twist, Scientist : Celebrate girls as explorers and problem-solvers.

  
  

You can help effect a change in achieving gender equity in cartoons. Whether you’re a parent, grandparent, aunt or a friend, in your next conversation with a young person, ask them :

·      “Why do you think all the heroes are boys?”

·      “How would the story change if the girl was the main character?”

·       Then as a fun activity, ask them to rewrite endings or invent their own characters that break traditional molds. Let a boy be a mermaid. Let a girl rescue the dragon.

It’s time to move beyond pink sparkles and blue capes and let all children see themselves as the heroes of their own stories.