Passive Girls and Active Boys in Magazines
Notice that in this Children’s Place ad, both images with boys and the one with a mixed pair is captioned with activities (“travels,” “campers,” and “sporty favorites for hangin’”). The caption under the lone girl, however, emphasizes “smiles,” a passive, pleasing appearance. As Victoria says, “She is there to be cute.”
Similarly, in a three-page Fisher Price ad featuring racially-diverse children, both boys are shown as active learners. In the first page, the text above a boy putting a train set together reads “Developing his attention span helps him learn to solve problems on his own”:
The text accompanying this child is also implies activity. It reads, “He’s getting a good grasp of what his little fingers can do”:
But the text that goes along with the girl children playing with dolls only suggests that children, generally, grow:
Victoria also found that girls were sexualized. In all of the ads featuring girls in bathing suits, she noted, the suit was a two-piece. Here are two examples of frolicking beach babes:
She found this ad especially troubling. The girl, she argues, “has been reduced to nothing but buttocks and genitalia”:
Meanwhile, Beth M. sent us these examples from a Land’s End catalog:
