Gender roles and stereotypes in children’s media

After being released, “the storybook that no one read but everyone has an opinion about” (or “Meseország mindenkié”, as we call it among friends) caused an uproar with its tales focused on gender roles. I felt it’s time to write the third installment of the series that addresses the way children consume media, this time highlighting the gender roles and stereotypes associated with fairytales.

You can find previous chapters about the media-conscious family here.

The foundation of this research consists of 80 interviews with elementary school children and their parents, where I asked about the kids’ favorite fairy-tale characters (I didn’t ask specifically for books or cartoons, but the results show that audio-visual stories tend to be the main source of the emblematic characters in a child’s mind). Since having started this research, I seek to examine the results with the eye of a parent, so I will also be providing personal parenting experiences.

In fairy tales, it’s not immediately clear that characters can only have one, very defined gender out of two options. On the contrary, the media that non-binary characters tend to appear most in is meant for children. Just think about the anthropomorphic animal characters who either don’t speak, or have child voices (like The Small Mole, or Roo the kangaroo). On other levels, gender can also be revealed by the spoken voices or the context of the story. In Tom and Jerry, gender is not really important, since almost all the cast is male, as made clear by their names (even the dog is male, whose main trait is taking care of his puppy). The appearance of traditional gender roles is occasional (emerging when a female mouse or cat comes into the picture, creating a romance plot).

The voice of a character raises an interesting question. A very good example is Moomin, the Japanese cartoon adaptation of Tove Jansson’s book (released in Sweden). Moomin’s gender is not immediately self-evident (so much so that in one Hungarian dubbed version it’s a female-, in the other it’s a male voice, and in the original Japanese version it’s a neutral, child’s voice). The relationship between Moomin and Snorkmaiden is also ambiguous, which can be either a very deep friendship or the first embers of love. Having seen almost all episodes, it’s both, and that doesn’t necessarily raise contradictions. If someone really wants to find out, it’s no secret that the book was inspired by the writer’s lesbian love.

Since it involves lesser-known characters: the series, which was shown on TV in Hungary in the 1990s and later in the 2010s, is centered on a family with a more or less traditional structure. The stories deal with important social topics in an extremely rich and sensitive way, starting from the traumas caused by the Second World War to the diversity of human relationships. The house of the Moomin family is a welcoming environment where several peculiar characters find a home for longer or shorter periods of time, where human character flaws are met with love and acceptance, and where they treat others with basic understanding. Last winter we regularly watched these tales with my then 4-year-old son. A few things were still scary for him (monsters, weirder fairy-tale characters, villains), so we started to strongly filter out these episodes, but it never once came up whether Moomin was a boy or a girl, and whether they would marry Snorkmaiden. Because it has no impact on the story. On the other hand, the glee emanating from the cartoons, which is not the “let’s always be happy and cheerful” atmosphere, but an authentic joy of life, did have an impact on us and made this series one of our favorite fairy tales. Let’s not even get started on the beautiful visuals made in the anime style.

Of course, the Finnish, Swedish and even Japanese model was never mainstream. In the mainstream, since the 2000s, the trend of addressing girls and boys with different content has become stronger and stronger, with entire merchandising industries built around it. Oftentimes one look at a series and its merchandise can reveal if it was made for girls or boys. And the attributes tied to them are the model of gender norms that children will follow. As Jenő Tanschburg puts it in his book “Áldás vagy átok? Gyerekek a képernyő előtt”: ”In children’s programs, messages calling for fight, struggle, self-assertion and autonomous decision/making are addressed almost exclusively to boys, while messages of innocence, vulnerability, and the search for support and care clearly reach the girls”.

In Hungarian terms, Tévémaci, who was a universal figure until 2012, is a very good example of the increasing importance of gender roles. Although there have been various speculations about the characters’ gender, it was intended by the creators to start as a character of an unspecified sex and, although Tévémaci underwent several redesigns, it appeared as such until 2012. During the transformation of M2 into a children’s channel, Tévémaci was also transformed in accordance with the new trends. More precisely, one teddy bear became two: a boy and a girl. So the “Should it be a boy or a girl” question was decided, the gender ratio was evened out, but stereotypes could not be avoided here either.

The strong separation of boys’ and girls’ content was likely enhanced by the spreading of media featuring girl characters. Since as long as the heroes were predominantly neutral or male (the characters of the previous cartoons were male dominated, clearly shown by their names), they were still watched by both boys and girls. And they still are. On one hand, it’s gratifying that content in which the female protagonist is an active participant in the events, not just waiting for the prince arriving on a white horse, has also appeared in the offer. She can have a brave, magical adventure where she saves the world or even the male character. However, in most of these fairy tales, the feminine line is strongly preserved, because in addition to the above, the lead must also be beautiful, kind, and fashionable. She must simultaneously maintain her regal ability and the symbols of her femininity. All of this framed by a visual style that pretty much encapsulates the world associated with “girly” content.

Perhaps this is also the reason why these contents are much more rejected by boys than the other way around- and according to the results of my research, the more patriarchal a community is, the more typical these rejections are. Interviews with some mothers reveal that their sons will watch some princess movies but keep it like the deadliest secret from their classmates. When asked about what they enjoy in these films, the boys’ answers were mostly “they’re funny, there’s interesting creatures, there’s fun adventures” ect. In other words, the children did not raise any gender issues here either, and despite this, it’s considered a huge taboo that they don’t watch the usual content that’s considered boyish by their community.

Considering the points above (the strong separation of boys’ and girls’ content and the gender stereotypes appearing in them), I am especially happy for a storybook

Whose characters do not appear in these limited gender roles. The ones where girls can be brave and active, without having to be pretty, smart or fashionable. And the ones where boys reach their goals not by fighting, physical strength or death-defying bravery, but with compassion, kindness and sensitivity, which can then become a model to follow for them.

Kassay Réka