April 28, 2016 The dismissive wails from the Twittersphere and social media mavens were almost audible: "Oh please, not another pink and blue gender in the toy aisle post..." To coin a phrase from Part One of the White House convening on Breaking Gender Stereotypes in Media and Toys, "Yes, And..." I’ve been writing about media and marketing’s impact on kids for ten years … [Read more...]
May 11, 2015 With superheroes crushing box office numbers with Hulk style force and toy merchandisers frantically scrambling to address market demand for sheroes deleted from mass media like an invisibly evil comic book spell, hashtags like #IncludeTheGirls are trumpeting a Herculean reminder that the new era of girls dubbed “Generation K” for Katniss will NOT be dissed and … [Read more...]
Dec. 18, 2012 This year marks not only the 40th Anniversary of Title IX changing women’s sports forever, it’s also the 40th Anniversary of the cycle-breaking, movement-making pop culture childrens' classic Free to Be, You and Me created by one of my very first childhood ‘sheroes’ Marlo Thomas. Marlo Thomas’ Free to Be Gold record and '70s era bestseller flipped the script on … [Read more...]
Dec. 7, 2016 Update Why not turn holiday gifting into a media literacy opportunity? Tomorrow I'll be signing up once again for Samaritan House sorting and stocking for kids less fortunate and I can't help but think it'll end up being a blog post about what toys are being gifted and how... From gendered cues to ages and stages, I'm sure it will prove enlightening as I … [Read more...]
     |
 | ShapingYouth is offered under a Creative Commons “Attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives” license. (Details) |