Jezebel 
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New York, 5:32 AM
Mon Dec 7
18 posts in the last 24 hours
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12/06/09
12/05/09
The Girls are Not Chicks book sounds like a parody of a feminist children's book. Not a good thing.
Now I want to read all of the books mentioned in this comment thread.
12/04/09
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12/05/09
12/04/09
Then Jane and the Dragon came after I liked a bit more text (but still mostly pictures). About a girl who wants to be a knight, but everybody laughs at her and tells her to be a lady-in-waiting. So the court jester gives her his small-sized armor, she secretly practices, and when the time comes and all the knights are far away at a tournament and the prince gets kidnapped by a dragon, she saves him. Except it turns out that the dragon is nice and is just trying to fit in, he doesn't actually want to kidnap princess. Jane teaches him to be himself.
Then came the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, which I know tons of people here have read because I get private messages every now and again with people telling me that they loved those books.
I also liked Winter of Fire, which I think is out of print. Those are chapter books.
I am positive that the two picture books about dragons absolutely made me who I am today. I am obsessed with them. But my parents didn't know that they were, or intend for them to be, feminist books. I just liked dragons and they thought "hell, anything with princess has to be good for a little girl, right?" Oh, how wrong they were.
12/04/09
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12/04/09
[www.latrobe.edu.au]
12/04/09
I thought it was crappy that Ma did so much work, but Pa seemed to make the decisions for the family. I also thought it was a shame that Laura had to become a Wilder when she married Almanzo, after all she'd been though as an Ingalls. Then I realized that my mother had done the same and that my siblings and I were given my father's name only and I thought that was unfair. Not knowing that it was an option for me to keep my name, I decided that if I couldn't be a boy when I grew up, I wouldn't marry.
12/04/09
He made the protaganists relevant to my life and instilled the belief in me from a young age that I could and should attempt to conquer anything I desired.
Reading and a supportive dad: a winning combination.
12/04/09
I must've been a good little feminist... The list almost mirrors the list of my favorite books as a child, especially A Wrinkle in Time.
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12/04/09
So badass.
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12/04/09
And this should include all forms of media.
12/04/09
btw, i love your icon.
12/04/09
12/04/09
Just the other day I was listening to someone go on about how the wish to 'save the day and get the girl' is universal. Really? I think 50 percent of the world's population might have something to say about that (that'd be 40 percent straight women and 10 percent gay men). And this was someone who had prepared a speech and thought a lot about the subject, but never once paused to consider that his p.o.v. left women as either getting saved or, if he's feeling generous, 'getting' men.
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12/04/09
My sons aren't avid readers--they're tech nerds--and I am a cinephile, so I select films such as the ALIEN series (Ripley FTW), KILL BILL or the old BUFFY TV series.
It's rather like slipping minced vegetables in the spaghetti sauce or among the pizza toppings. My boys don't know I'm feeding them something that's 'good for them'.
"Little kids aren't really known for their love of abstract concepts. What they are known for: resisting well-intentioned parental indoctrination of all kinds. "
OH SO TRUE! And that is why I am not a Republican math/science nerd despite my parents' indoctrination.
12/04/09
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12/04/09
but to be fair, the biggest influence on me becoming a feminist was simply my mom.
12/04/09
When I was in 3rd grade, a teacher asked me what i liked to read. I said i liked stories with women. Then she gave me a book about some girl who was strong and rode a horse. It was unbelievably boring. I hated that story, even if the teacher meant well and it was positive. I buried it under a mountain of books about the rainforest in my cubby.
I think sometimes, as adults, we think little girls are taking much more to heart from the media that they actually are. Children think blond Barbie is beautiful because adults in their lives gave them the message that blond Barbie is beautiful, not because Barbie is their doll, and they like their doll. I remember one comment on here that said that Disney taught little girls that older women were villains and useless. While Disney does have a few older women as villains, as a kid, I did not strongly dislike older women because of what I saw in those movies. I had positive older women in my life who provided a good example for me. Kids take messages from the real world a lot more seriously than from pretend world.
Of course we should have more positive representations of all kinds of women in the media, and in children's media, I am not arguing against that, and please don't take my comment that way. I think that this post does hit the nail on the head though -- sometimes little kids just see the boats.
12/04/09
True!