At the grocery store. Work that ass, Tinkerbell's little ethnic friend.
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The existence of this character, and the fact she's being marketed to children, is not at all funny. Your commentary on the other hand? LOLOLOL!
ReplyDeleteOMG. Who thinks this is appropriate for kids? Who are these people?!?
ReplyDeleteIt's awful, but predictable.
ReplyDeleteWow. Just...wow.
ReplyDeletemaybe your reaction to this says more about you than about disney
ReplyDeleteHa. lifesajourney gets it. Girlfriend Rachel is telling that story she needs to hear again. You know that one about the evil patriarchy and how everything she sees in the world just proves how pretty much everyone except white men are victims.
ReplyDeleteIt's obvious that an evil plot was is in place that led to the production of this playground ball. I just hope she was able to shield her daughter's eyes before she was blinded by the inhumanity and terror of it all.
Someone should take a bunch of Disney male characters and put them in these poses to illustrate the diference. I think a lot of people who think this is nothing would be disturbed once they saw the contrast.
ReplyDeletelifesajourney,
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting way to look at it, and I would agree with you if I believed that people function in a vacuum. If I was impervious to my social context and didn't understand the different sorts of narratives and nonverbal cues we use in our interactions, then you would be right. The thing is, it's pretty obvious that this is just not the way humans function.
For instance, in our culture, when a woman arches her back and sticks out her ass while gazing flirtatiously over her shoulder, that's an obvious social cue indicating sexual interest, or at least an attempt to attract the sexual interest of the observer. Watch what strippers do. Watch what women in porn do. It's pretty hard to miss. Then ask yourself why a character that is supposed to be geared toward little girls, and serve as a role model for them, is exhibiting these social cues that are so obviously sexual. Is it innocent and fun? If you think it is, why? What makes it innocent and fun? Maybe your answer will tell us a lot about you.
its always about someone else and never about you, isn't it?
ReplyDelete??
ReplyDeleteIt's about me and you and us and Disney and the shared cultural context we have, which invests body language with meanings whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not. Are you suggesting that the marketing folks at Disney don't understand this or that I'm just making this all up or what?
I suspect lifesajourney and his friend (burnbrother?) would both be offended if they had an altercation with someone, and then that person held up their fist and raised their middle finger in the air. Why is that? Because in our culture, that gesture is invested with meaning. This communication works because both parties understand the cultural meaning of that kind of non-verbal communication, and it depends on this shared background knowledge. Then if a bystander said "the fact that you're angry about that gesture says more about you than about the gesture," our friends life and burn would feel even more angry, because they had a legitimate response to the gesture, but we're invalidating it by shifting all the focus to them personally. The same thing is happening here.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Luce!
ReplyDeleteWhat Luce said. Exactly.
ReplyDeleteI can't speak for Life, but I pretty much get it. The only valid perspective on reality is yours. As soon as you convince the world to "get smart" and see things the way you see them everything will be cool. Then they too will be among the anointed.
ReplyDeleteI haven't witnessed this much groupthink bullshit since I bailed on the old Baptist Youth Fellowship thingy when I was in junior high because they were telling me that THEY were the only ones that had the right perspective on reality. Kinda funky that Rachel and her sheep embrace similar strategies. Feels kinda cultish to me, but whatever works I suppose. Frankly I'm no big believer in organized religion, but at least they have produced a few good outcomes versus the track record of feminists and progressives.
Not only do I need to think like you or I'm just not very smart but Luce is telling me how I'll feel and react if I get flipped off...and here I am thinking we hardly know each other. Personally I think you should harness that mystical power and focus on Vegas or the lottery. In any case, thanks for telling me how I'll feel. Next time I'm wondering I'll let you know.
I'm surprised Rachel let the first post through. She's been pretty heavy on the editorial side for a while now. Probably easier to keep the comments on track that way. We'll see if this one flys.
Burn,
ReplyDeleteNo doubt your comments never get through, but not because I'm personally moderating them, but because you're blocked, so I never actually see them. So as a reminder, the same rules still apply, even for those commenting anonymously. If you're verbally attacking other commenters or using offensive (sexist, racist, ableist, etc) language, your comments won't make it through. That applies to everyone.
You have no way of knowing this, but I've probably blocked an equal amount of offensive comments in response to you - that were belittling or verbally abusive to you - so don't think this doesn't work both ways, or that I only block the comments of those who disagree with me. Disagreement is fine. Actual critiques of my view are fine. Being abusive gets you bounced.
I'm curious to know how Life and Burn think we should interpret the little fairy's body language. If her arched-back-ass-out pose isn't sexual, then what is it supposed to signify? I'm honestly curious to hear what the competing explanations are.
ReplyDeleteMe too, Minerva. Let's hear it guys.
ReplyDeleteWhy would a character adopt that pose, and why aren't male characters ever depicted in this position?
So then burnbrother, do you feel like someone who's flipping you off is conveying a positive message? Like they're saying "have a great day!" or "I really like you" or something?
ReplyDeleteThe silence is deafening.
ReplyDeleteRachel - Yep, I was crushed when you banned me. Totally devastated, but somehow I soldiered on. Actually haven't tried to post since then. I only posted the other day because I was impressed that lifesajourney actually gave you some shit. I was surprised that you let it through given how predictable and boring the comments have become since you started your censorship campaign.
ReplyDeleteUnlike the many sensitive souls reading this blog on your long list of "ists", I don't need my sensibilities protected from comments. Given your impressive CV I'm sure you are familiar for all of the justifications that have been used over the years to explain away censorship. You are now among an elite group. Congrats. Kinda like "Hate Speech". Whenever the PC crowd hears things that don't fit their worldview they call it hate and make it a crime. Screw the first amendment.
I do have to thank you for one thing though. Gina and I are rocking a new game we're calling "Rachel Bingo". I know it's not a very creative title but I'm a business guy. Anyhow, we drew up some simple bingo cards and inserted a bunch of the common comments on this blog over the past year or so. You know really deep introspective input like, "Wow, just Wow", "OMG", "What an Amazing Post" or "That is so True". It does force us both to check your blog frequently, but since the loser has to buy dinner and drinks it's a burden I'm willing to bear. So if you're seeing numerous hits from my IP addresses it isn't being driven by the quality of your content. It's because I don't want to pay for dinner. You don't have to thank me for padding your blog stats for you.
Actually I think we've just created another game. We'll call it "Rachel Roulette" and we can start making odds on whether or not my posts are going to pass your stamp of approval. Here goes. Please be gentle comrade.
And this answers the previous questions or responds to the previous comments how, exactly? Way to totally not engage when you know you've been backed into a corner, burn.
ReplyDeleteBurnbrother, I'd like to hear your response to Luce's question too:
ReplyDeleteSo then burnbrother, do you feel like someone who's flipping you off is conveying a positive message? Like they're saying "have a great day!" or "I really like you" or something?
Minerva's question was also good. If you're going to take the stance that Rachel is just some oversensitive hysteric that's making this shit up, then you need to back your claims. As it is now, you're just using more complex and indirect ad hominems to cover for the fact that you can't answer these questions and still defend your position. Makes you look kind of ... "hysterical" and irrational. That must be embarrassing.
Rachel & Flock,
ReplyDeleteRelax. I needed to get my note to Rachel past Rachel (the censor). Now that we're over that hurdle.
The Flipping Off Analogy - only on a feminist blog would someone draw a comparison between that ball and flipping someone the bird. The fact that you people are so rabid about the ball speaks volumes about your bias. Your voluntary choice to be offended by something that most sane people consider innocent should tell you something...obviously it doesn't, but it should.
I would think that even you people could differentiate between a picture on a ball and an individual taking an aggressive personal action directly against another. Just because you choose to see that ball as porn or a symbol of the patriarchy doesn't mean that it is, it just means you've decided to assign it that meaning. If it truly was porn or even close to it do you really think they would be selling it for the intended use? Maybe they have a marketing plan to only sell it to unenlightened consumers...
Most regular people believe context matters. If someone flipped me off I would consider the context and respond accordingly. It doesn't always mean the same thing. I wouldn't just assume the worst. Once I made a judgement about the context I would respond appropriately. I certainly wouldn't start foaming at the mouth like you have over the playground ball and the evil you've decided to assign it. The sad truth is that you folks could walk out to the parking lot, pick up a rock and justify in your mind why the rock is a symbol of the patriarchy.
You see what you want to see everywhere. What was that old saying??? If you've got a hammer everything is a nail. That's it.
Between all the additional ad hominems... I see you kind of missed the point of the analogy. Let me explain.
ReplyDeleteYou and lifesajourney seem to be claiming that there is no such thing as shared cultural meanings for nonverbal communication, such as the pose that this disney fairy is portrayed in. You claim that this is all in our heads. The parallel claim, then, is that if you feel offended when someone makes on obscene gesture at you - a gesture which our culture invests with an obscene meaning - then it must be all in your head, and you must just be going around looking for something to get pissed off about. Because of your hormones or something. (See, I can hurl ad hominems around too.)
That's what you haven't really responded to. You say context matters. Why? What in the context would make you angry? And if an obscene gesture ever makes you angry, doesn't that mean you have understood the shared cultural meaning of the gesture and are responding to it? If not, what are you responding to?
Actually that's not what I'm claiming but I appreciate you trying to talk to me like I'm a moron. What I am saying again is that I don't agree with your politically biased interpretation of the cultural meaning of the pose. It's your right to think what you think but that doesn't make it "truth". You'd do well to remember that I'm not in one of your classes and I don't have to buy your program or suck up to you to pull a grade like most of the kids upon whom you ply your trade.
ReplyDeleteIt actually kind of amazes me that you are taking the obscene gesture, which I believe we can all agree has universally negative, aggressive and personal meaning across all demographics and expect a reasonable person to think there is similarity to your fairy pose that most certainly does not have the same deep universal meaning as The Finger. My position is that it's a very poor analogy as frankly the only folks that assign the type of meaning that you are to the pose are other pissed off gender feminists types many of whom work in academia and are not used to having their positions challenged in a meaningful way.
The unfortunate truth is that there is a lot of foolishness just like this being passed off as education in many of our universities when in reality it's just feminist political posturing.
But of course, raising your middle finger is not an obscene gesture in most cultures. It's not universal. It's tied to a specific cultural context, which is part of the point. You can't be a normally-functioning part of our culture and not get what the finger means. And I think Luce and Minerva and Rachel are right that the ass-out pose is a sexual one in our culture. It's hard to deny if you look around.
ReplyDeleteAnd again, why don't we ever see male characters in this position? Why is it only the female characters when they're trying to be appealing? I think that's a question you have to have a good answer to if your position is going to be defensible, burn.
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me about this image is that it reduces feminine appeal to nothing but sex appeal. There are other non-sexual ways to be appealing.
So this isn't meant to be sexy at all. It's just me putting my own perverted interpretation on it.
ReplyDeleteDamn. You should post that picture alongside the fairy one. It would make a nice little instructional graphic.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally with Sinderella on this. I mean, I think it's problematic that this kind of sexualized charatcer is being marketed to kids, but the larger problem is that for females of all ages, being cute or attractive=being sexually desireable. I don't doubt that little girls absorb the message, but the fact that the adults don't bat an eye at it is also really troubling.
ReplyDeleteGynormica: done.
ReplyDeleteSinderella and Janelle: I totally agree.
You don't see male characters in poses like this because unlike gender feminists, most people don't think sex is largely socially constructed. They understand and think it's OK that the sexes are perceived differently. What is considered to be attractive in a female may well be different than a male. They also don't consider the pose to be overly sexual and certainly not porn. Most consider it cute / attractive. You may not agree, but Disney has been successfully pitching Tinkerbell for something like sixty years now and somehow Rachel's discovery hasn't hit the mainstream yet in spite of her impressive ability to scour the web for pictures that support her conspiracy theory.
ReplyDeleteIf males were generally considered to be attractive in this pose and it helped sell products then you'd see them. They generally aren't so you don't. So I'd say that the reason you don't see dudes posing like this is the same reason they don't sell playground balls with Robin Morgan or Andrea Dworkin in the same pose. They wouldn't be considered attractive and wouldn't help sell balls.
Maybe you folks missed the memo, but attractive females AND males generally have an easier go in life. That's just how it is. Probably why both sexes try to make themselves more attractive by whatever means available. Might not be fair, but everyone isn't a winner in the genetic lottery.
So then, you feel that posing female characters that are marketed to very young children in sexually suggestive poses that, as you say, makes them more attractive, is OK? Because I think that's what Rachel is objecting to.
ReplyDeleteBurnbrother,
ReplyDeleteYou say that these poses are not sexual, and that Rachel scoured the internet for the pics of Tink (I assume your referring to the other post). But after I saw that post I just googled Tinkerbell and then selected Images, and they were all there in the first page of hits. These are standard poses for Tinkerbell.
I also think it's hard to argue these aren't sexual poses, seing as how they're identical to the standard pinup girl poses that have been used in our culture for generations. How can anyone deny that the poses struck by pinup girls are supposed to be sexy? Are you being satirical with this?
Enough already on this issue for me. Parting shots.
ReplyDeleteMichael - As I said earlier I think the pose can attract positive attention from the intended audience without being sexual. The best example I can give you is the common pictures of babies you see where they are naked and laying on their stomachs. Normally a goofy smile and drool complete the picture. I'd say that the majority of folks that see this type of picture think they are amazingly cute and very cool. They do not see them as sexual even tho the baby is bare ass naked and posing like many centerfolds have posed over the years. Now I would agree that there may be a small number of sick people who might see the baby in a sexual way, but not too many as a percentage. That's how I see the picture of the fairy. Disney didn't make the fairy unattractive because people want to see attractive fairies.
Willow - Look, if you and Rachel think that Disney has been leveraging sex via Tinkerbell and her evil posse of sexpot fairies to sell their products over the years there isn't much I can do to change your minds. I don't think your opinions are commonly held (except in this blog) but that's fine. I also think there is an entire story line behind fairies that is pretty positive for kids.
As I mentioned above I don't see the referenced fairy pose or Tinkerbell as any sexier than the nekked baby, which isn't sexy at all in spite of being posed in what you folks seem to believe is a sexy pose. I also don't believe it's very productive to assume the worst possible motivation for everything you see. Frankly all a worldview like that does is put a person in a permanently shitty frame of mind.
I think I would tend to agree with Burn on this in general. But I don't agree about Tinkerbell because I work at Bed Bath & Beyond, and we used to have a kids room set that had Tinkerbelle standing in that looking-over-the-shoulder pose, and it said "Flirt" in flowery script all over the comforter. That seems pretty clear what the intention is.
ReplyDeleteBut generally I think this is meant innocently, even if that's not how we'll naturaly interpret it because of the pre-existing norms of pinup girls and female sexual posturing. So maybe I'm with Sinderella and Janelle on this, except I don't think it's conscious or intentional.
If Life's a Journey is a man, I can understand why he isn't getting it. If she's a woman, then, shame on her.
ReplyDelete