Gender Roles Ahoy!

[pantryslut]

I think the poll question really says it all.


[Poll #1731087]

Comments

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

You could always model princess behavior as fighting to save the kingdom from the evil monsters, using sharp wits and sharper bladed weapons.

I'm not sure how to get cheerleading to that level.

However, I was a pom pom girl in highschool for one season, and I still seem to have turned out okay.

[jactitation.livejournal.com]

While cheerleaders make me grit my teeth harder, princesses are part of a bigger and more powerful structure, royalty, that is way more fucked than high school hierarchies.

I guess I am more disturbed by how the whole princess thing naturalizes the life and death power of monarchies than I am by the body fascism, heteronormativity, and class and ethnoracial inequalities embodied in the cheerleader. When I grew up, calling someone a "lady" was an awful thing to do because it posited that they were a member of the (enemy) ruling class. "Princess" does that x 1000.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

At least cheerleaders are athletes who engage in teamwork. Princesses are only good to feed the guillotines!

[jactitation.livejournal.com]

Yes, and I think that comment points to how it might be easier to transform the figure of the cheerleader than that of the princess who is a despotic ruler by definition (okay, except when she's a disenfranchised despotic ruler).

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

When I grew up, calling someone a "lady" was an awful thing to do because it posited that they were a member of the (enemy) ruling class.

Now I'm dying to know where and when you grew up!

[jactitation.livejournal.com]

Brooklyn, early 1970s.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

My dad was Brooklyn (East New York) early '50s. I am going to have to ask him if it was the same then (he was in the Jewish projects). His mom was quite a commie.

(for the record)

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I can see it both ways. Princesses get to be the center of the story, while cheerleaders are by definition confined to a supporting role. But then there's the hederitary power structure of princesses--and the fact that there's only ever one, right? So it undermines female solidarity. Cheerleaders are athletic and active, princesses are often very passive and lack agency despite their central position in the narrative. But princesses can be as fantastic as dragons, while cheerleaders are a little more perniciously real.

I can also see it flipping back and forth depending on age and developmental stage.

Re: (for the record)

[jactitation.livejournal.com]

There can be multiple princesses who subvert the ruler's authority!

And princesses are all too real in some parts of the world: a woman I know recently had to begin her academic address with, "Your Highness," because a Dutch princess was in the audience.

But yeah about age. I'm just praying that my kid's recent pronouncement that he intends to go to the hospital to get a vagina when he's a grown-up* does not mean I will also have to endure the princess thing. Ah, the tribulations of a less gendered parenting style...



* Where he got that, I have no idea. We talk about friends who grew up from boys to be women, or girls to be men, but not the surgical aspect. So much for my powers as one who teaches that gender is social, eh?

Re: (for the record)

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

The kids do have Rachel Isadora's version of the Twelve Dancing Princesses on their bookshelf...

[zevinboots.livejournal.com]

Cheerleader [should be] a gender-neutral role involving talent and athleticism.

[kiya]

There are co-ed cheerleading squads. (Metamour taped some competitions a while back and I watched them.) My end verdict was that competetive cheerleading was what I wished competetive gymnastics was: interesting.

[zevinboots.livejournal.com]

That's what I mean. I love watching competitive cheerleading.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

I took "cheerleaders" literally, instead of the more figurative definition of "those who stand by on the sidelines of the action and cheer on the heroes/heroines." Real high-school/middle school cheerleaders? Way worse. Princesses aren't known (fairly or unfairly) for Mean Girls-style backbiting and bullshit. Kids probably don't have to deal with the egos and politics of actual princesses, but they will with cheerleaders.

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

I think of cheerleaders as mean girls who are the leaders of cliques in high school, very interested in how one looks and dresses and the best hairstyle and the best boyfriend. I also think of them as inherently in a supporting role and one the sidelines.

Having said that, I did have a friend who was a cheerleader who was of the athletic, kinda gymnastic-y variety.

I think of princess as, well, a fantasy. It is a fantasy that can be enacted in so many ways. It can be a helpless rescue-me, but it can also be a "dress up in clothes and DO stuff" I like the "self-rescuing princess" t shirt, personally.

I can understand the hereditary royalty issue and class and stuff, but I didn't grow up with that perspective, so I'm not sure how it plays out.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

It probably depends on the age of your child. If they are 3, you'll be sick of princesses. If they are 13, you'll be dreading cheerleaders.

How about making it into a story: and the cheerleaders performed great feats of daring do to cheer on the dueling princesses. (Insert swords, horses, lances, colorful banners ...)

[trinker.livejournal.com]

*shudder*

they're both banned here.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Simone was talking about cheerleaders and pompoms today for some reason. I just cheerfully ignored her. I did forbid my father from buying them mini cheerleading outfits, but I think he was just yanking my chain.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I refrained from growling at the people who attempted to gendernorm my kids over STICKERS today at an allegedly progressive toystore.

The "girls" set only has flippin' dress-up dollies in it. The "boys" set has pirates, dinosaurs, construction equipment, cars and trucks, and sports.

AAGH!

[rednfiery.livejournal.com]

The only thing I focused on while responding to this poll is which group is less likely to do that high-pitched squealing thing that some girls do (and that I hatehatehate with a passion). Based solely on my own personal experience, cheerleaders seem more inclined to act that way.

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

Cheerleaders actually are very athletic and don't get credit for it.

Cheerleading's troubling, though. I get creeped out by little girls doing it, especially because it gets treated as "sign up now! softball/football for boys, cheerleading for girls."

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

I voted "Princess," but that was before I remembered that George W. Bush was a cheerleader.