The Gender Equality Checkpoint

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

I wonder whether it originated* with Marvel corporate, or Disney corporate.

Because Disney is already pretty bad on this front..

Bloody hell, you're not kidding.

The Disney Store have been selling Iron Man 3 tshirts for boys/men and girls/women - the boys tshirts have the slogan 'Be a Hero' whilst the girl's tshirts say 'I Need a Hero' and 'I Only Kiss Heroes'. In light of a bunch of negative feedback they've removed the 'I Only Kiss Heroes' one, but are still only selling 'I Need a Hero' for the girls and 'Be a Hero' for the boys.



And in other Superhero toy news ....

In Age of Ultron, there is one truly kickass female character - Black Widow. There is an iconic scene in the movie in which Black Widow exits the Quinjet on a black Harley.

Having previously left Black Widow out of the toy line for the Avengers movies, the toy makers have now included both the Quinjet and the Harley, which comes out f the the bottom of the jet just ;like it does in the film, so that kids can recreate that iconic scene - except with either Captain America or Iron Man riding it.

So they have erased Black Widow from her own iconic scene.

I get that boys might not want to buy girl toys. But there is no reason at all, why boys would not want a complete set of characters, including the female character. And there is no reason at all to assume that only boys will be playing with these toys. The fact that Disney made a tshirt for girls and women at all is a tacit acceptance that girls and women are wanting superhero film merchandise.

Time and again, the toymakers remove the female characters from their line up. They did not include Rey initially in their Star Wars Force Awakens line up, despite her being one of the central characters - they replaced her with minor characters and characters from previous films.

They did not do this in the 70s! The Princess Leia figure was there in the line up for the original Star Wars toys - my best friend, David had them all (including the Millenium Falcon and one of those things with the giant legs). Nobody thouight it would be a good idea to remove the only key female character - they just sold all the characters, and they all sold just fine. I remember the Princess Leia figure - she was done in exactly the same style as Luke and Solo - with a gun in her hand (the later figure sets granted, did opt more for the Leia in a gold bikini sex slave figure). It wasn't an issue. And that was back before anybody thought about girls wanting to buy the toys - they just put out the key characters for the film. And boys bougth and played with them (and so did some girls as it happens)

This kind of over the top gendering of toys is a new thing.


Here are the Disney tees