Busting the Myth: What 'Tweeners Are Watching and Why

I was a bit surprised to get an invitation to a Humanitas Master Writer’s workshop called “Busting the Myth: What ‘Tweeners Are Watching and Why.” I must admit I hadn’t given much thought to what we are saying to young girls about the roles of women, not in our primetime fare, but in our programming for children. So I went to the panel discussion at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences where we were treated to a special presentation by SEE JANE, a research and advocacy organization founded by Academy Award Winner Geena Davis. The topic: gender images in the media specifically geared towards the young audience.

Like the rest of society, film and television has been rife with a disparity of roles for females as opposed to their male counterparts in terms of availability and substance. But like in other professions and areas, we have made significant strides in those directions. While the disparity still exists in adult fare, especially for older women, the playing field is a lot more level today than it used to be. How surprising, then, to learn that while there is pretty much parity for females and males in live action aimed at our children, there’s a big disparity in animation and an even larger one in videogames.

Panelists were actor GEENA DAVIS, who co-founded the SEE JANE organization in conjunction with the DADS AND DAUGHTERS national non-profit; DR. STACY SMITH, researcher for See Jane and associate professor at USC; BEN SILVERMAN, executive producer of Ugly Betty and The Office and founder/CEO of Reveille Productions; ERIC COLEMAN, vice president/executive producer of animation & production for Nickelodeon, overseeing Sponge Bob; JONAS AGIN, senior vice president of The Tom Lynch Co.; DOREEN SPICER, co-writer of “Jump In!” film for Disney; and KARIN GIST, co-writer of “Jump In!” film for Disney. Moderator was CYNTHIA LITTLETON, deputy editor of News for “Daily Variety.”

Dr. Stacy Smith reminded us how in the ‘60s, there was concern about violence onscreen in children’s programming and in the 70s, the focus was on children exploitation and sexual exposure. Today, there are grave concerns surrounding sexual stereotyping in programming designed for children and 'tweeners. There’s a concern about equity, because repeated exposure to sexual stereotyping leads to a sexist, gender view of the world. ‘See Jane’ is attempting to reduce gender stereotyping for female children and increase percentages of roles for girls and women.

Actress Geena Davis summed it up best when she said she created See Jane because as an actor, she’s constantly aware that there are fewer roles for women. She admits to selfishly wanting to play baseball roles rather than the cheerleader ones. And she managed to do so… 13 years ago. The two movies that she made back to back, Thelma and Louise and A League of Our Own, increased awareness because she met many women who told her how those movies changed their lives. At the time, the media touted that these movies would start a wave of female buddy films and female baseball films. Unfortunately, it took 10 years for the next one to appear.

As she watched shows with her young daughter, she saw lots of gender imbalance and disparity. Unfortunately, she explained, women will watch shows about boys, but men won’t watch shows about girls. This is said to be human nature. But is that true? she asked herself. Could it be growing up with this disparity, not human nature, which took kids into adulthood perpetuating this inequality into adult fare? What if we change it from the beginning, so that they grow up with a more balanced viewpoint? Perhaps then, they’ll carry that into adulthood. That was the genesis for See Jane.

Dr. Stacy Smith supplied the empirical resources, for she studies gender balance and the amount of roles of male and females in children programming and movies, utilizing G-rated films and 1,000 children shows. Her findings for single-speaking characters aimed at children and tweeners was this:
TV content m:f 1.72:1
Movies content m:f 2.5:1
Videogames content m:f 6:1

In live action, there is almost parity between the sexes. G-rated–TV shows are close to parity. These same ratios are seen in adult and TVG fare. The highest disparities of females to males are in animation. While TVG shows equity, TVY and TVY-7, in particular, need improvement.

But in films, there is a curious phenomenon at work today: women more likely cast in traditional roles, while males (or the male personality) are often portrayed as less intelligent, more action, more humorous, dumb, strong and bad.

And while multi-channels and more media outlets make it seem like it should be easier to find one’s niche, the reality is that all we get is more of the same.

As a network representative, Eric Coleman explained that when a project comes in, he first looks at the content and idea. He doesn’t seek out gender shows to do, but the reality is that certain networks have more girls watching than guys. The bottom line, he reminded, is that “hit shows are the driving force of programming. We’re giving them what they want.”

Doreen Spicer answered him that perhaps we should be looking at it as “something like: ‘If you build it, they will come.’ – If you do it, and it’s successful, then other people will copy it.”

Coleman went on to elaborate that networks want strong female characters and balance because it’s smart for business. “But it’s not enough to say, ‘got to have more females.’ You need to bring something to the table… a show that’s so awesome that it’s gonna break through.”

One such series brought to the table this season is Ugly Betty. Executive producer Ben Silverman thinks it’s fantastic how many people embraced the character and suggested the enthusiasm shows that many people want this kind of program. In the Spanish world, Ugly Betty is seen as successfully challenging the stereotype of what is beauty. Its predecessor originated in Columbia -- a country under attack for corruption -- where Miss Columbia is more popular than the president. Hence, there, Ugly Betty stands for purity, an absence of the corrupt world, not the vapid world often shown.

In the US, however, Ugly Betty is seen more from the looks angle. It’s ‘The Ugly Duckling’ syndrome and its popularity points out an underserved audience. Even so, it didn’t surprise Ben that the first note he got from the Network was “We need an angry guy.” The audience laughed but Ben said he had been okay with that note.

One of the things that makes this kind of programming difficult, Eric offered, is that we’ve shut down the discussion of race and gender politics in the real world.

To which Ben proudly responded that The Office may insult many different groups but it also shines a light on problems through its humor – e.g., who’s in prison, who’s running the company. Hence, with Michael Scott as today’s ‘Archie Bunker’ who sees his female boss just as a sex object, Ben sees The Office as promoting dialogue on the subject.

It was then that Doreen Spicer and Karin Gist weighed in. They had done a very successful coming-of-age film for Disney, called Jump In! It’s about double dutch jump roping tournament in inner city Brooklyn. Originally meant to be a movie about just girls, the studio wanted a boy in. I suspect the studio was thinking along the lines of what Geena said: That boys won’t watch girls without a significant guy interest in it. But she didn’t elaborate.

Doreen Spicer was very familiar with skipping rope and she knew boys didn’t do double dutch, especially not in Brooklyn. Since you have to give the studio what it wants, she asked herself, how can I get a boy in? Doreen decided that the only way a boy would get involved in a ‘girl thing’ is if he’s hooked in by thinking it’s interesting and fun, then finds it challenging, plus… he likes a girl doing it and wants to spend time with her.

Karin explained that then the central question becomes, will he be seen as a wuss by his male peers if he joins the double dutch team? He’s fearful that he will be teased about something only girls do. The idea of creating a script of a boy doing something out of the box excited Karin, for most scripts have girls coming out of the box, doing things, not boys.

What came out of these ruminations is a movie in which a boy, whose family owns a boxing gym, is expected to be the third-generation boxing champ of the family by winning the Golden Gloves. When he is forced to take his younger sister to a double dutch tournament, he discovers two things: jumping rope takes talent and creativity and the girl he has a crush on is on the team. He joins the team as they prepare for the city-wide competition and has to overcome obstacles such as a bully disseminating a picture of him double dutching with the caption of ‘loser’ and a dad who sees this as the reason his heart isn’t in the ring and labels him weak. In the end, he learns to follow his heart, not someone else’s dream, and about family support and love.

Turning gender stereotypes on their head was so satisfying to Karin that she craves this kind of projects now: the boy-driven, out-of-the-box kind. The point of tweeners shows like this is to ‘empower’ the kid. To have them see a kid finding his dad dumb as a cliché. To have them explore their inner strength without having their parents look stupid.

When the floor was given to the audience to ask questions, a woman asked how parents could combat this gender stereotyping. Geena Davis explained that parents presenting their views to their child while watching the show with their child can mitigate a lot of bad parts. For example, she said, if you are watching violence, ask the child, “Wouldn’t that hurt if it happened to you?”

All agreed that the danger is for writers to write down to the child audience, especially when teenagers think they know everything and speak from that place. To this, Geena added that animation writers have told her it’s too hard because the girl needs to be more beautiful and smarter than anyone, stronger. The stereotype has become that the girl is the smartest and does the best and is the best behaved. Karin Gist agreed with Geena, for even writing Jump In!, she had to write the character description as “pretty but…”

The answer to this might be to have more girl characters, so each character doesn’t have to be everything – doesn’t have to represent every different type of woman. More choices working and playing together means none need be the spokesperson for all girls or womanhood.

Jonas Agin talked about the network side – saying that broadcasters want to be responsible and want to make the message clear. In fact, they will allow a character to be as flawed as you want, as long as he/she is redeemed in 22 minutes and has a clear message behind it. Networks have a strong sense of responsibility, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because their audience want it. A big part of the appeal of The Simpsons is that Homer may be the worst dad ever, but he shows he has a lot of heart. People hunger for that heart, they just want to be entertained without the heaviness of being lectured.

Ben added that one of the reasons he got the call for Ugly Betty is because the pharmaceutical companies want female-skewing programs. Bringing new revenue sources to television, pharmaceuticals believe it’s the women who make their dumb, put-upon husbands get the colon cancer drug that the husbands wouldn’t necessarily get on their own. So they want to provide programming that will keep the women watching.

But there's still a long way to go. Even though CBS is shifting in personality with a woman running it and the CW is clearly programmed by a woman, there has been no systemic change in the number of women in movies (17%) since 2004, even with some women in the top positions. And, Ben educated us, women watch more reality shows than men. How this all affects what our children are exposed to remains to be seen.