Before it airs on PBS you can see some of the individual interviews on the MAKERS website, and browse through them by last name or the area of interest that they’re in. What I love overall is the inclusion of household names as well as women who have achieved and contributed just as much, but we haven’t been exposed to their stories yet. This video initiative is giving those women the opportunity to share their experiences and contributions with a much wider audience, and giving us the opportunity to see other ways that women are leaving their mark in history.

The interviewees cover everything from women in Hollywood to making society a better place for our future daughters. There’s such a personal feeling of watching them discuss these issues in the context of their own experiences, with some referencing back to their childhood in the interview. As I watch the clips I find myself relating to many of their own stories, which reassures me that I can work towards being just as influential. It allow us to see how these women achieved what they have today, and gives us inspiration that there will continue to be amazing women like these, and possibly even ourselves, that will be featured in future documentaries like this one. The MAKERS site goes even further to personalize the experience and encourages you to make it your own journey with a MAKERS Moments section, allowing you to click on what inspires you and watch related interview clips.

Whether they are business entrepreneurs or politicians, the wide range of occupations and contributions that MAKERS showcases exposes the different ways in which women are shaping our world. We need to continue this discussion of our own personal experiences, struggles, and achievements as women, and get our stories told. Explore more of the MAKERS site for blog posts and interview clips that are already available online, and be sure to catch the whole documentary when it airs next year!

Loist builds the conversation around 5 keywords: counterpublics, feminist movement, networking, ghetto, and professionalization. In regards to counterpublics, she talks about the “safe space” that women’s film fests provide for constructive discussion of films about women and for women, with many having Q and A sessions, allowing the films to be “presented and considered outside of mainstream norms of film reception that still often have a tendency (if they are not outright) sexist and heteronormative.”

She also discusses the Bechdel test, and how few films pass it. I didn’t even know about the Bechdel test until I started interning here at WAM!, which surprised me because the earliest memories I have of defining myself as a feminist came from the problematic issues I noticed in film and television. It’s really pathetic that the only criteria needed for a film to pass the test are “(1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man (for more than a few seconds).” You would think that’s not that hard to do, but the lack of films that meet these requirements makes movies like The Hunger Games a huge deal. Back in March, Melissa Silverstein noted that it’s important to recognize that this is a popular movie involving not only a female character as the center of the film, but “a STRONG female who spends the movie literally fighting for her life.” She also discusses the fact that it matters that there was so much hype even before the film opened, and that hype was around a film that follows Katniss, a woman. It shows film producers and distributors that “having a strong female character is not something to try and avoid, it is something to be seen as a potential success.” Films that highlight female leads doing something other than worrying about men and relationships reminds me of my mother talking about how she felt when Alien came out. She was excited to see an action movie with a female lead fighting for her life and a positive role model for young girls. That was in 1979, and in 2012 we’re still talking about the rarity of a film like The Hunger Games debuting as such a success.

As we’re still far from seeing an equal representation of films made by men and women in the mainstream film industry, women’s film festivals offer a place for film screenings that represent the voices of women that we’re currently lacking. However, we still need to accomplish getting these films out into the mainstream world as well, and not just keeping them in the WFF community. Loist acknowledges the need for WFFs to “legitimize their existence towards funders, politicians, filmmakers, and distributors.” Right now, it’s difficult to even get films made by women into larger festivals. This year at the Cannes Film Festival, no women directed films are in the main competition. Silverstein nails it when she explains, “for an industry that professes to examine questions about life, that challenges conventions, that pushes the envelope, the total Neanderthal approach to women is breathtaking. How can this industry say it is progressive or forward thinking in any way when it constantly shunts aside the perspectives of half of the world.”

It was clear at our own WAM!Boston Film Festival this year that WFFs create a space for our stories to be told and understood. I felt incredible energy and pride while sitting in that theater supporting women’s voices along with the filmmakers and audience members. That feeling of seeing women accurately represented on the screen needs to become the norm when we go to the movies on a Friday night, and not just something that’s experienced at specified film fests.

But while WFFs provide an important environment where films made by women and about women can be publicly viewed and discussed, Loist explains that “WFFs are accused of being niche events that pigeonhole female directors, put them in the ghetto rather than help them be equal to their male colleagues.” We still need to get these films into the mainstream industry so story lines like a woman fighting for her life can become what people think of as a ‘regular’ movie, and not ‘the other’ in some sort of special interest genre. As film narratives that include strong female characters become part of the everyday media messages that people receive, we will then begin to move away from the current limited gender roles society has placed women in within our real lives, and not just on the screen.

Melissa Silverstein asks, “What can and do WFFs provide and do differently than other festivals?” and encourages any thoughts you have on the issue. Comment and share your answer to her question at Women and Hollywood, and learn more about what happened at our WAM!Boston Film Fest this year.

It all started with the LEGO Friends line, marketed to girls. Feministing’s Eesha Pandit talks about why the line is damaging, exposing the problem that “it reinforces stereotypes and is intentionally domestically oriented, with toys that encourage girls to decorate their homes and get their hair done.” Meanwhile, the line directed toward boys has “ninja quests, being police, doctors and construction workers and my personal favorite, fighting alien invasions.” In response to this new line, SPARK started a Change.org petition in December to ask LEGO to “stop selling out girls.” Since then, they’ve gotten more than 55,000 signatures.

In the letter to LEGO, SPARK states that “we fully understand that the trend in marketing is to sell a narrow, commercialized version of gender to younger and younger children,” but that they expected more from LEGO, and the company should “continue to open up creative options and give children a wide range of experiences.” They go on to emphasize that their point is that “it’s about the lack of faith you have in girls’ skills and interests,” and that in order to purchase LEGO products, “girls need messages about the value of shopping, clubbing, baking, and tanning.” They make powerful points in the rest of the letter including the fact that the company rarely uses female characters in traditional LEGO sets, and very few girls are in commercials for them. SPARK representatives point out the powerful message that to LEGO, the traditional toy sets are for boys, and the “others” are for girls.

These efforts finally led to a meeting between SPARK and three LEGO executives this past Friday. The discussion went longer than planned, and SPARK left “feeling energized and encouraged.” Michael McNally, Brand Relations Director of LEGO, stated that the role of LEGO ambassadors was “to be active listeners” and consider the concerns of SPARK. I’m glad that SPARK felt it was necessary to make it clear that the media inaccurately portrayed them as an “angry feminist group out to get the LEGO Friends banned because we hate pink.”

SPARK had three main requests for LEGO, including more girls and women characters in all the LEGO lines, more girls in LEGO ads as well as placing boys in ads for LEGO Friends, and lastly, include sets in the LEGO Friends line that aren’t stereotyped girl activities. LEGO execs responded that they will be increasing the number of women in all LEGO lines by the end of the year, and that the company recognizes SPARK’s concern that the stereotyped Friends line doesn’t apply to the interests of all girls. Based on the meeting, SPARK feels that “there is work being done to make sure that girls’ introduction to LEGO doesn’t start and stop with the current batch of LEGO Friends.”

It’s inspiring to see that a petition led to an actual meeting with LEGO execs, and they were willing to hear what SPARK and the 55,000 people that signed the Change.org petition had to say. It was important that SPARK reps clarified that their concerns with the LEGO line come from “holding LEGO to a higher standard of toy-making – one that is gender-neutral and allows kids to engage in the benefits of construction play without the intrusion of outmoded and harmful gender stereotyping.” Making this clear may have helped set a more constructive environment, where both groups could discuss what was in the best interest of young girls. LEGO needs to look at the concerns discussed in the meeting and begin to move away from the limited and stereotypical images and products it provides girls, and meet the three main requests that SPARK made. It was a success to gain a meeting with them, but now LEGO needs to follow through and address the issues that the company agreed need to be changed.

I agree with Angyal in believing that “the corner of popular culture where fairytales are the most influential and sometimes the most harmful is the contemporary romantic comedy,” with romantic comedies being “grown-up fairytales.” I really hadn’t thought about the connection between fairytales romantic and comedies before, though after reading Angyal’s piece it seems so obvious. As adults watching romantic comedy films, we’re able to “relate to and understand romantic comedies because of the foundations laid by fairytales.” We recognize storylines like Pretty Woman because we grew up with narratives involving women winning over men and becoming princesses.

As kids we learn repetitive narratives from Disney movies and bedtime stories like women battling it out using beauty to gain power or win over a man. In The Little Mermaid Ariel literally gives up her voice so that she can be with a man!  She sacrifices her own voice in order to fulfill the ‘ultimate goal’ many Disney movies and fairytales teach girls, which is finding a successful heterosexual relationship.

While finding a man is an obvious message in a lot of these stories, Angyal stresses that we can’t forget about what we learn through the relationships between women that are portrayed in fairytales like Snow White, as it’s a story about “what happens when we tie a woman’s worth to her physical appearance: we toss ageing women aside and encourage all women to cut each other down.” However, you can’t try too hard to be beautiful, because “it’s a brutal double-bind: you will be rewarded for being beautiful, but you will be punished for trying to be beautiful.” This reminds me of Ashley Judd’s recent article about the crap women get for ‘getting work done,’ while they’re just trying to fit the impossible beauty ideals that society has set for them. We’re taught that if you’re not pretty enough you’re not good enough, but don’t try to do anything about it because then you’ll be criticized for that too.

In terms of men and looks, fairytales like Beauty and the Beast teach us that a man who is ugly on the outside might actually be a handsome prince, and you just need “the power of requited love” to get rid of his outside appearance. With romantic comedies, this storyline changes from “teaching girls to look beyond beastly appearance” to teaching women to “look beyond beastly behavior.” So then basically, if a man is treating you badly you should wait it out and maybe you can change him. These messages in romantic comedies for women are just as damaging as the ones in fairytales for young girls, especially because we are continuing to receive them even as adults. We need to support and provide “new narratives that don’t trap women and men in outdated roles and that provide a less 17th-century vision of a woman’s worth.” To find films that don’t use these outdated narratives, check out sites like Women and Hollywood and other upcoming WAM!News posts.

The Mommy Wars is a descriptor of the social, cultural and ideological battle allegedly being fought between stay-at-home and work-for-pay mothers over who is doing “motherhood” and “womanhood” correctly. They were kicked off anew last week when Democratic commentator Hilary Rosen stated that the Republican presidential nominee’s wife, Ann Romney, had “never worked a day in her life,” and has therefore “never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing.” Mrs. Romney tweeted her response, and thus, the Mommy Wars got started all over again.

Rosen wrote a response at the Huffington Post, talking about how what she had meant was that Mrs. Romney’s choice to stay home and raise her five sons was not a choice that most Americans have. Intention, however, matters less than reception, and the last week has been a flurry of comments from prominent women in politics (running the political gamut from Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to Rep. Michele Bachmann) thinkpieces on what Rosen’s words really mean for women, how Rosen’s words benefited the Romney campaign, comparing Rosen to Hillary Clinton on a scale of mommy-war tact, etc., especially since Rosen’s apology for starting another “faux ‘war against stay-at-home moms.’”

It is not the war, however, that is faux, for it certainly exists in the culture, as both conservatives and liberals, stay-at-home and work-for-pay moms as well as women without children defend their choices; what is false about this notion is that women are attacking each other unprovoked. Rosen’s comments, after all didn’t run away with themselves. These stories are getting linked and searched, creating page views and ad revenue for news sites and aggregators, feeding the 24-hour news cycle. While there is a serious war being waged on women’s bodies, reproductive rights and healthcare now, it is much more fun for mainstream media outlets to cover what appears to be a social issue catfight between two women from opposite sides of the aisle.

How many stories and thinkpieces have been written, however, about the fact that Romney the candidate thinks that working-class women with children as young as 2 years old should be afforded the “dignity of work,” so they can be eased off of government safety nets? This is not about a woman on the left and a woman on the right clawing each others’ eyes out over ideological differences; this is about an election cycle that needs to be fed. These sites get more page views when the flames get fanned, when quotes are taken out of context; for the general audience, this is much sexier than talking about serious issues of policy and economic inequality.

I’m not going to tell anyone to ignore these kinds of stories, because I certainly haven’t, and I won’t. I also can’t tell anyone how to stop them, because I don’t really know myself; the kind of sociocultural battle being fought with the Mommy Wars as proxy is nothing new. Share the stories that have impacts, though; poke holes in the myth that these conversations are reflective of anything other than a slow news day.

Essentially, using publicly shared information on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and other social media sites, a new app called “Girls Around Me” allows a person to “check in,” find the names and pictures of a number of women (or men, but it is called “Girls Around Me”) in local social spaces, and then approach them, with whatever information is publicly shared already in mind. After the Cult of Mac story came out, Foursquare cut the app’s access to its API data, stating that this use was against its policies. I spoke to WAM!bassador of Technology Deanna Zandt about “Girls Around Me,” the fallout & the future.

To Zandt, the majority of the reaction to the Cult of Mac expose has seemed like “everybody being like ‘oh my god, women shouldn’t be using Foursquare.’ When publishers of apps create their APIs they should be taking the appropriate precautions so that users have the ability to protect themselves, that people know that their lives weren’t going to be in danger in some way.” She, herself, had an interchange (click here for the Storify) with Dr. NerdLove, a love advice column, about the good doctor’s victim-blaming reaction. Saying women should stay away from this kind of technology is, as Zandt said to Dr. NerdLove, like saying women shouldn’t wear short skirts. The problem is not individual women engaging in technology; the problem is a culture where abusing public information like this is permissible if not explicitly encouraged.

“Technology becomes an easy target to place all of our hopes and fears onto,” she said. “Rather than addressing women’s public sexuality, or any of those [issues around violence] culturally, we point to technology and say ‘how terrible.’”

Another contemporary example, Zandt said, was when Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers student, committed suicide after his roommate used a webcam and Twitter to “out” Tyler. “I was being interviewed on CNN [about technology's role in Clementi's death],” Zandt said, “and in the pre-interview, the reporter asked, ‘Doesn’t this incident show us the dark side of technology?’ And I said, “No, this isn’t about the dark side of technology, this is about the dark side of humanity.’”

While the challenges that come along with apps and iChat are new, this kind of technological panic has numerous precedents. ”I think about how people treated the telephone in a certain way, like it was going to stop people from visiting each other, that it would be the end of society as we know it,” she said. “When the telephone [was first made widely available], prank calls and dirty calls were all the rage in one way or another, and people didn’t tell women to stop answering the phone. But we always seem to get general instructions about what to do,  and parents understood and could hold our hands through it. These newer technologies are not as culturally ingrained, so people automatically fear them.”

Technology, for this generation, is very much a given. As a broader culture, and especially for folks who have lived their whole lives with the Internet, we don’t fear new technology so much as accept it. We want to try new things, and give applications our information. This means, however, that for developers as well as consumers, issues of security, as with “Girls Around Me,” often come after the fact of their publishing, rather than before.  Zandt attributes much of this to the relative homogeneity of developing teams.

“In terms of personal safety, developers don’t have a breadth of diversity and equity coming to the development table to take their blinders off to see where these things could go horribly awry,” Zandt said. “When GoogleBuzz launched as a new feature, you had to click 80 million screens just to get to GMail, but one of the things that it did as part of the integration package was automatically share things that you read on GoogleReader with your most contacted person in your GMail. For your normal average person and normal average experience, your most contacted people are your partner or your best friend. For one person, it was her abusive stalker ex-husband who was threatening to kill her, and the technology was passively, without her knowledge, sharing things with this person.  If you look at the GoogleBuzz launch team, too, it is largely these young dudes, most of them white, maybe one or two women and a couple of Asian guys, coming from roughly the same kind of experiential background. That’s where for me a lot of the problems arise from the after the fact, there isn’t the diversity of experience at the table to prevent these kinds of things from happening.”

It’s dangerous, too, when developers don’t consider the experiences of those using their interfaces abroad. Zandt talked about an app called Path, which synchronizes all of a person’s social media networks into one place, making it easier to share updates or photos with as many people as possible. “While most apps scan your address book in some way, Path would upload your address book to its servers and process your contact information,” Zandt said. “It’s not just that it could be evil and marketing smarmy, but especially in countries that are using mobile technologies to fight dictatorship, they could lose their lives if the regime could get access to the features somehow. ”

So then, what do we do? How do we, as a culture, keep ourselves safe, while still being able to share and talk and meet-up and enjoy all the spoils of the new technological frontier, which only keeps expanding?

To Zandt, much of this work is being done by advocacy groups, notably the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Northern California, who are “publishing great set of guidelines and developing for privacy,” she said. “There are a bunch of people that are pressuring for certain adoption standards. Right now, for an individual to take action or hold the company accountable, all the company has to do is point to the Terms of Service.”

Because right now there aren’t really the mechanisms, historically marginalized folks are told to “stay in line and do XYZ and not get hurt,” she said. “It’s important to develop standards.”

While the real issues here are around culture, and the big work must be done by larger organizations, these things don’t change overnight. For now, read up on how you can better protect your data, look into the advocacy work that’s already being done, and keep the conversation going. While “Girls Around Me” is a particularly heinous example, I’m certain it’s not the only app of its kind, and certainly not the only instance of technology being used for exploitative means. We must remain vigilant, we must remain vocal and we must remain skeptical, but we also can’t let this scare us off from engaging with social media, because that’s how the creeps win.

Judd knows the impact of the media’s focus on women’s bodies, and that “we are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification.” She also reminds us that ‘ideal’ images of women are “directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us.” Since entering the industry 18 years ago, she’s learned that “ I do not want to give my power, my self-esteem, or my autonomy, to any person, place, or thing outside myself.”

She then goes through several examples of how media outlets concluded that if she doesn’t have any wrinkles, she must have gotten plastic surgery, and when she’s gained weight the media warned her that her husband will start looking for someone else. Seriously? Not to mention that what they consider ‘fat’ is a size 8…

Judd addresses the depressing reality that a lot of the negative focus and conversation about women’s bodies is being initiated and continued by women, and that “patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate,” and “we are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.”

Her response to the accusations is significantly powerful due to her position as a Hollywood voice. A female voice at that. Judd’s article allows us to see this conversation from the perspective of a woman who has actually experienced this attention and criticism firsthand in the Hollywood spotlight. Yet at the same time, Judd reminds us that “as focused on me as it appears to have been, it is about all girls and women. In fact, it’s about boys and men, too, who are equally objectified and ridiculed, according to heteronormative definitions of masculinity that deny the full and dynamic range of their personhood.” Share Judd’s article with others, and “join in – and help change – the Conversation.”

- Pre-screen film submissions for quality, content, and technical issues
- Organize digital copies of films and DVDs to be viewed by the festival selection committee
- Data entry
- Connect with organizations and key individuals to spread the word about our call for film submissions
- Contact local businesses and organizations about sponsorship opportunities
- Assist with other festival logistics as needed

Skills needed:
- Being highly organized is a must
- Good customer service/people skills/comfortable on phone
- familiarity with Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel)
- Good writing skills
- Interest in film, event planning, and marketing
- Be able to work independently
- Familiarity with digital video formats
- Graphic design skills not required, but a plus

Good candidates must be willing to commit to 10-15 hours per week, including time for supervision. Fearless in the face of detail. We are not able to offer a stipend but are happy to work with schools to help you earn college credit. People of all genders, colors, cultures, identities and orientations encouraged to apply.

TO APPLY:

Mail or email resume and cover letter to:
Intern Search
Women, Action & the Media
7 Temple Street
Cambridge, MA 02139

email: wam@womenactionmedia.org (subject: Film Fest Intern Search)

“We’re approaching labia saturation on television,” said Two and a Half Men creator Lee Aronsohn earlier this week. “Enough, ladies, I get it. You have periods.”

We are, apparently, in the era of “Bridesmaids”-esque gross-out girls. Women on network television, really for the first time since Roseanne went off the air in 1997, are visible, sexual and imperfect. These women are largely white, and in urban, class-privileged positions, but there are a lot of them, and that, in and of itself, presents a threat to the status quo.

“Two and a Half Men,” created as a a vehicle for noted misogynist Charlie Sheen and his character (named Charlie), has only featured women in a number of standard paradigms: bimbo, shrew, stalker, desexualized and aggressive fat woman, drunk WASP mother, etc. The show, which until Sheen’s departure was among the most highly-watched shows on television, has never really been a site for women to flourish. These female characters serve exclusively to further the plotlines and wacky situational comedy of their “two and a half” male characters. This is not to entirely fault “Two and a Half Men;” how many male-centric sitcoms would be able to survive without the jokes made entirely on the backs of their beleaguered and tropic wives, girlfriends, daughters, grandmothers, female employees and co-workers?

There is never a sense that “we” will ever approach dick saturation, though we’ve heard that some are small and some are large and they get even smaller after one goes into a pool. There is never a sense that “we” will ever approach talking-about-football saturation, even though we’ve seen these serious discussions run the gamut from mundane to enthralling on television, from Budweiser commercials to “Friday Night Lights.” Women, however, are doing it wrong. Remember, y’all? Women aren’t funny.

Of course it is not relevant that these shows are mostly written, directed and produced by men, on networks run by men, owned by conglomerates run by men; Lee Aronsohn is aware that we’re getting our periods, ladies.

Aronsohn’s been defended all over the place – by Rush Limbaugh, but also people who are not Rush Limbaugh – by folks saying his quotes were being taken out of context, that he’s been instrumental in pioneering female-centric sitcoms (just not this “kind” of female-centric sitcoms), that he’s not really a misogynist but really just doesn’t care about your period. These things all may or may not be true. Emily Nussbaum, television critic from the New Yorker, tweeted and re-tweeted, defended and outsourced many sides of the argument on Monday, and it was WAM!mer Alyssa Rosenberg, of ThinkProgress, who challenged this whole approach, saying “I guess I’d ask why we’re outsourcing what counts as a useful or feminist show to a dude. Norms change.”

One such norm is how “ugly” women are allowed to be. This is not ugly in the Ugly Betty sense, or ugly in the best-friend-with-whom-there-will-never-be-sex sense, but more along the lines of complicated and flawed and inconsistent and shitty, like a lot of us are in the world outside of network sitcoms. WAM!mer Sady Doyle wrote this week at Tiger Beatdown about the joy of watching terrible Betty Draper Francis on “Mad Men,” because Betty is an asshole.

“I selfishly want Betty to be awful because I just really enjoy unsympathetic female characters,” Doyle said. “I think they challenge the idea that women in the public eye should never be ugly; that a woman’s first duty, at all times, is to be merely “pleasing.” I enjoy a story that makes you hang out with flawed women, and forces you to value them for something other than conventional lovability.”

Aronsohn’s comments aren’t really about anyone’s vagina; they are about weird, antiheroic women, unlikeable women, women who have no interest in fucking Charlie Sheen, even if they might want to talk about it for a few hours. This reinforces, as Rosenberg said this week, that even when television is for women, it’s really for men.

That may be the reason why, while I’m glad that women are being seen more fully and more often, I don’t particularly like any of these new female-driven shows, or their protagonists. And that’s okay; not everyone can watch everything. I can’t stomach Zooey Deschanel’s manic pixie dream girl thing, “2 Broke Girls” is apparently super racist, and from the posters I saw leading up to its premiere, “Whitney” and I don’t really have the same ideas about gender essentialism. I am only one woman, and there’s good evidence to show that women (and men!) who aren’t me are watching. I also know that the newest and most heralded show about “ugly” women, HBO’s Lena Dunham-created “Girls,” sounds like my worst nightmare. It is my worst nightmare, though, because I know versions of those “girls” in real life, and I’ve been trying since middle school to steer clear. I understand that everyone has problems, but I spend enough time with 20-something white upper-middle-class girls who go to private colleges; I’d rather watch “Say Yes to the Dress.”

The lesson we should take from this new round of sexist bullshit is the same message coming from the VIDA count, from the stories about Limbaugh, or from coverage of this week’s National Magazine Awards, for which not a single woman was nominated. Write! Act! Create! Build a counter-narrative! Foster the talent of those around you! Ladies (and allies) in positions of power: nurture and hire women! And don’t let anyone tell you we’ve reached a “vaginal peak,” because we can only go further from here.

I immediately thought of that memory when I saw this awesome new website, “The Gendered Advertising Remixer.” The site contains an app that “lets you re-combine video from ads directed at boys with audio from ads directed at girls (and vice versa) to create hilarious and insightful fair use mash-ups.” You can drag and drop clips from 40 different gendered toy commercials to make 800 possible combinations. The importance of this issue is explained on the site, reminding us that “young people in the United Statues are subjected to an average of 25,000 TV commercials every year. Embedded in those advertisements are a very regressive and stereotypical set of social values about gender roles for boys and girls.” The site provides a link to a Feminist Frequency video that dives into the embedded messages found in these commercials and how they limit the way boys and girls see themselves and their capabilities from a very young age. We see that commercials directed toward boys “value competition, being in control, having power, and conquering and commanding.” Ads directed at girls focus on teaching “child-rearing, homemaking, domestic work, popularity, self-image, and an obsession with beauty.” These commercials send messages to boys and girls about the toys they’re ‘supposed’ to play with based on their gender, and the social skills they then develop from playing with these toys with others. Kids are learning extremely limited gender roles at a young age, allowing little room for boys to feel they can be nurturing or caring, or girls to feel they can be powerful and assertive.

Jonathan McIntosh, the designer of the app, found that “fair-use remix video can be a fantastic way to combine critical media literacy, technical skills and creative play to help youth understand, deconstruct and remix mass media messages about gender roles.” Funny commercial mash-ups provide a relatable tool to showing kids how they are taught to feel and act according to their gender, allowing them to see beyond the limitations that these commercials project. Check out the “Gendered Advertising Remixer” page to create mash-ups and learn more about why this is an important tool to addressing the issue of limited messages embedded in toy commercials for kids.