Seminar 5: Gender in Animation

Today's seminar was all about gender in animation. Now, when it comes to debates on "sexism" I'm usually on the fence. I think it's wrong that women throughout history were considered inferior to men, resulting in many not being as successful as men in their artist careers and other situations along these lines, but when it comes to how women are portrayed in animations I couldn't really care less.

Let me explain what I mean.

I think people at the moment are going overboard when it comes to criticizing how women are being portrayed. Take Barbie for example. There's an uproar about how skinny she is and how there isn't a range of sizes for the doll, depicting all body shapes. Granted, there isn't a range, but should there have to be? The way I see it is that it's just the design of one female character. This doesn't mean that this is the "perfect" body form for a woman which we have to adapt. It's just a toy. It doesn't mean this is how we as women should look. It maybe hard to believe this because of how much thin people are idolized in the media, but we don't have to look like that, but really that should be a given.
I think it's crazy that people are saying that Barbie should be a "normal" weight or even plus size. Isn't that just "Skinny-bashing"? What about the people who ARE that thin, (maybe not to that extent, because the proportions of barbie means that if she was a real human being, she would cave in due to the weight of her head and she would have other problems along these lines)? Aren't we just "bashing" skinny people for saying that Barbie should be a "normal" weight? What annoys me about this is that if a plus sided Barbie was produced people would probably still moan about it because the doll would give others the impression that it's okay to be unhealthily over-weight. We would request smaller dolls to eliminate this, but if they'd just made a "normal" doll to begin with, it's likely we would have complained about there not being dolls to accommodate those who are skinner/larger. The company can't win really.

I don't see why we can't just accept Barbie for what she is, and move on. Some people are as skinny as this, others aren't and we should just leave it at that. Maybe I stand alone with this opinion; I know I'm definitely in the minority if not.

So to conclude I think people just need to calm down and take things with a pinch of salt. Yes it's bad that women are seen as inferior to men in most departments, but I don't think we need to get critical about how women characters are depicted in animations. Obviously not all women act or look like they do, and the artists aren't generalizing this image to ALL women.