CHARLES GRAHAM: Men losing battle of sexes
A battle of the sexes is being played out on our children's TV screens, and when it comes to Thomas the Tank Engine, the girls are losing.
So says Prof Shauna Wilton from the University of Alberta, who has laid into this children's classic after catching an episode while her three-year-old daughter Katie was ill from school.
She says the stories are too male-dominated and the few female characters that feature are uniformly bossy know-alls. The professor said that while Katie loved the show, it would teach her negative female stereotypes and think that that kind of behaviour is the norm.
Well, that's as maybe: after all, the books of the Rev W Awdry come from a bygone age of accepted male supremacy which has, rightly, been debunked.
But what Prof Wilton may not know, being based in Canada, is that in the world of British television Thomas is in a minority these days, as far as unflattering gender stereotypes are concerned.
He is more than counterbalanced on television by Horrid Henry (the latest in a long lineage of unappealing male role models including Billy Bunter, William Brown, and various Grange Hill bullies).
And there are plenty other examples of stupid/naughty boys being punished by girls, whether it be Sooty or the Tweenies.
And don't think there's much escape from negative male gender stereotyping in more mature TV either.
Any chap sitting through the otherwise excellent dramas of Kay Mellor or Lynda La Plante has to put up with some pretty uniformly awful representations of manhood, whether they be corrupt, sexist, violent or spineless.
The male cast lists in our soaps are dominated by brooding thugs, dodgy businessmen, philanderers, modern variations on the village idiot and weaklings, while on the distaff side we have an abundance of "strong women."
Then there is advertising. One of a myriad examples – for period pain capsules – has the narrator telling you that the product helps you get rid of all those minor irritations. Cut to "in control" woman catapulting some grimacing male out of the window via an ejector seat.
In the 1970s a reversal of roles (nagging wife silenced) would have been acceptable, but that these days is sexist and engenders negative stereotypes about women.
Moving away from the world of TV fiction I shall quickly draw a veil over Loose Women – a preponderance of whose material is drawn from perceived male shortcomings.
Young Katie Wilton has little to fear. I, on the other hand, wonder how I managed to get to adulthood.
Read Charles Graham every Thursday only in the Wigan Evening Post ...
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Thursday 02 September 2010
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