I was struck by President Bush’s kind words to the Obama family in his farewell address:

And I join all Americans in offering best wishes to President-elect Obama, his wife Michelle, and their two beautiful girls. 

It was the “beautiful girls” that threw me. Unfortunately, I can’t make a direct comparison to the most popular descriptions of young sons who have moved into the White House — there haven’t been any in recent history — but I’m going to venture to guess that they wouldn’t have been described as handsome. Or cute. Or with any termingology that described their physical appearance.

So this is where we are. On Tuesday we’ll be witnessing an historic inauguration and on Wednesday, it will be back to business as usual for American girls: Corporate-created media images and messages telling them that their value lies only in how they look and what they buy.

No example is more appropriate than this dissection* of the premiere lifestyle brand, American Girl:

Some might argue that American Girl is not as bad as other materials on the market, or as offensive as Barbie or Bratz dolls. This argument misses the key features of what makes this phenomenon so insidious: how corporations play on the feminist and /or educative aspirations of parents, teachers, girls, and young women and turn these toward consumption. American Girl is less about strong girls, diversity or history than about marketing girlhood, about hooking girls, their parents and grandparents into buying the American Girl products and experience.

Meant to be lessons in history featuring girls, their books fail, too:

. . . any potential “girl-power” lessons are short-circuited in these books through the use of historical fiction to deliver traditional lessons about what girls can and should do. While the stories take place in key historical moments, such as the Civil War, and World War II, the girls rarely participate in historical events in any substantial way. Meet Molly is set in WWII and her father, a doctor, serves in the U.S. military. Molly’s concerns center on what to be for Halloween and how to deal with a bothersome brother. The historical fictions encourage a limited independence and emphasize conventional “good girl” behaviors. Girls might go on an adventure or two, but these are usually within the bounds of family relationships (e.g., playing tricks on brothers) rather than as social actors in a larger world.

As for those “good girl” behaviors, we look to Harvard historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich who said, “well-behaved women seldom make history.” 

My hope is that we take the inspiration of electing our first black President and continue the momentum until we elect our first woman president. And until half our senators and representatives are women. And until women receive equal pay for equal work.

And it all begins with girls. Smart girls. Strong girls. Capable girls. Energetic girls. Creative girls. Hopeful girls.

More on hope:

New Moon Girls: Advertising-free social networking site for girls 8 to 12, plus the classic magazine. This week they are welcoming Sasha and Malia Obama to the White House and calling on girls to report on inaugural activities. Citizen journalism!

TVbyGirls: In the Twin Cities, TVbyGirls teaches the skills needed for girls to learn how to create their own media to expand expanding “the vitality of images about girls and women.” Watch their videos and if you’re local, get a girl you know involved.

The Girl Revolution: For grown-ups who love girls, “The Girl Revolution’s only aim is to heal the soul of the world by raising powerful girls. . . . We’re going to protect them from media consumption and dissolve every single barrier that exists between girls and gender and economic equality.”

*H/T to our friends at the Institute for Humane Education.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19, 2009 at 10:57 am and is filed under Corporate Contradictions, Mattel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.