Is society becoming more conservative?

[Guest Anonymous]

It does make sense, thanks. I wasn't criticising the way you said what you said, I just didn't understand where it was coming from. I guess that the age/culture difference between us, een in the UK, makes it highly likely that we watch different tv shows and are exposed to different things, so I may just not be aware of all the stuff you have seen. I am too cheap to get pay tv so I see very few US tv shows. I agree though that attitudes towards gender have changed, but not necessarily for the better. The teen tv that I have seen at my sister/niece's house does make me cringe. Although I am old enough that there was no teen tv in my day, except for Grange Hill and later Neighbours and Home & Away... :p

[freejoytoo]

I don't think that by any means we are as gendered as in the fifties and sixties, when my mother grew up, but there seems to be a kind of strange nostalgia for it atm. My mother said the gender roles then were just stifling.

I grew up in the nineties and remember things, for children at least, being much more unisex, and we had powerful role models on TV like Buffy and now there are characters like Bella dominating the screens. I think American TV has more conservative shows than British ones by a long shot.

As for Neighbours - the character in my avvy had a teen pregnancy storyline and none of them could say the word condom and I read that contraception was openly discussed in the nineties on that show!

[OkToBeTakei]

I don't think that by any means we are as gendered as in the fifties and sixties, when my mother grew up, but there seems to be a kind of strange nostalgia for it atm. My mother said the gender roles then were just stifling.

I grew up in the nineties and remember things, for children at least, being much more unisex, and we had powerful role models on TV like Buffy and now there are characters like Bella dominating the screens. I think American TV has more conservative shows than British ones by a long shot.

As for Neighbours - the character in my avvy had a teen pregnancy storyline and none of them could say the word condom and I read that contraception was openly discussed in the nineties on that show!

Like anniec I do not tend to watch those shows but I do remember that Grangehill was pretty cutting edge and not sure if TV for kids is as edgy. Due to Sky we get a lot of shitty Disney now which has no reflection on UK life for my child therefore I find it harmless if a bit saccharine.

Was Tracy Beaker your era?

The toy thing I think is just marketing. If you think about it not only are there more pink or boy toys about there are just bloody more toys about. Certainly than when I was a kid.

In many other ways I find us less conservative and maybe more politically correct. The two not to be confused. As for the feminist angle as discussed in other threads maybe that is a direct correlation between feeling comfortable in your sexuality and your intellect to choose to be who you want to be? Might be.

[freejoytoo]

Tracy Beaker was too young for me but I watched it guiltily haha. I'm the same age as the actress. I used to watch Grange Hill. I don't watch children's TV now so maybe I can't judge but I haven't seen any serials which seem to deal with controversial issues.

[ElphabaGalinda]

I've noticed that although books and toys were always gendered, they seem to have gotten more so. For example, things like legos, where there is now a pink version, or those toy kitchens kids play with or blocks....always now a pink and purple girly version, and the "neutral" version, when before the neutral version was all that existed.

[Sumeri]

I think that there are simply more toys and clothes now, so it seems more noticeable.

I wore some hand me downs from my brother when I was little, but for the most part I wore girly clothes. I was a child of the 80's, so it was My Little pony, Rainbow Brite, Cabbage Patch Kids, Barbie, and Strawberry Shortcake....very girly toys.

I think this is true as well. I grew up in the 70's and there were always "girl" toys (Dawn and Flatsy and Liddle Kiddle dolls, etc) and I remember my brother being an avid model car builder - but there just weren't so MANY toys. I think it seems much worse now because we are just freaking bombarded with aisles of pink and lavender glitter.

I do think that back in my day there was more of a selection of unisex toys - everyone played with Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys and PlaPlax and Colorforms - none of those ever seemed geared to one sex or another.

[DrPusey]

I think a lot of any nostalgia for the 1950s and 1960s has less to do with a desire to recreate idealized gender roles of those periods, and more to do with the fact that those decades marked a period of economic expansion and prosperity. You could live comfortably on one factory job's income at that point in time. (largely because union membership, at least in the US, was at its peak) I think the sense was that if you played by society's rules, you wouldn't get screwed in the larger life sense.*

*I'm not saying at all that the post-World War II period was all sunshine and rainbows, just that nostalgia in the general cultural sense remembers the good but not the bad. Many fundies, I'll grant, would love to see all of us going to church at the same rate as people did in the 1950s and would love to enshrine strictly bifurcated gender roles in popular culture as they were imagined then.

[Boogalou]

I've noticed that although books and toys were always gendered, they seem to have gotten more so. For example, things like legos, where there is now a pink version, or those toy kitchens kids play with or blocks....always now a pink and purple girly version, and the "neutral" version, when before the neutral version was all that existed.

The Lego thing has been getting a lot of attention recently, more so when Lego Friends (what a stupid name) came out, and I have been doing a bit of reading on it. It has been pretty interesting learning about the history of Lego but from very near the beginning they have been gendering it, I think people are just more aware of it now, probably in large part due to the internet. The first push to marketing to girls seems to be Scala back in the late 1970's and then there were several more sets marketed towards girls in the 90's and early 2000's. There is an interesting history behind Lego. A good concise version can be found at sociological images if anyone is interested.

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... ender-gap/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... ender-gap/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... ender-gap/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... ender-gap/

Really, I think things like this have been going on for quite a while and we are maybe just more aware of it now than we were in the past.

Anyway, I'm looking through the Sears Crhirstmas catalogue from 1956 right now and all the toys are being marketed in a very gendered way. It's in black and white so I can't speak to the pinkification of things, but toys seem to be very gendered.

BTW, ElphabaGalinda this is more a general response not specifically targeted at you. You just brought up the interesting thing about the Lego and I didn't realize how much I had to say until I started typing!

[Wolfie]

I grew up in the US and the toys have always been heavily gendered as far as I can remember (I'm 30). We're more aware of it now as a society, I think, but as Anxious Girl said, there is some pandering to conservatives still.

I remember things like the easy bake oven or certain fisher price toys as being gendern neutral in color- the easy bake ovens of my childhood were beige, our sit and spin was red. There WERE gender specific toys, but it didn't seem like all toys were aimed at specific genders.

[crazyforkate]

I think that over the long term things get more liberal, but on a smaller scale it goes in cycles. For example, the 80's had a wave of conservatism, and some of that's still sticking around, but on a whole there has been quite a bit of progress and a general move towards more liberal ways - just as they become the norm, they move more to the conservative side of things, if that makes sense.

[SquirrelySquirrel]

I don't think so, I just think it's certain companies pandering to neo-cons, because they think that because they think that most neo-cons are rich and will want to be merchandise for their kids all of the time, and traditional media such as Disney and Nickolodeon are afraid to put LGBT and sex-friendly shows on T.V, because they're afraid they'll here the wolves cry persecution for making their kids watch those channels when the wolves can make their kids watch Christian channels. Maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about/I'm too biased.

Nick is actually pretty darn liberal. Just ask all the parents who are up in arms over gay kissing scenes on Degrassi. I find most Viacom networks to be quite liberal, minus CMT, but they're playing to a different market there.

[Dysfundamental]

I remember things like the easy bake oven or certain fisher price toys as being gendern neutral in color- the easy bake ovens of my childhood were beige, our sit and spin was red. There WERE gender specific toys, but it didn't seem like all toys were aimed at specific genders.

Agree, and I totally think this is so they can sell more toys. If Bobby has to get the GI Joe scooter when he's 5 and his younger sister Lily wants the Barbie scooter when she turns five, you've sold two scooters where in the old days, Lily would just use Bobby's outgrown yellow scooter, no big whoop.

[Sumeri]

Yes. It also comes in waves depending on where we are in history -- does anyone else remember the red, white and blue craze of the 1976 bicentennial? EVERYTHING was star-spangled that year. I had my first 10 speed bike in 1976, a red, white and blue free spirit monstrosity, and clothes, stationery, dolls...what have you were all decked out in American flags and patriotic themes. No gender escaped that marketing ploy.

[Iokaste]

From what I see around me there is no doubt that my small Scandinavian egalitarian socialistic country has definitely become much more conservative then it was in my childhood/early youth (80s/90).

The colour-coding of children is rampant and where as we were encouraged to break gender-stereotypes 20 years ago, today they are encouraged and explained as "fact of nature/biology".

Walk into a class-room today and you'll have blue/green row and pink/purple row.

When I was a teenager we thought it was gross to shave your pubic-area and we talked about feminism, gender-expectations, family-roles, private vs. political, etc., when my 9 years younger sister was in high school each and every one of her class-mates were clean-shaven and non of them would fess up to being feminists because "we don't hate men and it's nice when a guy buys you a drink", thank God they seem to have come to their senses and today we hold regular red-wine-and-gender-politics-evenings :dance:

As for the pink LEGO, we had that too in the 90s and if a bit of pink is what it takes to make parents buy good, creative, mind-expanding toys for their daughters as well as sons, make more of it!

One of my real concerns however is the "Hannah Montana-ing" of girls. All these horrible shows Hannah M./I-Carly/Shake It Up etc. targeted at 8-13 year olds where girls talk in hysterically high-pitched squealing voice about nothing but boys, how to be famous and/or "fabulous" and they all have "enemies". It teaches girls to be narrow-minded mini-mean girls with bad bad attitudes.

I swear when I worked as a teacher you could tell which girls were allowed to watch these show.

[freejoytoo]

Great point about the shaving thing. Nowadays it seems that if you don't wax certain areas you're just foul. It's as if it's fashionable to make yourself look prepubescent.

Perhaps I should have titled the thread 'have attitudes towards gender become more conservative?'

[SayNoToMullets]

There is an interesting history behind Lego. A good concise version can be found at sociological images if anyone is interested.

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... ender-gap/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... ender-gap/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... ender-gap/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... ender-gap/

Holy shit, I know that guy! Went to undergrad with him. Small world :lol:

Anyway, I think that society has become more polarized if anything. I'm 29, and in the late '80's/early '90's, in a household with two girls and conservative parents, we had mostly gender neutral toys, including Lego bricks in primary colors. We had Barbies only because other people bought them for us. My aunt bought me a Barbie ice cream parlor and my mom was none too pleased about that (all these tiny pink and purple parts floating around the house! That one went to the back of my closet after one use. I think it's still there, and I moved out 10 years ago.). Anyway, in most of the pics from before I could pick my own clothing, I look pretty gender-neutral. A few dresses in posed pics, but most of the candid snapshots up to about age 3 have me in overalls, camo, and a tiny little Mets jersey. The pink glittery stuff didn't start until I was in school and saw other girls with it. They let me do ballet when I asked for classes, but they were equally ok with my sister doing karate.

Granted, conservative in that era did not mean what it means now. Moderate conservatives like my parents are being squeezed out of the Republican party and being replaced by extremists who spew soundbites that are so ridiculous that they have to make news. My dad's pro-choice stance is in fact informed by his religion (conservative Judaism) - today's GOP doesn't recognize a religious viewpoint other than Christianity. My parents told us "don't be the cheerleader - be the one they're cheering for" - imagine that! And a lot of today's female conservatives do exist as cheerleaders - Palin, for one, came to prominence as an accessory to McCain's campaign, and what did she contribute other than a boon to Tina Fey's career? The GOP's inclusion of women is a cynical move, and not representative of women's rights. And the worm began to turn right when I came of voting age, and my sister a few years later, and that is how two Republicans raised liberal children.

[freejoytoo]

I think after 9/11 the Republican party took a severe right swing. There seems to have been a lot of conservative hysteria lately (in the social sense).

[SayNoToMullets]

I think after 9/11 the Republican party took a severe right swing. There seems to have been a lot of conservative hysteria lately (in the social sense).

That fits my trajectory pretty closely. I was pretty apathetic for most of my teens, and then I was 3 months shy of 18 on 9/11. Saw what the Republican party was trying to sell from that point forward and went "hell no."

[docmom]

The Republican base aside, society as a whole is much less conservative than it was. I was rewatching some Six Million Dollar Man episodes with my BIL over Christmas and the sexism was cringeworthy. This was a pretty advanced show, too in the 70s.

[Hane]

The Republican base aside, society as a whole is much less conservative than it was. I was rewatching some Six Million Dollar Man episodes with my BIL over Christmas and the sexism was cringeworthy. This was a pretty advanced show, too in the 70s.

Did you ever catch the original Star Trek episodes from the late '60s? Cringeworthy sexism rampant in a "revolutionary" show!

I've noticed various waves of conservatism/sexism and kickback against it over the decades I've been around, and from the older women in my family.

My grandmother was a "flapper" in the '20s. She worked in a shirtwaist factory, and didn't get married until she was 28 because she enjoyed being single. During her working years, she saved some $12,000 and brought it into her marriage in 1923--a considerable sum then. When my grandfather lost everything in the Depression, she did piecework at home to keep the family above water.

My mother was an office worker in the '40s. She often said that she considered WWII to be monumental in changing the status of women in terms of education and achievement, getting women out of the house and into the workforce. Some women welcomed going back to the kitchen when the "boys" came home--some refused to and kept their jobs.

In the '50s, the media celebrated female domesticity. I can't tell you how many '50s-era movies and novels (intended for adults) I've seen in which a woman's ABSOLUTE WORST POSSIBLE CRIME was being "frigid." Translation=not sexually available and submissive under societally-condoned circumstances.

Then the '60s came along, with greater social liberalism AND the "sexual revolution," thanks in large part to the Pill. With this liberalism came a huge dose of sexism, though--hence the feminist slogan, "The Sexual Revolution Wasn't Our War." Women started to make greater strides toward equality, but there was a huge wave of resistance in the form of sexism: as in, "You have the right to be pretty and sexy and available to us men, but don't start using your brain to disagree with us or buck the system."

Feminist strides were made in the '70s, but there was conservative pushback in the '80s. By the '90s, there was more awareness of the dangers of sexual harassment in the workplace, and it was much less acceptable.

Re toys: Toys were pretty sex-segregated, by implication at least, until the '70s or so. (In the '50s, I coveted my boy cousin's magnificent Lionel train set. A couple of years later, Lionel came out with a pink monstrosity of a "girls'" version. I remembered thinking--I was maybe 5--"Who the hell would want a stupid thing like that? Real trains aren't pink!"

In the late '70s and early '80s, when my daughter was a kid, there was an effort to market traditionally boys' or girls' toys to the opposite sex. In ads, boys and girls were shown playing with construction or kitchen sets together. Stores had a lot more sex-neutral clothing for kids, too: jeans, tee shirts, sneakers, and so on.

The trend of over-using (IMHO) pink and purple as a marketing device for girls' toys and clothes didn't come along till the '90s. It's damn near impossible to buy a little girl a pair of plain blue jeans without glitter and flowers and butterflies and crap all over them. My traditional new-baby gift used to be a pair of plain blue denim Oshkosh bib overalls (in keeping with my belief that all kids need the chance to go out in the yard and get dirty when they play)--I haven't been able to find them in stores for years.

[Dinorah]

I think certain ideas that used to be considered extreme-right and marginal are becoming increasingly mainstream, and that's a worrying trend, but I don't necessarily thnk that society in its whole is becoming more conservative.

As for toys, etc, I think they've always been gendered but maybe less so than now in the 70s and early 80s. There was probably less of a fixation on blue and pink. I was a small kid in the earlly 80s in Europe and didn't wear much pink. But I had some light blue dresses. Nowadays, it seems very difficult to find girls' clothes that aren't some shade of pink. People seem to make more of a big deal about it. One of my friends said that she "had" to put her baby girl in pink otherwise people wouldn't understand she was a girl. I thought "BFD. People are going to ask "is it a boy or a girl"? sometimes. It's not a tragedy." It seems that before no one worried much about the gender even of a short haired, pants-wearing toddler not being obvious.

[Mama Mia]

I think a great deal of the gender specific baby gear and toys is due to simple marketing strategy.

If everyone knows what gender of child they are having before birth it is much easier to sell girly strollers, car seats, high chairs, pack n plays etc... all the newborn clothing and nursery items that are purchased before birth can be bought for either a boy or a girl, where in the past you had a lot more gender neutral items.

While I think that most toys have always been more promoted towards one gender or the other - I think there is increased emphasis on making girl versions of traditionally uni-sex toys like legos. Or even electronics - the casing will be pink / purple to market it to girls.

It seems to me the main benefit for companies is that they are greatly increasing the amount of stuff that is bought. Families who buy a pink car seat /stroller/ high chair / pack n' play / bassinet for their 1st born daughter aren't going to pass it on to their 2nd born son. They will buy all new. They may pass it on to a friend, but only to a friend with a girl. Same with clothes and toys. People buy more stuff if the stuff is limited in who they feel can use it.

[Wolfie]

It seems to me the main benefit for companies is that they are greatly increasing the amount of stuff that is bought. Families who buy a pink car seat /stroller/ high chair / pack n' play / bassinet for their 1st born daughter aren't going to pass it on to their 2nd born son. They will buy all new. They may pass it on to a friend, but only to a friend with a girl. Same with clothes and toys. People buy more stuff if the stuff is limited in who they feel can use it.

Though, for the car seat, pack n' play, ect- safety standards have changed and some of those things now come with expiration dates.

[GiggleOfGirls]

Gendered toys only potentially increase purchasing if families have children of more than one gender. Having all girls has been kind of awesome as far as hand me downs and toy sharing goes since family buys a lot of very girly toys for them. We have a lot of gender neutral toys and clothing around as well though, because I think it's ridiculous how gendered things have become since I was a child (in the 80s). If I was to someday have a son, we would not need to buy any different toys - we have lincoln logs, original legos (were my husband's as a child), neutral-colored kitchen set, etc. I also would expect any sons of mine to play with dolls since they could someday become fathers just as my girls could someday become mothers.

I also think it's hilarious that blue used to be a "girl color" and pink used to be a "boy color" and yet people nowadays seem to think that there's something inherent in the colors themselves that only make them appropriate for the opposite gender :roll:

[thetabmeister]

Just last night at dinner I commented to my husband that I feel like society is becoming more conservative and that we are perhaps looking at the sunset of all obtained by women's rights. I hope not. I'm only 26 though, so I really don't *know*, but it seems like around here (deep South) people are rushing to put women in their place at home all over. Even the ads we get on TV here are starting to look strange to me. It's the typical food products, vehicles, and household items being advertised, but I've noticed a lot of models looking like "that 50's" stereotype with the set curls and knee-length plaid dress, it really surprises me. Why do we want to go back to that way? Overall I can't put my finger on why it is exactly, but here in the rural South it seems to me like there is a huge push to demean women's and minorities rights, which is so anti-climactic after how far we'd come as a nation.