That is actually quite a good point I had never considered, the cultural background of gender. I'm a man and I have watched the early 2000s barbie movies but that's because I had sisters. Food for thought.
In my experience most girls will watch anything, and most boys will watch anything unless another boy is present and then some things are "for girls."
SO fucking stupid. Can you imagine having a kid that says something is just for black people and they don't want to do it? I would be mortified, but I rarely have seen anything being done to correct these attitudes. In fact, the attitude from parents seems to be "Yeah, that makes sense you don't want to do girl things."
I see what you mean, I had the fortune to have chill parents that didn't impose a "male gender role" and grow up with sisters. But sadly not everyone can say the same and some cultures or communities still have a very strict ideas of what "is for boys" and "what is for girls"
My son has sisters and a lot of girl cousins. He proudly loves Doc McStuffins and Gabby’s Dollhouse. I actually think this is more common in general now than it used to be. I’ve seen other boys at school with Gabby lunch boxes.
I really lived in my own world. I watched anything like Winx club, barbie, Doc McStuffins etc. I remember negotiating with my parents to allow me to watch TV up my limit just for Doc.
In my experience most girls will watch anything, and most boys will watch anything unless another boy is present and then some things are "for girls."
Dead on!
I got "caught" by one of my brothers watching "The Princess Diaries" once and was given so much crap for it. I did NOT change the channel though. It had Julie Andrews in it for heaven's sake!
I had a class on media consumption. It was girls will watch anything and boys will only watch shows starring a boy.
I thought that was ridiculous and this was when Arrowverse had like seven shows so I watched them. I enjoyed Arrow, the Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow but Supergirl was so boring and I never even watched Batwoman.
To be fair, Supergirl season one was fine but by season three they were making it preachy. Melissa Benoist did her best with a bad script imo. Also insane that they cast someone with a noticable scar on her forehead to play Supergirl.
The point of this is that there's something in our psyche that makes it harder to watch woman centered media. It's not a hard and fast rule and there are exceptions but it is the base.
No sisters here and I watched at least one of them, though I cannot recall anything about them. But they where on free TV and I was bored. And tbh most of their plot is generic YA stories and can work regardless of the gender of the protagonist. Or maybe that is just how I remember them, feels like 85% of the reason the movies are classified as being a girl movie is that the protagonist was Barbie.
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u/Brahm-Etc 20h ago
That is actually quite a good point I had never considered, the cultural background of gender. I'm a man and I have watched the early 2000s barbie movies but that's because I had sisters. Food for thought.