Ding, Dong for the last time! Goodbye to the Avon Lady

With the most iconic beauty brands available via online shopping, exclusive Avon products delivered to your home by a woman who also lives in your neighbourhood are now a quaint relic. Coupled with the embrace of cosmetic emporiums like Sephora, the doorknock and friendly cry of “Avon calling” will come to an end in Australia and New Zealand later this year. 

I haven’t used an Avon product since being hooked on the girls’ “Little Blossom” range of demurely “tinted” pink nail varnish and lip gloss in the 1980s. While younger women may not have continued to use their products in the Instagram era, the Avon lady was once a radical figure who played a pioneering part in women earning their own incomes.

Avon began with a man, David H. McConnell, selling books door-to-door to a captive market of housewives in the 1880s. When he began to offer women a free sample of a custom-made perfume in return for listening to his book spiel, they were more interested in the scent than the books. It was not as simple as ducking down to the shops for cosmetics for many women with no mode of transportation, particularly in small towns.

Persis Foster Eames Albee, the first "Avon lady"

Persis Foster Eames Albee from Westchester, New York joined his California Perfume Company and initiated the famous method of women selling directly to other women door-to-door. While travelling salesmen were common, Albee pioneered the model of a low-pressure “house call” that was as much a socialising opportunity as a sales pitch and opportunity to demonstrate products.

With very few opportunities for most women to work or access welfare, they were largely financially dependent on their husbands. In her twelve-year career, travelling by horse and buggy and train, Albee trained up 5,000 American women to sell cosmetics through the California Perfume Company. She granted them the rare opportunity to generate their own income without neglecting their family responsibilities or breaking expectations of how women should behave.

Inspired by Shakespeare, McConnell renamed his company Avon in 1928, as it expanded well beyond its original “Little Dot Perfume Set”. While the post-war emphasis on family life in suburbia stultified enough mothers to drive them to self-medicate with alcohol and prescription drugs, Avon provided an outlet for women to nurture or regain a professional identity.

Dianne Wiest as Avon lady Peg Boggs

The pastel-wearing Peg Boggs in the film Edward Scissorhands neatly embodies the void that Avon sales filled for housewives in suburbs where the men emptied out in sync every morning only to return in the evening. While most married women were locked out of the world of work that was a car-ride away, through Avon many turned the homes around them into places of business and joined a network of industrious women.

Like Tupperware parties, which were popularised in the 1950s, selling Avon did comply with a culture that wanted to keep women in the home, devoting their attentions to housework and maintaining their looks for their husband. However, the discriminatory workplace practices of the past meant many married or pregnant women could not continue to work outside the home. Regardless of whether women were selling food storage containers or lipsticks, they were still mobilising their business skills and earning money that might not be controlled by a man.

Today, as department stores lose their cultural cachet, more cosmetics are bought through browsing products on websites, in much the same way as women would browse the printed Avon catalogue. What is lost, however, in these transactions is the thousands of women who found a degree of financial independence and personal satisfaction through their own local sales business.

The women of 2017 have more employment opportunities and work rights than those of the 1880s or even the 1950s, many of whom had few options beyond toting cosmetic samples around their suburb on foot. Nevertheless, the perennial problems of household and child-rearing responsibilities continue to plague women and hamper their abilities to build careers and earn their own incomes.

Now some women are establishing their own businesses online that allow them to tread the same fine line between independence and maternal responsibility as Avon ladies of generations past. While the need for Avon’s kitsch ornaments and scented talc may have declined to the point where Australian operations are no longer viable, the need for flexible working options for women has not.

On the surface, they might represent an era in which the ultimate homemaker was glorified, yet the ringing doorbells of Avon ladies also helped to dismantle a system that kept women financially dependent and excluded from the world of business

UK crackdown on gender stereotypes in advertising shows up Australia's low bar

From next year, TV advertisements that play on gender stereotypes, or that mock people who fail to conform to them, will not be permitted by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority.

The kinds of ads that have been flagged as inappropriate include those that depict men as incompetent at doing basic household or parenting chores, or that show a whole family leaving a giant mess for mum to clean up.

The authority has said ads that belittle people for not living up to gender norms – such as a KFC advertisement that implied a man suffering from anxiety was not masculine – have “costs for individuals, the economy and society”.

A UK KFC ad from 2014 suggests it’s not manly to listen to your
girlfriend.

Attempts to counter the prevalence of gender stereotyping in the popular media are popularly dismissed as “social engineering” designed to alter “natural” behaviours for each gender. However, the stereotypes we see represented in advertising are already ideologically motivated by centuries of gender inequality.

Gender is a social construct and we have the power to shape and revise what is considered masculine and feminine. And the media we consume – particularly advertising, which we see continuously – are particularly powerful in shaping what we think is “normal” and acceptable for men and women to do.
Think of the ubiquitous television ads in the 1980s for Tip Top bread, with their “good on ya Mum” slogan. The smiling mothers presenting sandwiches to their children conveyed that women are the default parents and that satisfaction for women should stem from caring for others.

Tip Top ad from 1983.

Australia has laws that apply to discriminatory advertising, including the Racial Discrimination Act and state and territory anti-discrimination acts. Apart from this, the industry is largely self-regulated. The Australian Association of National Advertisers has its own code of ethics.
The code forbids any advertisement that:

… discriminates against or vilifies a person or section of the community on account of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, sexual preference, religion, disability, mental illness or political belief.

It also marks out “exploitative and degrading” sexual representations as unacceptable.

Australia has largely moved beyond acceptance of extremely objectifying advertisements for products with no inherent connection with sex. A prime example was the seductive “Chiko chick” who promoted the Chiko roll while posed on a motorbike from the 1950s.

However, self-regulated advertising criteria that merely forbid outright illegal discrimination or “degrading” sexual content set the bar especially low.

Other countries, such as Sweden and Spain, have made concerted efforts not only to avoid gender stereotyping in advertising but to counteract it. For instance, toy catalogues produced by Toys R Us and Toy Planet have drawn international attention for their depiction of both boys and girls playing with dolls, trucks and tools.

This kind of gender neutrality is not intended to discourage girls or boys from playing with the toys traditionally associated with their gender. Instead, it aims to make it acceptable for them to choose from any of the available options.

When you consider that debates about child-care costs are still usually framed in terms of whether it is financially worth women returning to work, it is clear the way we socialise children into seeing child care as women’s responsibility flows all the way through to major issues of employment and gender equality.

Gender stereotyping in advertising is not just problematic because of limiting representations of girls and women and the reassertion of their role in the home. In addition, the ways boys and men are depicted as useless at basic domestic tasks makes them out to be simpletons.

There are countless examples of “dumb dads” in ads. Think of the father in a Glade advertisement who is consistently befuddled by an automatic deodorising spray.

A banned Verizon ad from the US portrays the dad as being ‘stupid’.

Part of the strategy of advertisers in their representation of “dumb dads” may be to flatter mothers who do the majority of domestic work and grocery shopping.

However, these ads – which usually have a heteronormative orientation – also reinforce the status quo and culturally absolve men from responsibility to contribute to unpaid household labour, privileging their employment and recreation.

One way to consider advertising and other forms of popular culture is as a mirror that reflects our social norms, beliefs and values. If this is true, then advertising could be absolved of responsibility for reproducing gender stereotypes in that it is as progressive or regressive as the society in which it is produced.

Crucially, advertising and other media are not only reflectors of our culture. They also have the power to produce and influence values and norms.

With this in mind, the sooner we regulate advertising to encourage the depiction of a world we’d like to inhabit, the sooner it is likely to eventuate.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Cultural Cringe and Ja'mie, Private School Girl

Lilley described as “a skinny, long-faced guy in his late 30s
flouncing around with what looks like a horse’s tail on his head”
in the role of Ja'mie. 

Originally published at The Conversation.

Australians love to know that we’ve been noticed overseas. When floods and fires strike, news broadcasts frequently ensure that excerpts from CNN or Fox are shown. It doesn’t matter if the event is a naturally occurring catastrophe rather than any form of achievement, we need to see that other countries registered our existence, especially the United States.

This need for external approval is related to Australian cultural cringe. When A.A. Phillips first used the term in 1950, he referred to the tendency to perceive Australian literature, music, theatre and art as inferior to British and European high culture.

Since then the need for overseas recognition in order to prove the worth of Australian creativity has extended to include all kinds of popular culture, including film and television.

In the past week, it has become national news that several American critics panned Chris Lilley’s current mockumentary series Ja’mie: Private School Girl after its debut on US television.

The AV Club gave praise to the work of Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage, but described Lilley as producing “sloppy, transphobic drag” in his performance as teenager Ja’mie King. Tim Goodman at The Hollywood Reporter complimented Lilley’s oeuvre in general, but found the new series “almost unbearable to watch”.

While the involvement of US network HBO in Ja’mie’s production gives a partial explanation for local interest in these negative American responses, cultural cringe is also a significant factor.

We can readily criticise one of the plethora of American television programs included in Australian TV schedules without it being seen as a reflection on American culture overall. Yet when one of our own productions achieves the rare feat of an international release, it is seen to bear the weight of representing us on the world stage.

Comedy induces far greater anxiety than any other genre. It reveals a great deal about a culture’s preoccupations, prejudices, and character—it tells viewers who we’re laughing with and who we ought to be laughing at.

We generally accept that there are national differences in comedy. For example, American humour, as reflected in its film and television, is seen to differ substantially from British humour.

Australians continually express cultural cringe about how our own comedic inflections, especially in programs such as Lilley’s, as well as Kath & Kim, give an impression that we are unsophisticated, racist, sexist and homophobic.

When news of Hey, Hey It’s Saturday’s “blackface” skit drew international attention in 2009 due to the outrage of guest Red Faces judge Harry Connick, Jr., the rightful embarrassment that this kind of humour would have otherwise gone largely unremarked about in Australia was palpable.

Lilley’s previous series Angry Boys also prompted debate in the US, especially given his use of blackface to portray rapper S.mouse. Australian site The Vine interviewed US hip hop artists to collect their largely condemnatory comments about the appropriateness of a white actor playing an African American character and the show’s use of racist terms.

Lilley’s adoption of blackface and “yellowface”, with character Ricky Wong in We Can Be Heroes, can be understood as more complicated than expressions of outright racism than these American responses identified.

As Lisa Bode shows, We Can Be Heroes made “ visible tensions and contradictions within contemporary Australian national identity, as well as the truth of white economic and cultural privilege within a dominant discourse of celebratory multiculturalism that seeks to mask it”. Though there is nothing to prevent racist or non-PC celebrations of some of Lilley’s characters, several of his series also work to expose the racism that lies at the core of supposedly upstanding and accepting Australians.

Ja’mie is a prime example of this tendency in Lilley’s creations. She brings a Ugandan boy, Kwami, into her palatial family home for the sole purpose of appearing charitable in order to receive a prestigious school medal. Yet her performance of tolerance and racial equality is just that. She is mortified when he expresses affection for her, telling Kwami “no offence, but you are really povvo, you live in the western suburbs, and you’re black, and I am… this”.

While the politics of drag, blackface and yellowface are highly fraught, we should not base our anxieties about Lilley’s programs on international perceptions of what is and what is not funny.

Our television comedies often mirror unique aspects of Australia’s cultural make-up and shared history that are largely incomprehensible to those outside of it, in a way that US and British comedies are not unintelligible to us, with our large quota of foreign programming.

When some programs mysteriously find a niche despite their idiosyncrasies, as did a dubbed version of Hey Dad! in Germany, it’s a positive thing for our television industry. Yet we shouldn’t seek to iron out elements of Australian humour because of perceptions that our culture is inherently not good enough.

The Colonial "Dolly" Magazine: Ethel and Lilian Turner's Parthenon

The Parthenon, 11 August 1890

The age of the print magazine may be over, especially for younger readers who are not as familiar with the idea of traipsing down to the newsagent each month, as I once did, to seek out a copy of the newest Smash Hits. Magazines are nevertheless still considered influential on girls in particular. In the past few weeks, a petition to encourage Cleo magazine to stop their practice of using Photoshop to erase blemishes or bodily imperfections from the images it publishes has gathered over 13,000 signatures. Earlier in the year, Dolly, a magazine with a younger readership,  drew criticism for resurrecting its model search competition. The competition ran throughout my girlhood, but was put on hold ten years ago. The editor of the time, Mia Freedman, felt that the quest for cover girls fuelled the pressure that girl readers feel to live up to a particular ideal of beauty and also launched girls into an industry that she described as "all about rejection".

The history of British and American girls' magazines is a developing and exciting field, but the girls' magazines of Australia and Canada have been barely examined. In part this is because fewer magazines were produced in the colonies and those that do exist are not easily accessible. My colleague Kristine Moruzi has spent hours in church archives in order to read some of the Canadian girls' magazines, which were mostly published by religious organisations. Because magazines such as the Girl's Own Paper were readily imported from Britain, there is really only one example of a nineteenth-century Australian girls' magazine, the Sydney-based Parthenon (1889-1892).

The writers Ethel and Lilian Turner, who were still in their teens, began publishing the Parthenon in January 1889. Ethel edited a magazine at her high school, the Iris, but after her graduation soon moved to build a viable commercial venture. The sisters not only edited the magazine, but wrote most of its content, managed subscriptions and sought out advertisers. There are only two complete sets of the magazine in Australia, so when I finally saw copies of the Parthenon I was surprised by the professionalism of the design and the quantity of advertising that the sisters managed to attract as the magazine established itself. It is an astonishing and unique achievement for young women of the period.

Masthead, 1 February 1889

While the Parthenon includes some of the traditional fare of women's magazines, such as fashion and society news, it set out to be most especially a literary magazine. It sought to transform a situation in which Australian readers tended to prefer to import English and American magazines, and to foster locally produced print culture. Though the Turner sisters were trailblazers in their publishing venture, the magazine is not radical in its gender politics. It actively supports better conditions for women journalists and higher education for women (so long as it does not interfere with the duties of home: see article about aligning your tablecloth with mathematical precision), but does not support women's suffrage without reservation. I've written an article recently that compares the Parthenon's attitude on these issues with the feminist women's magazine the Dawn, and ultimately the kinds of beliefs they share about women's careers and responsibilities are not too dissimilar in most areas.

The magazine ran for 39 issues and in its time it featured early versions of some of the works that Ethel Turner would go on to publish during her long writing career, including Miss Bobbie. She was assigned responsibility for writing the serials for the children's page by Lilian, a serendipitous delegation that no doubt contributed to Ethel taking up a lucrative post writing for the children's pages of the Illustrated Sydney News soon after their enterprise could not find a buyer and was forced to cease publication in 1892.

So Long God and Liz: The New Australian Girl Guides Promise

Girl Guide salute, as used when making the promise,
demonstrated by a Canadian Guide and Brownie (1985)

For an organisation with a small membership, Girl Guides Australia has attracted local and international media attention in the past week. Though there are fewer than 30,000 girls and women involved in Guiding in Australia today, down substantially from a peak of 80,000 and despite a century-long legacy in which one million Australian women are former Guides, the very idea of changing a traditional organisation still excites public opinion. This week the more than century-old Guide promise was revised to remove reference to a “duty to God” and service to the Queen. The change is clearly intended to stem the decline in Guiding in Australia. This downward trend is not reflected in the United Kingdom where there are more than half a million Guides and one in every three girls of the appropriate age is enrolled in Brownies. For an organisation teetering on the edge of becoming unviable in its current form, the change in the Australian Guide promise is a major, and controversial, step in demonstrating that an organisation built out of British imperialism is still relevant to 21^st century girls in a postcolonial nation.

Across the past decade or more, Guiding in Australia had already begun moving away from many of the traditions that defined it during the mid-20^th century. Uniforms became more casual, with mix-and-match polo shirts and other casual wear. Overall the new look is less reminiscent of a 1970s QANTAS flight attendent crossed with a sailor in full regalia in an attempt to lose some of the daggy connotations associated with being a Guide. In what I thought was a sad moment, the Brownie section of the movement was merged with Guiding such that there is no separate uniform for Australian girls in the younger age group (and no toadstool, Brown Owl, skipping around mirrors, or Woorails, Tintookies or Lullagullis).  

Australian Guiding has been eager to show that it is modern and progressive and a cool place to be. Witness this television advertisement from three years ago that was clearly not impressive to the one Guide who chose to comment on it. The logic of tween and teen years means that anything that girls need be told by adults is "cool" is, in fact, the farthest thing from being so. Even I knew that I was flirting with danger as a Brownie in 1988 and did not make the transition to Guiding when I became too old for my brown dress and yellow skivvy.

Changes in uniform and name, coupled with attempts to promote Guiding on television, seemingly did little to attract more girls to an organisation that was nevertheless making great efforts to provide a relevant and challenging program for today's girls. Guiding in Australia has an image problem. As in the UK, the shifting cultural make-up of Australia's population has prompted some of the changes to Guiding. In 2007, Girl Guides UK introduced a headscarf to the official uniform to encourage Muslim girls to feel welcome in Guiding. Last year a Muslim Guide unit was established in New South Wales in an attempt to draw in girls from communities who have not traditionally been part of Guiding in Australia.

Ismaili (a sect of Shia Islam) Girl Guides circa 1920s holding a portrait
of Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan

Nevertheless, any idea that Guiding was or is a solely Christian organisation is untrue. A substantial number of units, especially in the United Kingdom, had associations with church groups, but an equally substantial number were run from neutral community halls or purpose-built huts. From the beginning, Scout and Guide founder Robert Baden-Powell made it clear that girls must believe in a higher being in order to join, but the notion of God did not preclude girls of faiths other than Christianity from becoming Guides. Indeed, it was the imagined relevance of Guiding and Girl Scouting to girls from every kind of background that meant that it was adopted in one-hundred-and-forty-five countries, with Hindu and Muslim nations among those that formed affiliations with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts not long after its formation. Guiding began in India in 1911, Turkey in 1923, Lybia in 1958 and the United Arab Emirates in 1973, to give just a small number of examples.

Without denying some of the missionary efforts underlying the establishment of Guiding in some of these countries, or the historical separation of Indigenous girls from white girls in some places, Guiding did set out with goals of being relevant to, and inclusive of, girls of all faiths and races. Olave Baden-Powell, the World Chief Guide from 1930 until her death in 1977 (and Baden-Powell’s wife), visited over one hundred countries to meet with Guides, and spent a substantial amount of time in places such as Kenya.

How curious, then, that it is imagined in 2012 that steps need to be taken to ensure that girls of all faiths and backgrounds are welcome in Guiding: this idea has been at its core for more than a century. The recent change is oriented around the “promise”, a brief paragraph that is generally only spoken once in a Guide’s time in the organisation, unless there is an extraordinary situation in which the promise is renewed (as at the Guiding centenary celebrations recently). In this way, it’s reminiscent of a marriage vow—symbolic, but of little ongoing importance in day-to-day living.

The original British Guide promise read:

“On my honour, I promise that I will do my best-,

To do my duty to God and the King,

To help other people at all times,

To obey the Guide law.”

The promise that I made in Brownies in Australia in the 1980s was very similar:

“I promise that I will do my best,

To do my duty to God,

To serve the Queen and my country,

To help other people,

and to keep the Brownie Guide law.”

It is also how the Australian Guide promise read (minus the word “Brownie”) until the following  promise was adopted:

“I promise that I will do my best:
To be true to myself and develop my beliefs
To serve my community and Australia
And live by the Guide Law.”

Queen Elizabeth II inspects a Girl Guide

Much of the media response has focused on the removal of God and the Queen from the promise. Australian Scouts have the option of mentioning the Queen or leaving her out, but God remains. In the UK, the Guide promise wording is still in the vein of the original promise, but “to love my God” replaces “do my duty to God”. This retains the spirit of Baden-Powell’s intent that Guides should believe in a higher being (though some countries were originally permitted to replace the term God with an alternative), but that this could accommodate girls of any religious faith. While Australian Guiding could have similarly changed “duty to God” to “love my God” to more clearly show the inclusion all kinds of religious belief, they have instead opted for the vague “develop my beliefs”.

I think this wording indicates that there is no longer a requirement to have any kind of faith in a god, rather than being an attempt to accommodate girls of all religious faiths, who have been welcome from the outset. As an atheist, the removal of reference to God does not bother me, but it is intriguing that this change has been presented as a way of accommodating different religious backgrounds rather than acknowledgement of Australia’s increasing secularisation, or at least of declining participation in formal religious attendance. There has been critique of UK and US Guide and Scout organisations for discriminating against atheists in their membership terms, and this change in Australia has successfully removed reference to God in a way that seems more accommodating of religious diversity rather than being irreligious.

Though the removal of reference to the Queen has been of most interest to monarchist and republicans, the changes to the accompanying Guide Law are striking for the way they mark of changes in how we perceive childhood. The original Guide Law was composed in 1910:

"A Guide is loyal and can be trusted.
A Guide is helpful.
A Guide is polite and considerate.
A Guide is friendly and a sister to all Guides.
A Guide is kind to animals and respects all living things.
A Guide is obedient.
A Guide has courage and is cheerful in all difficulties.
A Guide makes good use of her time.
A Guide takes care of her own possessions and those of other people.
A Guide is self-controlled in all she thinks, says and does."

The new Law bears little relationship to the original:

"As a Guide I will strive to:
Respect myself and others
Be considerate, honest and trustworthy
Be friendly to others
Make choices for a better world
Use my time and abilities wisely
Be thoughtful and optimistic
Live with courage and strength."

While it is admirable that girls are encouraged to think about their potential to change the world, some of the deletions are revealing. To be “cheerful in all difficulties” does suggest a kind of outdated model of the uncomplaining housewife, yet the notion of staying positive despite adversity still seems relevant, especially in a world in which children are increasingly shielded from disappointment and its by-product, resilience. In the brief discussion of the changes in the Law in the media, the use of the words “loyal” and “obedient” were seen as especially inappropriate for girls and women. Loyalty is a valuable quality in all humans, and for girls who develop through contemporary hurdles to coming-of-age, such as cyberbullying, being a trustworthy friend is surely still important. “Obedience” is much more fraught in that the notion of women “obeying” their husbands that was embedded in the marriage oath suggested a gendered obligation to subservience. Nevertheless, it is telling that we no longer expect children to “obey” or do as they are instructed by parents, teachers, or community leaders, as in Guiding.  We also lose specific reference to being kind to animals, which is disappointing in an age of factory farming, animal testing, and wholesale destruction of habitat that is entwined with environmental degradation. What better way to "make choices for a better world" than by "respect[ing] all living things"?

I understand that the girls and leaders involved in Guiding all feel some kind of ownership over the organisation and that agreeing on a new promise and Law must have involved inevitable compromise and concession. The intent of the changes are no doubt worthy, in that they aim to make Australian parents and girls see Guiding as a worthwhile place to socialise with other girls and to develop leadership and practical skills that they might not undertake in school. The removal of God and the Queen from the promise removes much that was symbolic of Guiding throughout its first century. The test will be whether a new model of Guiding, without these traditions, retains sufficient meaning and identity, or whether holding on to these traditional signs, in modified form, and with attempts to modernise, as in the United Kingdom, is a better strategy for the survival of Guiding.

Farewell Terri, Kerry, Frances and Leigh: Trend Against Unisex Baby Names

How do names suddenly catch on? Why are kindergarten teachers wiping the noses of Brittanys and Mias, Coopers and Rileys, yet nursing homes accommodate women named Mavis and Edna and men called Theodore and Cecil? I'm not sure why names fall in and out of favour so quickly. Perhaps each generation wishes to separate its identity from that of its parents, and may even seek to reclaim the identity of the generation that was cast off before that. "Old-fashioned" names can magically transform into hip originality.

A research company in Australia has released details of the top baby names in Australia in 2009. What interested me most about the results, more than the return of once-dated names like Isabella, is McCrindle Research's observation that "Australian parents are consistently registering baby names that are undoubtedly gendered." The trend they identify for "soft-sounding" girls' names, versus "firm-sounding" boys' names is I think well-known. A good example given by linguist David Crystal is the fact that "Marion Morrison" would not have made a masculine-sounding cowboy while "John Wayne" was short, sharp and strong.

What is seemingly new is the disappearance of unisex or gender-neutral names. The researchers involved have proposed that this change reflects the "conservative side" of Generation X parents. Just which names would Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke choose for their children? Well, actually, short-haired, almost-forty Winona has yet to reproduce, and Ethan Hawke has three children, including a darling daughter, Clementine. From the researchers' assumption it seems that Australian parents wish to more firmly locate their children as feminine or masculine right from the get-go. Coupled with the proliferation of "Jacks" and "Williams" you could wonder whether we're carrying misplaced nostalgic for the gender ideals of more than a hundred years ago, when the sexes were generally confined to separate spheres of home and public work.

Is it also part of the backlash against feminism that parents feel that the blurring of gender roles- and names with blurry genders- are just too complicated? Wouldn't it be easier if lines were redrawn as they once were so everyone knew where (and how!) to stand? Mia (proud owner of the most popular female baby name in 2008) will be at her plastic replica ironing board with wrinkled clothing in hand, while Jack (similarly popular for males in 2008) will be working on a woodwork project with his miniature tool set.

American Girl Takes on the Aw-Sees

I am totally fascinated by the idea of the American Girl dolls. Not only does the range include contemporary and historical American Girl dolls, but there also accompanying books that tell the stories of each "girl" in her relevant time period. I'm sure these books do not contain literary gold, but I'm interested to see how this large and profitable company thinks historical girls should be presented to contemporary ones. I'm also guessing that real girls are more interested in the modern dolls and that it's adult crackpots like me who are interested in the likes of "Kirsten", the Minnesota frontier settler from 1854. Then again, the recent American Girl film, Kit Kittredge (starring Abigail Breslin), was set in the Great Depression in 1934.

When playing on the American Girls site (it took me several times to get a perfect score on the pop quiz, humiliatingly), I discovered it was possible to travel (virtually, and perhaps not even necessarily since I'm already here) to Australia. I loved the facts about Australia section. I had to laugh as some slang was given a pronunciation key that would have the speaker come out with the most American-sounding accent for supposedly ocker terms like "aw-see" for Aussie (more likely "oz-ee" from Strine mouths). Others replicated the British sounds that were adopted in that bizarre Simpsons-come-to-Australia episode, such as "gid-dye mite" (g'day mate). "Lolly water" was listed as the equivalent for "soda pop". I can't say I have ever heard anyone call it anything other than "soft drink" in my life. "Lolly water" has only ever arisen in the context of someone drinking a sweet alcoholic drink (in contrast to a "man's drink", like VB!), but that may reveal some now uncommon, earlier use for sweetened carbonated drinks.

The one that surprised me most was the phrase "See you in the soup!", which apparently means "See you around!" Again, I must not be getting out enough, and I'd have thought having a father who is the embodiment of the Bruce Ruxton skit from Fast Forward and Alf Stewart from Home and Away would have qualified me to know these things. I had to do a Google search to see where I was going wrong, and most of the results for the phrase were links to travel dictionaries, explaining to poor holidaymakers what funny (both ha-ha and strange) language they might encounter on their journey to the land where the water swirled down the plug-hole the "wrong" way. What has Hugh Jackman been telling them all?