Smurfett

A detailed Summary of Smurfett

As Katha Pollitt said, "girls just don't matter much" (Pollitt 40). In her essay "The Smurfette Principle", Pollitt talks about how girls are not represented well in the world of preschool culture. Pollitt describes how boys are always the main characters in books, movies, television shows, etc. This display of genders in the media impacts the views of preschoolers who are exposed to these books and movies as it teaches them what the role of males and females are. It teaches them that males are more important and are always the main attraction while females play the supporting role and are not that important in the overall scheme of things. Pollitt defines this as the "Smurfette principle: a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined" (Pollitt 38).

I agree with many of the points that Pollitt makes in her essay. The representation of females in preschool culture is very poor. Females are almost never the lead role and if they are the lead role they reinforce many stereotypes that females have. There is no denying that males are a lot more prominent in children television shows and books and are almost always shown in a good light. As opposed to Pollitt, I

While I acknowledge that preschoolers are influenced by books and shows they are aware of, I believe parents ultimately have a larger influence to their children. Pollitt states that because of preschool culture, Pollitt and her husband "have [their] work cut out for them" (Pollitt 40). I believe that if parents lead by example and show that both the wife and husband play equal roles in their family then the child would not be as influenced by preschool culture. From personal experience in my family I have witnessed that both my mother and father share equal roles in our family, if anything my mother has done more than my father to help our family. As a result of seeing this first hand, I am not as influenced from what I see on television and know that women can have as important of a role as men in our society. It is because of this that I believe it is up to the parents whether or not their child is heavily influenced by the shows they watch or the books that they read.

Pollitt starts off her essay by explaining a time when she bought her daughter a "Little Mermaid" cassette. She explained how the only reason she bought the cassette was because Ariel was a better representative of females. To further her point of how males are prominently featured in preschool culture, Pollitt uses many examples of this occurring. She points out how "April, of the wildly popular 'Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles,' functions as a girl Friday to a qua

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Approximate Word count = 979
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English