BBC Gender Stereotyping

[TimeforaNNChange]

Grr.

BBC GBBO promotional photos released today.

All the male competitors mixing blue icing. All the female mixing pink icing.

It doesn't seem like a big deal, but really?

It's just a drip, drip, drip of stereotyping every day, everywhere we look. Blue for boys, pink for girls.

Even in a show that has done wonders for breaking down gender stereotypes in the past.

Rant over.

[SpeakNoWords]

I wonder if it was thoughtlessness and lack of imagination, or genuinely thinking that it's appropriate to signal gender at all times!

[JacquettaWoodville]

Ugh

[Grimarse]

It is indeed a terribly sexist programme. Putting all those women in a kitchen setting whilst the menfolk kick back and drink beer, doing manly things. Oh, hang on...

Do you think, just possibly, it was done tongue in cheek, given that the whole premise is to taker what is traditionally a women's task and to open it out to everyone? Boys and girls will sit and watch GBBO with their parents and see both genders getting stuck into cakes and pastry.

[PurpleDaisies]

Do you think, just possibly, it was done tongue in cheek, given that the whole premise is to taker what is traditionally a women's task and to open it out to everyone?

I don't see any indications that it was tongue in cheek. What makes you think that it is?

[Grimarse]

Because of what I said in the rest of my post. The whole premise of the programme breaks down gender stereotypes. Even three of the four hosts are women.

[Xenophile]

3 of the 4 hosts of a show about making cakes are women.

So gender groundbreaking.

[TimeforaNNChange]

grimarse that's what I said in my OP! It's the fact that the show has done so much to challenge gender stereotyping, that this pisses me off so much.

Tongue in cheek or not, it's damaging. Boys and girls will see these images and it will reinforce the "blue for boys, pink for girls" - even if those boys and girls both like baking!

[PurpleDaisies]

I think you're being very generous to ascribe it to "tongue in cheek" playing with gender stereotyping. It seems to me to be a lazy reverting to the default men get blue, women get pink.

[Grimarse]

Of the three female hits, one is a famous baker. So, no surprise there. The other two are pretty clueless about baking, but are in fact a comedy double act to ramp up the entertainment value. Swap them out for Reeves and Mortimer, and then you can complain that female comedians never get a break, more men on telly etc etc etc.

Sometimes people cannot do right for doing wrong. It is genuinely possible to take any programme, any scenario, and pick a fault with it if you are so inclined.

And the boys blue, girls pink thing has been done to death on here. It is a recent fashion thing. Go back to early 20th century and it was the opposite way round.

[Grimarse]

*hosts, not hits

[ChocChocPorridge]

It's pointless and lazy - not even nice shades - why not just have a rainbow of colours or uncoloured? There's absolutely no need at all for pink/blue icing, so why do it? I don't see what it brings to the pictures at all.

Nothing tongue in cheek about it - there's no comedy angle to the colour icing a baker is mixing.

[TimeforaNNChange]

And the boys blue, girls pink thing has been done to death on here. It is a recent fashion thing.

So because the MN jury has spoken (sorry, I missed that bit of the talk guidelines) and decided it's something that shouldn't garner outrage, that's it? It's not open for discussion?

Insisting that women are scantily clad on high-class French resort beaches is a recent "fashion thing", too - should we just accept that, too?

[Grimarse]

Seriously - outrage??

[MrsJoeyMaynard]

There's another thread about this in chat www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2709068-GBBO-Gendered-icing

FWIW, I don't think it's tongue in cheek. I think it's much more likely to be just a thoughtless, lazy "if we're having icing in the pictures, let's have pink for the girls and blue for the boys" thing.

[TimeforaNNChange]

Seriously - outrage??

Well, I don't know, I must have missed a memo. What was decided was an appropriate level of reaction to these things? You say it's been "done to death" so I assumed that outrage was not an acceptable response.

....oh, did you think I'd said I was outraged? No. RTFT.

[Grimarse]

Both options are possible. Thoughtless gender stereotyping, or humour. Someone would have to ask the BBC themselves to find out which it was, I guess.

[ChocChocPorridge]

If they think that's humour they have a problem - someone mixing a bowl of icing isn't comedy no matter what the colour is.

[VestalVirgin]

Someone who is not very, very, very fond of gender stereotyping would never ever have come up with the idea that the same icing is not appropriate for everyone.

It's just labelling women as "other", thus reinforcing sexism.

No, it is not funny, and no, it is not "tongue-in-cheek", which is a lazy excuse anyway. All sexism is sexism, I do not care that you meant it as joke. It harms women, your intentions are not relevant.

[Xenophile]

Choc, no, it's hilair, and so much more so because two well established female comedians have been chosen to front it rather than two even more firmly established male ones weren't. Stop looking for things to be outraged about, everything's lovely.

[MrsJoeyMaynard]

I'm failing to see how reinforcing gender stereotypes (pink for girls, blue for boys in this case) is humorous.

If they'd switched it around so the women had blue and the men pink, I could see a possible humour argument, although as ChocChoc says, there's nothing particularly funny about any bowl of icing.

[deydododatdodontdeydo]

It's just labelling women as "other", thus reinforcing sexism.

It is lazy sexist stereotyping, but how is it labelling women as other and not labelling men as other? Is blue inherently superior to pink?

[JacquettaWoodville]

"I was at Harlow Carr recently. They had some astronaut cut outs you could put your head through"

YY ego,. Same cutouts at all the RHSes. Why, though? Astronauts all have the same suits outwardly (assume plumbing inside may be a little different for waste collection!)