Which CBeebies White Men Would You Sack To Make Room For Diversity?

DD was about three, and watching Cbeebies and she said "mummy, why are there more men than women on TV, that's not like real life is it?"

And it's true, if you did a sweep of TV and extrapolated out to the population as a whole you would assume:
most of the population are under 35
about 1/4 of the population get to over 45
very few people achieve old age
men outnumber women by at least 3 to 1
all non human characters are by default male, unless there is specific reason for them not to be such as required to be caring or get upset

Nina and the Neurons is good. There's also Katy on i can cook (although they programme would be considerably improved if they took away the guitar) but that is still stereotypical woman in kitchen clap trap.

Erm...

Sorry that was re: A-Levels.

...and being tolerated (or at least sympathised with), I imagine, Lavender. (Not by you, but in general.)

Whereas if I'd said that Macbeth was boorrrrrrring because it was all about MEN and their BATTLES and their silly AMBITIONS TO BECOME KING everyone would have thought I was an idiot or needed to improve my ideas a bit.

Totally agree with teddybare I mean - I think there are an adequate supply of male role models in pop culture....all doing the good jobs...

Totally agree. The problem is that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. By the time they are a bit bigger, boys therefore CAN'T relate to main female characters. For example, in my experience, teaching Austen at A-level to a mixed class is totally ruined by boys casting up their eyes and whining about how borrrrring it is.

I always thought that the reason that there were more male presenters on cbeebies, was to provide role models for children who don't have fathers in their lives. Most children have mothers and/ or female teachers but many don't have positive male influences. Positive male role models benefit both sexes!

I don't believe this stuff about boys not wanting to watch female characters. We only have Swedish TV in our house (I'm Swedish and the dc are bilingual and need to hear someone other than me speak Swedish). In Swedish children's tv, there are lots of interesting female characters and boys still love them. My ds's favourite show ever was about a detective office which was run by a young girl who went off and had amazing adventures and solved crimes, with her male side-kick. I find it hard to believe that British young children are already so closed minded that they couldn't enjoy a good story. I think it's parents and tv producers projecting their own ideas onto children.

Did anybody hear Kay Cargill being supposedly taken to task about this a few weeks on Woman's Hour? AFAIR they also interviewed a person to defend the programmes and a person putting the case that programmes such as Everything's Rosie and Zingzillas put women and girls either in places of powerlessness (Drum for example is inarticulate, everything's rosie consistently (deliberately?) misses opportunities). The person defending the programmes said that her son(s) watched and enjoyed them too. I thought "how is it better that boys are also being fed this claptrap and reinforcing what they already see all around them"?

Cbeebies seems to have changed since my day.

It was all Auntie Mable and Come Inside with Poi in between.

And Sid.........has he grown his hair?

ah...i see you were arguing for more females ..so not entirely wrong (just noticed this was in feminism/women's rights)

agree elephants

I mean why the hell NOT a female captain? Or a female anything? Or a Chinese train? There's no reason why I'm a woman, just bloody am one. I expect the same logic to be applied to fictional characters.

It's also part of the CODDLING of boys on the grounds that they supposedly "won't watch girls". Well, loads of boys like Northern Lights or My Neighbour Totoro, IMO it's the adults projecting onto them that precious boys shouldn't have to concern themselves with watching someone who doesn't exactly resemble themselves.

Nannies not jammies

Mr bloom was a street show for kids called the vegetable jammies; it was gorgeous, as is Mr bloom, and no, he didn't go to the drama centre.

Mike the knight is atrocious though.

black men are actually over-represented in the media. Young men are in a more general way.

the most under-represented group is women over fifty, followed closely by women 35-50.

so, basically, your whole argument rests on a false premise.

but i think Andy is great. Sack Alex if anyone's going...

You are right Elephants it is all about the default being white male and everyone else taking the scraps. I mean we are scraping the barrel if we are trying to big up the one female cartoon character in the octonauts.

I named my firstborn after Long Distance Clara! Er, without the long distance bit, although there was some debate in the registry office. Driver Dan is such a rubbish substitute.

I think the problem really is that white able-bodied blokes are still "default person". Imagine going to a meeting with an idea for a kids' show. It's hard to imagine someone with Mr Bloopy being asked "why MR Bloopy?" - much easier to picture the creator of Viking Vi having to find an answer to "why a GIRL viking?"

(Really want to watch Viking Vi now, someone tell me it exists)

There used to be three female cbeebies presenters. Then five years or so ago two disappeared and they brought in Sid and andy. So at the time there were three men and one women (Poi). It was written about in the guardian at the time so there may be a link. Anyway they made this decision as apparently they were losing boy viewers to nickelodeon and other channels.

I am not saying it was a right decision. But mention it to say there is deliberate male bias on cbeebies so the basic proposition of the op is not wrong at all.

Cross post there Optimistic!
I agree re. Antimated cartoons.

Doesn't the female character in Octnonauts the boat fixer?
I like the male cbeebies presenters. I prefer it to the fake female presenters.
Mr Bloom devised the programme idea himself since he was concerned his children didn't know where their food came from. That's quite a devoted dad in my book.
This is obviously my personal opinion.
I understand in terms of postman pat and bob the builder but postman pat comes from what the late 80's early 90's? Mrs Goggins was voiced by a man back then!
I think the BBC have to be quite diverse don't they?
Please note this is not my specialised subject!