to be annoyed by 'Little' Miss

[bumpertobumper]

my sons are currently very keen on Mr Men books for bedtime stories. It really annoys me that the female characters are 'little... '. Why can't she just be Miss naughty or Miss Sunshine etc.
I feel it's part of the insidious undermining and belittling (literally!) of women.
So I leave out the little when reading, but DP doesn't and DS1 is in yr1 so can see for himself the girls are all little.

Yes, now you mention it “Mrs” would have made more sense than “Little Miss”.

So in the spirit of those reviews, can we conclude that Roger Hargeaves' literary output was profoundly constrained by contemporary social anxieties around mature female sexuality? (I wouldn't be at all surprised )

Little Miss Bad
Little Miss Bossy
Little Miss Busy-body
Little Miss Contrary
Little Miss Dotty
Little Miss Fickle
Little Miss Greedy
Little Miss Jealous
Little Miss Late
Little Miss Naughty
Little Miss Prim
Little Miss Scary
Little Miss Scatterbrain
Little Miss Show-off
Little Miss Stubborn
Little Miss Trouble
Little Miss Vain

Yes there are negative Mr Men characters, but they are a much smaller percentage of the overall Mr Men characters than the negative Little Misses are.

Eeel - are you "censoring" your children's reading then by depriving them of access to certain authors/books? Or are you ensuring they access appropriate material? IMO sexism is inappropriate.

Is sexism in children's books something to be concerned about? Yes

Do we ignore that sexism because of nostalgia and re-expose our children to it? I think that is irresponsible.

How sad. They're not supposed to be taken literally, you know. They're children's books, they contain a lot of nonsense, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Of course, if we try to make an academic study out of every single quirk of life, we're going to be 'offended' practically all the time. Wait a minute..... Oh God, it already happened. Anyway, please ban Mr Strong as he's clearly going to upset the puny. Also, Mr Nosey should be banned in case some child's parent with a big schnozz takes offence.

Kleinzeit - yes we can conclude that, but why accept it in 2014? Why continue to expose children to badly written sexist drivel without challenging it?

I just wouldn't have chosen these books to read to my kids as they are a tad boring.

my teen dds have bags of ambition. perhaps that's why!

Fefifo I always read the Tiger who came to tea as a feminist parable. The tiger is feminism, sweeping away the daily grind of chores and cooking, while not drinking mummy's wine...

YANBU. It's is very low level sexism but it is part of a wider problem.

Imagine if Mr Bump was "Little Mr Bump" , it sounds ridiculous! So why is Little Miss Sunshine okay? Why not just Miss Sunshine?

Low level sexism is so ingrained in society and it makes it harder to tackle the bigger issues.

If you knowingly choose to expose your children to books that contain sexism, don't be surprised if they grow up to be sexist themselves. It's not rocket science.

Oooooo but wait, I have fond memories of reading them when I was young so they must be ok.

And it was ok to be sexist back then so let's continue reading it to our kids and not challenge it now or we'll have strangers on the internet telling us to calm down.

I'm out.

I cant get worked up about this to be honest.

It always leaves me bemused when in a thread like this, the most fervent mouthfrothers are the people accusing the OP of being... a mouthfrother.

They're not supposed to be taken literally, you know.

That's the point - the OP is not taking things literally at all, she is looking at the metaphorical meanings of calling someone "Little Miss", and not liking them. There's no reason to like them, really.

(One or two of the Mr Men books are quite amusing but I imagine that by the time Roger Hargreaves got round to writing the Little Miss books he was as fed up with the whole idea as the rest of us, only he had a publisher to please.)

I thought that was what AIBU about - mouth frothing??

She is, in the sense that they're clearly fantasy characters which in a decent upbringing the child will readily realise to be such. I think years of proper education and upbringing are going to be vastly more influential in preventing the formation of sexist attitudes than whether or not we read Mr Men to tiny children.

But they are part of that education and upbringing. It's bad news for education if you have to say "ooh look, here are lots and lots of ordinary everyday children's books, which just happen to be sexist, and here are a few extra-special books which have gone to great trouble to show girls in an equal light". With that upbringing children are likely to learn the exact opposite of what you seem to hope.

Anyway, I now feel the urge to wonder whether someone somewhere is comparing the early and late oeuvres of Roger Hargreaves for signs of increasing disillusionment with the tropes of the genre. And thinking that I really should get a life.....

I didn't see any mouth frothing in the OP at all.

No, AIBU is not about mouth frothing.

Of course they're fantasy characters. Just as Game of Thrones is a fantasy series. It doesn't mean that there isn't the potential in them to harbour underlying (or sometimes quite blatant) sexist messages.

Kleinzeit - exactly.

There are plenty of 'negative' Mr Men - Mr Rude and Mr Fussy spring to mind, but I know there are lots more.

As for Little Miss - I know what you mean (and I hated the Litte Miss Naughty T-shirts for adults that TopShop flogged for ages.. 'ooh I'm twee and risque at the same time!'), but I use it as a prompt to write my own. Ms Rush has a hard time of it when Ms Dawdle won't leave the house.

In French they're all Madame, as it happens.

Or joking, apparently.

Purleeease....

Ffs, get over it. And yourself. Those books have great humour.. Looks like you could use some.

I can froth and make extensive comment every day at the casual sexism I come across, or I can put my energy to better use by continuing on a practical level to be a positive female role model to my 2 boys, as well as the young girls at work.

I can obviously do both, but I think there is more mileage in positive, real life every day role models as then the children grow up to question why the books (e.g. various Enid blyton) never let the girls be in charge etc. If you ban the books, you cannot talk about how things have changed.

Little miss books are meant for little girls, they will identify themselves more with the description of 'little miss' more than Mrs or ms, I really think it's as simple as that tbh.

Well said, Monica.

Little miss books are meant for little girls, they will identify themselves more with the description of 'little miss' more than Mrs or ms, I really think it's as simple as that tbh.

Why are little boys given books with "Mr" then?

My boys were called sometimes called 'Mr xxxxx' when they were at nursery etc, the girls were ' miss xxxxx'.

Mrs/ms is exclusive to older women in everyday life, Mr is used for men of all ages. I have never called a small boy 'master' even though it is technically correct.

A little boy would easily identify with 'Mr', a little girl would not so easily link herself to 'Mrs/ms' as they are equated to being a grown up.

Just my opinion obviously!

Mrs/ms is exclusive to older women in everyday life, Mr is used for men of all ages.

Well that's interesting in itself.

Do you mean males of all ages, though? Boys are not men.