To think it would've killed the producers to make one of the principle Octonauts female?

[lookingforthecorkscrew]

There ARE two female Octonauts but they're v much secondary characters, and does make me a bit miffed*. Thought we'd come a bit further than this.

*obvs I don't stay awake all night being angry about this, it just irritates me

YANBU. Obviously it would be better to show a mixture of boys and girls performing strong roles.

My 3 year old DD doesn't care tho. She likes Marshall (PP) and Fireman Sam. She doesn't gravitate towards the "girl" characters/programmes in the same way that my older two DDs did.

Who cares?!

I am willing to bet if they'd all been female, no-one on here would be complaining that there's no MALES in it.

I'm sure I read somewhere tha Margaret Atwood had some involvement with Octonauts so I'm always surprised how little the female characters get featured. I may have made that up/ dreamt it though, off to google.

Of course they wouldn't be tippz. The same way no one would be complaining if they made a program with all black characters. Male characters are hugely over represented, especially in programs like octonauts which are actually educational.

Also I can find no evidence that Margaret Atwood was involved in Octonauts. I have no idea why I thought she did!

Maybe a dream you had this? That happens to me.

Yeah it sucks. And the female horse in the knight princess show, why!? It's like they tried and then still had to add a shallow female character to go with the male one.

The Octonauts is not nearly as bad for this as many other kids programs (Tweak is a good character) but it is still annoying that in nearly every program like this, the male characters outnumber the female ones. There seems to be a pattern of a "token" female character who is usually "the clever one". Xuli in the Go Jetters is another good, active female character, but she is still the only female team member. This is OK in an individual program, but the overall pattern is a problem. If there are 3 main characters, you can all but guarantee at least 2 will be male. I can't think of a single program where the reverse is true.

DD loves Paw patrol, but it is annoying the Skye is the only female member of the central team (Everest doesn't even live with them does she?) In our house we have made Zuma a girl dog, to balance things up a bit.

It should be a requirement that any of these shows with groups if characters have equal male to female character numbers. How different and more positive would paw patrol, octanauts, etc be with 3 male and 3 female characters! I always wonder where my kids think the other girls are on these adventures. At home waiting to hear about what The boys and their token girl got up to???

squishy we have had to descend to changing the sex of the existing characters too. Because dd was always determined Peso was a girl and also Piglet in Winnie the Pooh (an awful one for all males but then it's very old) I always read the books changing he to she.

Good ones imo are Charlie and Lola as Lola is the "character " and Charlie sensible, and I also like that in Justin's House (though awful in many ways) the male robot is sensible and does the cleaning and the little monster who messes everything up is a girl.

Also Skye in PP is a total airhead (no pun intended) although thinking about it none of the PP characters will be troubling Mensa.

Interestingly, my 6yo DS, whose official line is that he hates 'girls' things' is addicted to DC Superhero Girls, where the male characters are little more than background. Shows that if the characters are good enough, people will watch regardless of gender.

Thomas and Friends totally pisses me off for this. I know I'm the original books almost all the engines were male apart from Daisy the Diesel and all the coaches. But they've added hundreds of engines now that aren't mentioned in the books and they're almost exclusively male.

YANBU, I see this so much with various kids shows. Paw Patrol being the most obvious culprit.

There's always a 'token girl', very rarely is there an even split.

Changing the tack a bit but I often think older when there will be a male lead Disney character? I can only think of aladdin and Hercules and any others are animals.

Don't know where 'older' came from!

I think scooby do is good, although only the original series and what's new, the newest season isn't great

Why don't male animals count as male leads?

Have you seen the latest paw patrol pup...her name is "Sweetie". I shit you not.

Fair enough assasinated, but even so it's simba and, I don't know - Pongo? Is he a lead?

The hunchback of notre dame? Tarzan? Dinosaur? Chicken Little? Bolt? Winnie the Pooh? wreck it Ralph? Big Hero 6?

"Sweetie"?! Oh, fuck off.

I think animal male leads definitely count, and if you look back in time you'll see male Disney leads were quite normal, perhaps even the norm (barring the odd princess and snow white - beautiful lady types anyway). Robin Hood, Dumbo, Pinocchio...

Mowgli

It used to be that Disney animations could be fairly neatly split into princess stories and adventure stories. The former had female leads, who looked pretty, acted kindly, sung sweetly and were eventually rescued by a man. The latter had male leads who did stuff.
They are much, much better now though (Brave, Moana and Frozen are particularly good at having female leads that are not just passive and pretty).