Mr Men and Little Miss books

[Wombat44]

There are some new Mr Men and Little Miss books, and how exciting they sound. There's Mr Marvellous, Mr Adventure, and Little Miss Fabulous - who has fabulous long hair

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/12/fabulous-news-mr-men-and-little-misses-get-fresh-set-of-companions

People seem to think sexism springs out of nowhere - that boys (as a group) become men* (as a group), and suddenly they morph into brand new beings, prone to explicit and implicit sexist behaviour.

It doesn't spring from nowhere, which is why Buffy's question is an important one. Trying to explain it to people who will not see it is pointless massively frustrating, though.

*Not all men are like that.

Miss Fabulous is interesting. I'm still not sure what is so awful about her ( cue response " you must never comment on a little girl's appearance") but presumably there are other characters which are just appearance based?

Long hair on girls seems to cause this board a bit of a problem- it's usually criticised very negatively; which seemed a bit strange given I've seen at least 2 threads lauding a mother for refusing to bow to pressure to cut her little boy's hair.

I've never seen long hair on girls being criticised very negatively on these boards

😮

Imagine what Little Mr Ponytail could be like. Or Little Mr Man-Bun.

My hair is waist length. It looks awful short and I like it long, anyway. It's silky and a lovely colour.

Will I be banished from MN?

Of course not, Anchor!

Sounds a bit frivolous really Buffy. Maybe try and get it cut in a humourless style?

And infantilised. It's not 'Little Master Marvellous', is it?

Oops missed the second page so my comment is a bit of a non sequitur. It was meant to follow on from BungoWomble's 'our daughters are being crowded out and being forced back into dependence.'

Interesting.

I liked the old ones as a kid. I obviously did get they were meant to be male and female but I also sort of thought of them as cartoons and therefore not really real. But I don't think we had anything quite as ridiculous as little miss fabulous then.

Little miss tiny yes. I liked her. I was tiny. I felt represented . But I agree the message from these new ones seems to have quite a gender bias.

I'm with you OP.

For those who think it doesn't matter, of course one small example doesn't matter, but it's a part of a bigger picture. I can recommend the recent BBC programme 'No more girls and boys', if it's still on iPlayer, to get an idea of the impact this stuff has on our kids.

Slightly off-topic, but I recommend reading the reviews of Mr.Men books on Amazon by Hamilton Richardson.

I'm with op as well, those posters saying that mr marvellous and mr fabulous are equitable obvioulsy are just having an anti feminist knee jerk reaction. As so eloquently pointed out by a pp me marvellous is marvellous because of how skilled he is, miss fabulous is just fabulous because she wastes all her time preening herself for the male gaze and achieving nothing of any actual merit.

We had a a few and they are the most boring and dull children's books to read out loud.

I tried a few times and just gave up.

There are so many wonderful picture books out there that are a delight to read to the DC. I'm amazed that these are still in print.

Zombie thread, revived by someone who's now been deleted....