PINK ATTITUDE by Alexandre Roux

Photo © Dina Goldstein

PINK ATTITUDE

heerful, bubbly and colorful, the Girlie-Girl Culture is an unavoidable phenomenon of our western societies. This ambiguous and popular culture—both angelic and demoniac-constantly oscillates between two extreme images of women: the little girl and the temptress, the ingénue and the predator. How has the Girlie-Girl Culture managed to conquer the world, to shape and impose guidelines to a new feminine identity? Which cultural codes lurk behind the glitter and pink veneer of the Pink Attitude—codes that guide the majority of today’s girls from cradle to adulthood?

Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Barbie dolls and Bratz dolls; Hello Kitty; pop icons Katy Perry and Rihanna and their sugar-candy sexy videos clips; TV shows and romantic comedies; women’s magazines and nail salons blooming on every street corner... Welcome to the land of Girly-Girl Culture. An enchanted land, where everything is pink, sparkling and magical; where the codes of femininity are sublimated, and where the beauty/youth cult/celebrity trinity is the face of a new lifestyle. Geared primarily at girls, this popular and multifaceted culture is unavoidable in today’s world. And though the Girlie-Girl Culture is often denigrated for its futility and superficiality, its power is paradoxically immense. It took less than half a century for the Girlie-Girl tidal wave to flood the Western cultural market. Taking complete advantage of this marketing and communication era, it has spread all over our screens and radio waves at great speed; it has seeped into our habits and even our cultural references. How did the consumer society and Marketing establish these new feminine stereotypes? Today, in Paris, New York via Seoul and Tokyo, our daughters and sisters—the first targets and the first fans—assimilate the Girlie-Girl Culture from early childhood. Whether it be the Disney Princesses acclaimed by little girls or today’s pop singers in the flesh, adulated by pre-teen girls, the heroines of the Girlie-Girl Culture are sending a message to their fans that seems to say «Be like ME.» But if the former are examples of virtue—“got married and had lots of children”—the latter proclaim their autonomy, their right to provocation by being increasingly sulfurous and sexy. In what do these icons—pure products of our consumer society—reflect the ideal feminine fantasy? How does the Girlie-Girl Culture participate in defining what it means to be a girl or what a girl is supposed to be like? This documentary takes us on a journey to Girlie-Girl Land. What is it like to grow up under the aegis of this marketing hype that has been accompanying little girls since birth, and throughout their adolescence and budding femininity?

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT OF INTENT WHO HASN’T EVER OFFERED PINK BABY CLOTHES TO A BABY GIRL? When next she wants to dress up like a princess and spend hours putting on make-up with her friends and singing the latest Katy Perry hit at the top of her lungs, this outcome almost seems like a fatality. The majority of girls go through this phase. These everyday situations—repeated over and over and over again—seem so obvious, that one could almost forget that loving pink for a girl is not determined by biology; no more than wanting to be beautiful is engraved in her DNA. Decoding the Girlie-Girl Culture is all about understanding how today’s younger and older girls subconsciously and progressively internalize these codes of femininity. Decoding the culture is obtained through the observation of childhood and adolescence, where everything is about learning: from the logos on cereal boxes, the cartoons they watch at snack time,

to video games, dolls, and the latest hit clip on MTV. It is all about the imperceptible and invisible integration of a certain sexual identity to which girls are subjected. It has permeated our references so gradually, has become so commonplace and yet so powerful, that it is difficult for a woman to pull free from this imposed and fantasized image of femininity. We take a look at the key historical episodes in the evolution of the consumer society, and conduct interviews with artists who are experts in these matters. This allows us to observe that which seems to be selfevident today, but from a greater distance.

A COMMON THREAD: As adults, we feel that we are better equipped to take a step back from these cultural injunctions; but what about those girls who are born in, who breathe in and who grow up in this omnipresent, paradoxical, sugar-candy universe—today more than ever?

PINK

One of the most visible aspects of this globalized culture is the emergence of the color pink as the Girlie-Girl Culture flagship. Vacillating between the sensuality of red and the purity of white, pink represents both angel and demon. Vast, global and transversal, pink is the symbol of the Girlie-Girl pop culture. However, a girl’s attraction to pink is not engraved in her DNA. So, how did pink become the “girl” color for the starry-eyed little girl, the romantic teenager and the provocative woman? To answer this question, we must travel back through time and through generations. Pink became the “girl” color with the advent of the consumer society1. It is not known exactly when or why the switchover occurred but many early Disney heroines—Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Wendy, Alice in Wonderland, Jane Banks in Mary Poppins—wore different shades of blue (when the company launched the Disney Princesses range in 1999, they changed Sleeping Beauty’s dress color to pink, officially to distinguish her from Cinderella). It was not until the mid-1980s that pink really came into play, at a time when amplifying age and sex differences became a key strategy in marketing geared towards children. We then began to think girls must like pink, that it was a part of their feminine identity—at least during the early formative years.

Let us bear in mind that in the past, young boys were dressed in red—the color of Kings—, and girls in blue like the Virgin Mary 1

The baby-boom generation was the first to dress their children in clothes designed specifically for boys or girls. Ever since, parents and their children have been submerged in a wave of commercial hype that has only become more sophisticated over the decades and thus strengthening a sense of belonging. The feeling is infused through toys, children’s books, cartoons, women’s magazines, handbags and other accessories. Before the explosion of Marketing, other prescribers— religious and social—had already developed very specific codes as to what a woman (or a man for that matter) should be like. But the great upheaval of the 20th century was the consumer society’s intrusion in the definition of gender and its constant injunctions as to what a girl should own and enjoy, in order to be a real girl. This goes back to the ‘50s when French fashion and pop music magazines—respectively, “Elle“ and “Salut les Copains”—and then radio and television, became prescribers: creating images and relaying role models beckoning the public to resemble them. With the Internet age, this message is spreading faster and faster, resonating on an increasingly large scale. Almost every month there are new external signs telling us what it means to be an “It Girl”. It has become fact: marketing trends dictate our conception of what is innate to children, notably our deepest convictions on their psychological development. Pink is but a sample of a vaster marketing-manufactured conception of femininity that young girls are coerced to conform to when shaping their personality.

TREATMENT

In order to understand and decode the Girlie-Girl Culture, we will not only meet little girls and adolescents who are immersed in it, but also those who create it, others that are fighting against it as well as the heroines who represent it. What is really hiding behind this pink, cheerful, enchanted, sugar-candy wrapping? The promise of a happy end or the beginning of a nightmare? How does the Girlie-Girl Culture educate girls? To answer this question, the film follows a little girl growing up from infant to young girl to young woman. Her evolution from childhood to adulthood in the Girlie-Girl Culture constitutes the leitmotiv of the film. This symbolical little girl is embodied by real girls who live in Paris and in the U.S. Each girl represents one of the three stages in their developing femininity: childhood, pre-teen (dubbed “tween” in marketing jargon) and adolescent. Girlie-Girl Culture has a tailored package for each and every age group; each has its own heroines, soundtrack, story and tie-in products. First comes the “Princess” phase: a time of dreams and innocence enchanted by Disney Princesses. Then there is body-awareness stage: the desire to be beautiful and to emulate. During this period, the girls make-up their dolls and get manicures with Mom at the beauty salon. Françoise Dolto proclaimed: “a child is a person” and advertising proclaimed that girls are mini-women: mini-women who are very conscious of their appearance (and often much more sophisticated than their mothers), parading in pink dresses, patent-leather pumps, all dolled-up and with impeccably varnished nails. Little by little, the little girl becomes a Slutwave adolescent; listening to Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Katy Perry, and watching shows such as Gossip Girl that relates the adventures of wealthy New York heiresses left to their own devices. “Pink and pretty” was sold to parents as proof of innocence: an inoffensive and even natural way for girls to forge their feminine identity. But the sales pitch is completely different for the older sisters. Looking “hot” has become the only way to express their femininity.

Photo © Dina Goldstein

GIRLIE-GIRL CULTURE OBSERVING, RELATING AND DECODING

THE DECODERS: Sociologists, anthropologists as well as artists, writers... REBECCA HAINS

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR the main consumers of Girlie-Girl Culture: as we have said previously, the film’s leitmotiv is the evolution of little girls through to their pre-teens and teens. The film follows them through the successive and decisive stages in the development of their femininity, taking us through the rites of passage of childhood and adolescence: from the birthday party, the School Dance in Junior High and the first manicure at American Girl, New York’s biggest doll department store, to pop star Selena Gomez’s concert (Selena Gomez is the Disney stable’s latest icon).

Sepcialized in the representation of little girls (ou granddaughters) in the media, she is the author of « Growing up with Girl Power : girlhood on screen and in Everyday Life ».

THOSE WHO MAKE THE GIRLIE-GIRL CULTURE: We meet those who design these packages daily and those who decide what tomorrow’s culture will be like. We will meet the Marketing Manager of one of Mattel’s biggest department stores and the brand’s marketing institute as they observe a research panel comprised of little girls in New York. We will be present at an editorial board meeting for a teen magazine and on the shoot of a major record label’s pop icon’s video clip.

NANCY HUSTON Writer, author of Reflection in the eye of a man. ANNE DAFFLON NOVELLE Psychology researcher, she studies the construction of sexual identity of boys and girls. JENNIFER POZNER Media critic, founder of Women in Media and News’ organization who lobbies for a greater presence of women in Media spotlight. ARMELLE LE BIGOT Founder of ABC+, marketing instute specialized in the behavioral study of childrens and teens.

The intervention of these women permits a critical analysis of the Girlie-Girl Culture to be found and also allows it to be put into historical perspective. How did it all start? Did it always appear in this manner? How can we explain its success? We will then film the photographer Dina Goldstein and the Korean artist JeongMee Yoon at work. They study the repercussions of the power of image on the way femininity is learned and question the stereotypes that have put them in place. With a simple photograph of a little girl surrounded by her toys, JeongMee Yoon divulges the sexist consumerist view of boy/girl separation. The resulting pictures show a mountain of uniform objects. At the same time, the photographer denounces a much more serious phenomenon: the loss of identity and the total disregard for a childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ethnic origin or culture, all sacrificed to uniformity.

A FRUITY, SUGAR-CANDIED, POP FILM. Similar to the images and information that the Girlie-Girl Culture floods us with, various contemporary sources have been employed to illustrate the sequences: video clips (California Gurls - Katy Perry, Wannabe - Spice Girls...), making-ofs; commercials, movie trailers (Legally Blonde Marie Antoinette, Hanna Montana...), TV shows (Toddlers and Tiaras, The Bachelor...) and TV game shows. As our girls next door and their icons grow up, the color pink—emblem of Girlie-Girl Culture—evolves. Pastel pink, hot pink, “skin-colored” pink, Crimson Lake to Vermillion, all these shades herald the passage of childhood to adulthood and symbolize the shift from sexualization to hyper-sexualization. The experts’ points-of-view will be illustrated by historical records. We will see women charging into the make-up and jewelry sections of the first department stores; the first Barbie doll commercials; and the first sale of the Shirley Temple doll. Shirley Temple—child star from The Little Princess—was Girlie-Girl Culture’s first heroine. We find that same Shirley Temple doll in toy stores in Shanghai, thousands of kilometers away. We will witness the first Mini-Miss beauty pageants. The culture has gone global, present in Asia, Eastern and Western Europe and in the U.S. Modern fairytale or nightmare? To question the Girlie-Girl Culture stereotypes, we punctuate the film with our very own offbeat portraits of girls. This staging highlights the disparity between the fantasy image and reality. For example, we will see three 50-year-old women dressed up as princesses, waiting for the bus; two little girls dressed in business attire walking down the street in high heels, drab gray suits, and with cell phones glued to their ears; and two young girls dressed as cheerleaders, waiting in front of the office copier.