Gendered Acculturation: Do Girls Love Anything As Much As Boys Love STAR WARS?

I have this theory that certain cultural objects/phenomena get their hooks in little kids before they have enough of a knowledge base to judge what's good or bad, and consequently they grow up with an almost pre-rational love for those things that is impossible to break. Things (movies, TV shows, records, etc.) that, when seen through adult eyes, are obviously garbage nonetheless retain a passionate and obsessive fan base of people who were first exposed to them in childhood.

Examples:

Star Wars movies
superhero comic books
professional wrestling
the music of Kiss

Obviously, there are male and female fans of all this stuff, but I think it's possible to agree that the examples I've cited are primarily marketed to little boys. So, my question is: Are there female equivalents? Things that are marketed to little girls, and that catch them at a vulnerable age in similar ways, so that they grow up and, as adults, are still as fixated on whatever it may be as many adult males are on Star Wars or wrestling or comic books? (Kiss is a separate case, because Kiss fans grow up and listen to lots of other different kinds of music, and the only real damage they suffer is their continued belief that Kiss are a good band.)

Thoughts?

I get what you're saying about SW being primarily marketed towards boys, but two of the most insane SW fans I know are 40 year old women. Full cosplay + convention attendance and shit.

horses

More on point, though, I think boy bands are the little girl version of the little boy Star Wars. New Kids on the Block fans I knew in middle/high school are still ride or die for them dudes.

Do girls still like Titanic?

Horses are garbage cultural objects/phenomena?

why not

I'm not commenting on the quality or anything but I've noticed a lot of girls fixated on Disney and videogame characters, particularly Ariel from Little Mermaid.

^ Definitely a thing.

I remember a lot of guys oddly gloating about male fanboy behaviour being particularly sad, as if there wasn't similar girls but that illusion has mostly disappeared. I don't know if the girl geek community is more intense or if it's just became more visible.

I get what you're saying about SW being primarily marketed towards boys, but two of the most insane SW fans I know are 40 year old women. Full cosplay + convention attendance and shit.

― Johnny Fever, Saturday, 1 August 2015 22:57 (Yesterday) Permalink

There's a woman like this in my office, although it's her second love and her first is Disney. So maybe Disney?

there's always the pre-rational love of believing oneself to have more sophisticated tastes than other people

Wonder if all those Naruto and Bleach fans will still be crazy for that stuff in 20 years.

But I don't think they'll get into it in their earliest years so maybe that doesn't count.

Horses are garbage cultural objects/phenomena?

under advanced capitalism everything is garbage cultural objects/phenomena sure

they shoot garbage cultural objects/phenomena, don't they?

wild garbage cultural objects/phenomena couldn't drag me away
wild garbage cultural objects/phenomena: we'll ride them someday

Lol

Well played

in my experience the fandom of most of the stereotypical 'male' interests is way closer to 50/50 than people ever want to believe and even in the face of actual attendance at related events/concerts people just shrug "i guess a lot guys dragged their girlfriends here huh"

fuck horses

Some guy who fucks horses (sexy horsepics)

You're looking for things that are marketed to girls that remain popular with adult women? Madonna, Hello Kitty, unicorns?

do you know any adult women

Me? Yes.

Horses seconded / thirded

a friend in college threw herself a my little pony themed birthday party

i'm settling in. i know you people too well...

http://www.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/20121028/634.MoviePopcornBox.mh.112812.jpg

barbie?

When he was still doing stand-up in the pre-SpongeBob years, Tom Kenny had a bit about going to see Titanic and noticing the reaction that the teenage girls in the audience had to it. As he put it, Titanic was their Star Wars

Also, Kelly Sue DeConnick would take issue about only boys being _really_ into superhero comics & Kiss.

The answer to this question is Frozen

New Kids on the Block fans I knew in middle/high school are still ride or die for them dudes.

All my friends at middle school age were totally into Take That and pretty excited to get their reunion tour tickets a few years back, but in a kind of ironic/"lol guilty secret" way, whereas some of the Star Wars dudes I know are still, you know, wearing SW t-shirts in regular rotation and will tell you that it really was the greatest film ever.

As yet I can't think of a girl equivalent that doesn't develop that patina of (feigned?) ironic distance with age but maybe women are just socialised to become embarrassed about liking childish or girly things whereas nostalgic dude stuff gets more "still totally the most important cultural product of the last 40 years" articles. (I dunno. "women do this and men do this" statements make me uneasy but I make 'em anyway.)

Not entirely related but I was thinking abt it recently: I work in IT. The sysadmin likes to quote Red Dwarf with the men on the team, but never with the women, and if I join in on a reference I get totally ignored. I think it might not make sense to his worldview that when I was 11-13 and at an all-girls school my best friends and I were totally into RD, watched the videos together, bought the merchandise, quizzed each other about RD trivia. But I haven't revisited the series much as an adult so I can't compete and don't particularly want to just for the sake of trying to be "one of the boys" when I clearly can't be.

what are you doing in this thread? get out

a second thought wouldn't have gone amiss there lj

maybe women are just socialised to become embarrassed about liking childish or girly things whereas nostalgic dude stuff gets more "still totally the most important cultural product of the last 40 years" articles

this is the thing, isn't it

Little Women.

what are you doing in this thread? get out

well I did wonder that but I didn't want to make assumptions about the 2 or 3 posters whose gender I am not sure-ish of...

tbf qualx codes female too, motion retracted :)

anyway get with the program: girls like pink things, boys like blue things. a pink transformer set would sell to girls, a blue barbie would sell to boys

How are you still 15 tho

constant diet of blue breakfast cereals

-horses
-Harry Potter
-Boy bands on a spectrum, starting with Beatles/Stones on through to 1D
-Wonder Woman

I remember someone suggesting 'figure skating' as an answer to a similar question?

xp Harry Potter is a good answer I think (although I am a bit older than the Harry Potter Generation so icbw)

horses/cats too but not sure if natural real-world animals count - although there may be collecting of horse/cat-related trinkets e.g. figurines and paintings as well as photos so yeah, I guess those are totally culturally mediated

not sure why I never got into superhero comics as I loved newspaper comic strips, Beano/Dandy, Asterix, Tintin... perhaps the rippling muscles or indeed cleavage were offputting to me where a less physically detailed, more cartoony male character was more of a blank slate to project myself onto?

(I loved Mighty Mouse but neither Superman nor Mickey Mouse! I'm not sure what that says except maybe I was just a weird 5y/o)

Oh yes! My sister was the skater and I was the horse person. And the answer to girl film obsessions that linger on into adulthood: Grease.

-Figure skating
-Gymnastics

If will be interesting what the more 'democratic' social media spaces for discussing culture will do to 'girly' things like Taylor Swift or One Direction. If it will become culturally coded as 'bad' as so much nineties stuff was, or if it will be kept alive.

Anecdote: In a podcast on TheDissolve, one of their - female - reviewers talked about seeing the One Direction film with an audience, which consisted mostly of tweenage girls. She said, that whenever there were one of - many - scenes where one of the boys took off their shirts, it was almost as if there wasn't enough oxygen in the room, as all the girls gasped at once. I completely honestly think that's awesome if that's true.

I was going to say Grease but then I wondered if it was originally marketed to young girls, with all the sexual references.

(My over-30 fiancee has a bunch of unicorn stuff, if that was the thing that prompted qualx's comment to me.)

Grease and Saturday Night Fever both marketed to young teenaged girls in the same way Seventeen magazine was most popular with girls in middle school.

in my experience the fandom of most of the stereotypical 'male' interests is way closer to 50/50 than people ever want to believe and even in the face of actual attendance at related events/concerts people just shrug "i guess a lot guys dragged their girlfriends here huh"

― FLOPSZN (some dude), Sunday, 2 August 2015 03:21

Yeah, this is what I was talking about. Even on the old Comics Journal forum you'd get these indie comics guys acting like women were far too superior to be into anything like that.
Cosplay exploding probably changed things a lot. I think the mostly female audience for Yaoi and scary Lolita gore comics has changed perceptions too but even a lot of highly sexualised western comics that so many people assume only lonely guys like. Lots of fanart of Link from Zelda boning his way through Hyrule.

suddenly
Johnny
gets a feelin'
he's being surrounded by
wild garbage cultural objects/phenomena
wild garbage cultural objects/phenomena
wild garbage cultural objects/phenomena

secrets
romance
not cultural products themselves but secrets and romance are the simmering core of manufactured girlhood iirc

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51xmNQYbxGL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

The notion is that the fangirls are doing LOTR wrong (at least in the fanboys' eyes).

BILL AMEND FOR PRESIDETN

He took down that ornaldo bloomps thing HARDCORE. DAMMMNNN.

Dogs

Gendered Acculturation: Do Girls Love Anything As Much As Boys Love STAR WARS? ...

Dogs and cats

― calstars, Sunday, 4 June 2023 19:03 (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

cats have fallen out of favour since june huh

Oops

other girls

I’m sure this has been commented on multiple times upthread, but the premise of the question is weird. The two biggest Star Wars stans I know, by miles, are my sister and daughter. I don’t think they are unusual.

Of course, the films have become much more representative since the 70s. Retconning Leia as the brilliant general was a good move. I suppose it started with her strangulation of Jabba the Hutt, which was surely the highlight of the third movie.

I've now tried Andor twice and shit's boring. Star Wars sux, Star Trek forever.

It does feel like with Star Wars and Doctor Who that the gender poles reversed between my childhood and today... a few weeks ago I eating at the bar at a restaurant and the bar staff, 100% women, were to a person talking about how excited they were to get off work and play Baldur's Gate 3. For me, surreal (and nice).

RPGs were always popular with women afaict. i remember my introduction to baldur's gate 1 as a kid was because my friend's mom had it and got him into it.

Star Wars sux, Star Trek forever

otm

both suck but there are some good star wars

My youngest, who is 13 (and a boy), steadfastly maintains that it is Disney, not Orlando Bloom, that has ruined everything.

there are some good star wars

Holiday special is fun I guess yeah.

I’m sure this has been commented on multiple times upthread, but the premise of the question is weird.

I dipped out after Caravan Of Courage came out in the cinema — what marketing was aimed at your daughter’s age group before 2015?

Ugh so sorry I started this dumb ass dialogue

i keep calling star trek "star wars" completely by accident

it sounds like i'm trolling, but it's just a persistent "oh! i always get those two mixed up!". like how i get "right" and "left" mixed up.

this thread kind of ties in a lot, to my mind, with the "quirky music made by women" thread, where the differences are mainly due in large part to, well, misogyny

the "bechdel test" isn't and never was meant to be a measure of "feminism", but seeing other women meaningfully represented in media is kind of important to me, and star wars failed to do that.

leia strangling jabba is ok i guess but making her a slavegirl in chains and a metal bikini in a scenario pretty, uh, strongly inspired by the racist "arab slaver" fantasy, uh, i'm not really a big fan of that whole thing.

both star wars and gaming _are_ hotbeds of entitled nerd misogyny, and with younger generations perhaps that's passing, but for older generations it was very much a thing. for a lot of trans women getting to play as a _woman_ in a video game was really important but it was _so_ fucking rare. (for me it was the original Phantasy Star, Alis Landale, fucking legend.)

doctor who's fanbase is interesting because for most of my life it's been pretty strongly queer. when i was young the fanbase was kind of like the film print collector community - overwhelmingly gay men. sometimes that can be problematic. john nathan-turner, ian levine, gareth roberts, john barrowman. none of them people i look at in a positive light. it does...

i mean honestly a lot of the appeal to me of doctor who was that he wasn't always trying to get with women. that can appeal to a wide range of demographics, you know? for me, i'm asexual, so i thought that was nice. it's also nice that he wasn't always trying to get into heteronormative relationships, though.

also, despite itself, doctor who in its most popular form _did_ have strong female character. this is in large part down to the actors. katy manning's character was supposed to be a stupid ditz. lis sladen's character was supposed to be a straw feminist. in both cases though they brought so much more to the characters - so for the six years when the original show was arguably at its peak and at its most widely-seen, it did have strong cross-gender representation. i think that's important because it, along with strong characters from the novels like ace and benny summerfield, were a pretty big inspiration for russell t davies when he rebooted the show. in his version of the show, the companion isn't somebody the doctor explains the plot to, but basically the central character the show is built around, i'd argue.

Phantasy Star is really underrated, probably because nobody had a Sega Master System

and even if you did, it cost 70 dollars! in 1988 dollars! the flipside is that there weren't any other games for the SMS worth playing, so i guess you might as well.

we swapped our nintendo and all the games we had for it with the one family whose parents bought a sega master system. phantasy star was fucking amazing. it was one of those games where you needed graph paper to map out the dungeons tho. also the game misgendered noah (lutz in the japanese version) - he was a healer and wore a cloak so the game kept using she/her pronouns for him. it confused the fuck out of me as a kid.

yeah, it was very pricy at $70 which is why I shoplifted it from Circuit City! coming from playing PC games I already was an old hand at mapping dungeons on graph paper (once you learned how to map the maze in Zork I these grid-based dungeons were a breeze)

Japanese RPGs on consoles were so random we just sort of rolled with whatever gender assignment popped up, them drawing upon an entirely different mythology (or their own interpretation of Western mythologies making the trip back here) plus haphazard localization was probably ultimately beneficial in some sense?

yeah the western influence on jrpgs is pretty fascinating. particularly with phantasy star you see this desire to do 3D dungeons like in _Wizardry_, which was the CRPG that had the biggest influence in japan. also, ultima did some stuff for japan where the original programmers did, like, voice acting and video. here's lord british introing ultima 1 for the fm-towns:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSVeEEGjkEE

and here's an ad he did for an ultima game in japan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DEz3iDkBeY

this stuff is big goofy fun. 3d dungeons were a goal a lot of the early RPG folks had, but you couldn't really do it on the NES... that it worked as well as it did in Phantasy Star, a lot of that was down to lead programmer Yuji Naka, who went on to be the guy behind Sonic the Hedgehog.

how would you say the haphazard translation was beneficial? i'm thinking of games like lufia ii and breath of fire ii that got translations that were just... bad. the appeal for me of phantasy star wasn't that noah got misgendered, haha.

I dipped out after Caravan Of Courage came out in the cinema — what marketing was aimed at your daughter’s age group before 2015?

Pre-2015 would have been the prequels. I don't remember the marketing being strongly "gendered" one way or the other. Amidala was certainly a more affirmative character than the original Leia.

leia strangling jabba is ok i guess but making her a slavegirl in chains and a metal bikini in a scenario pretty, uh, strongly inspired by the racist "arab slaver" fantasy, uh, i'm not really a big fan of that whole thing.

Sure, that was present, but it kind of got turned on its head.

Sometimes there’s a gaggle of girls on the street and a puppy comes along and it’s like a new Star Wars sequel to the prequel had just been announced

Are there female equivalents? Things that are marketed to little girls, and that catch them at a vulnerable age in similar ways, so that they grow up and, as adults, are still as fixated on whatever it may be as many adult males are on Star Wars or wrestling or comic books?

Considering the marketing angle of the OP question I think 'horses, cats and dogs' don't really fit that criterion. otoh, Disney princesses, Hello Kitty, My Little Pony, Barbie, troll dolls, or multitudes of stuffed animals would all fit the 'marketing' requirement very nicely.

But do girls remain fixated on them into adulthood? I don't have any recent experience to draw on for that, but my sense of it is that very few girls hang onto such interests beyond late teenage at the latest, and those few are very much desperately clinging to those signifiers of innocence like a piece of driftwood that is keeping them from drowning.

They do. Not all of them, but a lot of them.

The amount of adult, childless people outside the LGBTQ+ community who ride hard for classical Disney stuff would blow your mind.

And the thing about youthful fixations on domestic animals or horses is that it kind of does apply in this era of "Dog Mom's" etc. It's a big money industry.

wow some rudeness being spouted here

xp huh? how does LGBTQ+ connect to do with Disney adult standom?

and yes, I definitely have known some obsessive Disney adults, no judgment, everybody deserves to have hobbies that make them happy

I was trying to not say "straight" as a qualifier for "Childless," but what I did say looks worse, and I apologize to anyone I offended.

I don't think anyone is trying to be rude. these replies are by nature broad generalities that will never apply universally, so that if you don't dismiss the question entirely as invalid, then answering it puts one at the mercy of anecdotal personal experience, because what else can one turn to?

so LL, what answers to the question do your experiences and observations lead you to? we'll listen respectfully.

i don't think there is a non-offensive answer to this question tbh

My point (directed at Aimless) was that there are lots of entertainment/cultural properties fandoms that women carry with them as more than "Driftwood" into adulthood. One of things I liked about the Barbie movie was how that was addressed.

my objections fall under the categories of
* gender reductionism
* unnecessary focus on reproductive status
* not understanding what is wrong with a love of animals!?

Since the Barbie movie was cited, I think there is a difference between having a personal link to Barbie through the memory of having an important childhood relationship with that doll and all it meant (past tense) at that age, and remaining "fixated" on Barbie as an adult. My answer was intended to be read in the context of "fixation" and the sort of attachment that implies.

it’s incredibly not great when uninformed dudes opine on their theories about gender and stuff. Please just shut the fuck up.

this literally is like, a question to be asked by 9 year olds and that’s it

my objections fall under the categories of
* gender reductionism
* unnecessary focus on reproductive status
* not understanding what is wrong with a love of animals!?

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera)

co-sign on all of these, particularly gender reductionism. "gendered acculturation". i hear that sometimes as "socialized male". i grew up with the boy stuff. star wars, superhero comics, transformers, all that stuff. baseball. i grew up _loving_ baseball. couldn't play it worth a damn, but i loved the idea of the game.

like the entire premise of "boys love star wars" is faulty. when i was a kid, i had the tat, i had the star wars bedsheets and jabba the hutt t-shirt and some of the "action figures". it was fine. they told me i was a boy and that boys liked star wars and ok, fine, i liked star wars. if i'd been assigned female at birth they would've told me that i should like barbie. barbie seemed alright to me but i didn't like barbie because only girls liked barbie. do i feel like i missed out on some essential feminine experience because i had star wars action figures instead of barbie action figures? no, not really.

i don't see why girls wouldn't like star wars. i don't think star wars is "obviously garbage". fine most of them don't pass the bechdel test, but that was never meant as a serious criterion on which the worth of movies should be evaluated. lots of women were fans of the original star trek, which is just a _terrible_ show when it comes to representing women. people get to like what they like, that's my position. if somebody's a really big fan of star wars, i don't see anything wrong with that. i could roll my eyes and say "Ugh, STAR WARS fans" like i used to when i was snobbier but honestly i don't have an issue until or unless fans start telling me what i am or am not supposed to like. people arguing with me about how _the last jedi_, a movie i really liked, was an Objectively Bad Movie. that irritated me.

i guess i would say that when it came to being a boy, i was a bit of a filthy casual. i'm not a huge star wars fan, but i could imagine myself having a deep and abiding love of "star wars" regardless of my gender. there are corporate media properties that i relate to, that mean more to me than whatever "boyhood" was supposed to mean. "do you like boys or do you like girls?" "i like... watching television." does that make sense? is that weird?

i don't think anyone's premise was that all boys love star wars or that girls could not like star wars. if one goes back to the OP the major premise was that star wars was primarily marketed to boys, but that (quoting OP) "obviously, there are male and female fans of all this stuff".

they told me i was a boy and that boys liked star wars and ok, fine, i liked star wars.

this kind of supports the OP's major premise

These days Minecraft may have replaced Star Wars.

Sometimes there’s a gaggle of girls on the street and a puppy comes along and it’s like a new Star Wars sequel to the prequel had just been announced

You can include me (masculine male) as someone who would react to a puppy in that way too. WTF, how could you not, unless you're a cold, heartless lump

ewok costumes for dogs is a pathway to cuteness some consider to be unnatural...
https://barkpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/test.gif

Yeah but then come the years of videos and blog posts about how much the puppy sucked

this kind of supports the OP's major premise

― more difficult than I look (Aimless)

like the post is right there at the top. i can read the post. i mean i guess you can read my post in a way that supports the original premise, despite the fact that i said quote "like the entire premise of 'boys love star wars' is faulty", but honestly, that says a lot about you and very little about me or anyone else in this thread. i don't mean to be rude, but what are you _doing_ in this thread, other than disagreeing with people who have lived experience that you don't?

more star wars pup photos plz

Women, eh? What’s that about?

With two weeks left of school, I decided to let the kids sit wherever they want.

The boys put all their desks in one big group and named it Fart Island.

The girls made a similar group and named it The Tortured Poets Department.

— KD 📚🌎🌊🇺🇸 (@kdnerak33) June 3, 2024

can we lock this thread and the “pictures of men who look like lesbians” thread