Political Media Review – PMR

Jacinta Bunnell and Julie Novak
PM Press (2009)
Reviewed by Jacquelyn Arsenuk

Ballerina’s with wrenches, a stubborn Miss Muffet and high heel cloning projects are just 3 of the 27 gender bending scenarios in Jacinta Bunnell and Julie Novak’s Girl’s are not Chick’s coloring book. A yellow front and back cover is filled with multi-colored stars, the front featuring an upside down chick and on the flip side, a broken shell with the following definition:

Chick /chik/ n.

1 young bird   2 newly hatched chicken   3 derog. slang young woman

As some third wavers seek power in reclaiming words like bitch and chick, Bunnell (also co-creator of Girls will be Boys will be Girls) and Novak are clearly not two of them.

The new “Liv” doll (the anti-Bratz), decked out in a mini skirt and tooling around on a tiny motor skooter was featured recently in the New York Times. The article stated “others maintain that Liv may one day be poised to knock Barbie from her perch.”

Describing women and girls in such animalistic ways is as common as the infantalization of women in mainstream pornography. The reverse, that is the hyper-sexualization of young girls (check out the Little Miss Muffet Halloween costume), is on the rise. Such messages teach girls to speak with their bodies and clothes instead of their mouths. The Report of the American Psychological Assocation Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls found that Disney’s female characters today have more cleavage, fewer clothes, and are depicted as “sexier” than those of yesteryear. And let’s face it people, Tinkerbell looks like a porn star, ok?

This is where Girls Not Chicks comes into Crayola.

The strengths of this coloring book lie in its ability to sometimes temper, not always reject, some of its hyper-feminine aspects with traditional masculine roles and actions like Violet who puts food on the table with tractors not teaspoons. Mocking patriotism, rejecting carb diets, riding the big waves and empowering fair tale characters with independence through a proper supply of tools and transportation are a few other positive themes.

The main flaw I found was the complete lack of attention paid to the politics surrounding the title. The only reference to chicks made in the coloring book is in a message given by Bunnell and Novak right before the dedication page. The second paragraph reads:

When a girl’s voice is fostered to its brimming potential, the sound that is heard is not a peep, not a chirp, nothing akin to the tiny soft sound of a fuzzy baby chick. The encouraged voice of a girl is resounding, glowing with perfect protest and intellect, and contains as much as is possible.

This is a great analysis of how our young girls are pacified through comparison’s to baby animals but this was “The End” of that topic. The devaluing and contempt of animals in many socieities is projected onto woman and vice-versa and the problem doesn’t end in name calling but in the inhumane treatment of both.

Many of us are aware of the horrors that take place within the food industry, and that newly hatched chicks are just one species of animal that will be deprived of living happily ever after. So how about a coloring scene where a girl saves a bunch of male chicks from an egg hatchery where they are destined to be dumped? Or, since the book is about silencing girls, a picture of one speaking out against cruel animal practices like “debeaking”? Of course my ultimate favorite would be the dual message of protesting not only animal abuse, but a PETA poster depicting women in cages wearing yellow bikinis.

There is no said age range that the book supposedly targets, but since a reference to patriarchy was used, I’m figuring the target audience would also be old enough to start coloring connections between various types of oppressions. A Girls are not Chicks coloring book is a great place to start because while it’s true that girls are not chicks, chicks are not bitches and maybe, just maybe, men are not dogs.