English 101
Not All Girls Like Dolls
Gender equality is still a problem in society today, although there are many attempts to try and establish men and women as equals after years of inequality in earlier decades. The original GoldieBlox commercial has an interesting approach to gender equality. The commercial takes a Beastie Boys’ song, Girls, and then changes up the lyrics and has a few young girls sing it. The girls express their feeling about how they feel forced to live stereotypical girly lives. They want choices and more than just girly pink toys. In the commercial, GoldieBlox highlights the truth that women are forced into a certain way of life, and are not expected to be able to do what men do.
First off, the song they chose to make a parody on is very anti gender equality. The Beastie Boys’ song they chose is literally titled “girls”, and it mainly focuses on the awful stereotypes of what women should do or what they are good for. They Beastie Boys sing, “Girls to do the dishes, girls to clean my room, girls to the laundry”. In the commercial the line, “and we are all more than princess maids”, completely opposed the Beastie Boys’ lyrics. The Beastie Boys’ version could easily offend women because it sends the message that girls are supposed to clean and do laundry and be the perfect housewife essentially. In today’s society women are not all housewives anymore, they want careers and a choice in what they do. They definitely chose this song for a reason other than the beat. They girls in the video are saying how they want gender equality and the song's original lyrics are very much against that, whether the Beastie Boys meant it as a joke or not.
As for the visual aspect of the commercial there is much to talk about. The video starts off with three young girls watching an extremely girly looking video, and all three girls look as if they are going to die from boredom. Then it shows the girls picking up a tool belt, a hardhat, and safety goggles. Typically these would all be toys that society would expect boys to be more interested in or want to play with. The main concept is these young girls engineering some contraption that clearly c kid their age could never build, but it's the idea that girls can build and be engineers as well. In the lyrics they talk about how all their toys are pink and pretty. They also say, “Cause all our toys look just the same, and we would like to use our brains”. In the video they show all the pink and pretty toys, but instead of being used like society would expect them to be, we see them all used as different parts of some elaborate engineering contraption. The girls are doing just what they say in the lyrics and using their brains to build this apparatus because they don’t want to be stuck playing with dolls and doing what people expect of them.
The commercial uses pathos to make the audience feel bad for the young girls. The fact that the girls are as young as they are, and already feel like society puts limits on what woman can do show the audience how big of a problem it is. Even young America notices, and feel there are problems with gender equality. It has much more of an effect on people's emotions when children notice the big issues rather than just older, more educated people. The commercial also uses ethos by giving the girls tool belts, safety glasses, and hardhats, and having the supposedly make the contraption we see. Again obviously those girls couldn't have created that themselves, but they doesn’t mean it’s not something they would be interested in doing when they’re older. The idea that these girls are doing things men usually would do gives credibility that girls can do those jobs as well.
The overall idea or message of the commercial is that women feel their opportunities are limited. The commercial is not saying women are better than men. It also is not saying that all girls want to do construction and hate Barbies. It is simply saying many women feel as if they are forced into living life a certain way, but some would like the opportunity to do what the guys are doing, or to be someone other than the stereotypical girly girl.
Resources
GoldieBlox. “Original Goldie Blox Commercial." YouTube. YouTube, 14 Apr. 2014. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.
Kirkpatrick, Ian. "BEASTIE BOYS LYRICS." Http://www.azlyrics.com. AZlyrics, 2000. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.
Ede, Lisa S. The Academic Writer: A Brief Guide. New York City, NY: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. Print.