Baby cards

http://www.americangreetings.com/ecards/display.pd?prodnum=3124858&path=64318

He's Perfect.
From the first precious hug
to the bond that continues to grow,
There's a beautiful connection-
that only a parent can know.

Feeding into the concept of gender roles even this card colored in blue with a baby actively holding on to a parents hand goes along with Willer's article. This card also follows along with boy cards often having a rhyme with "grow" and "know." I also see the child grasping the parent’s finger as a sign of strength and calling him "perfect" making him infallible with him always being right. If this was a girl card I could seeing them making the baby sleeping still, but since they intend this to further the male gender role this baby is awake and firmly holding the parent’s finger. From even before we are born are gender roles are ingrained into with something even as simple as a congratulations card for our birth. This early normalization is socially expected and reinforced all the time.

Baby Girl

I found a greeting card at my house with a pink bow and a rhinestone clip attached to the front. You can remove the bow from the card after you read it and it becomes a hair bow for the newborn. The writing says "So soft, so sweet, It's a Girl!"

I think this fits the reading for todays post perfectly. Gender sterotypes are learned behavior from the first day a child is born. There are gifts where a father either gets a pink bubble gum cigar, or a blue one, which pretty much determines that the newborn is either male or female, and should fit one of the gender roles. Willer talks about language and how it is used to reinforce these sterotypes. In this particular card, it uses soft and sweet, which wouldn't be used to describe a boy. Most boys are not taught to grow up being "soft" or "sweet."

Baby Greeting Card

http://www.americangreetings.com/ecards/display.pd?prodnum=3078744&path=64318

The above link is a baby greeting card that I found at americangreetings.com. The card is intended for a little girl. It is animated and shows a stork carrying a pink bundle through the clouds, accented in pink. The outline of the entire card is pink as well. After a few seconds of the stork flying through the clouds, words appear. The words are in pink and say,"It's a Girl! Congratulations on your sweet little bundle of joy."

I believe that this card fits Willer's argument about baby greeting cards. First, As Willer claims, cards are colored to reinforce gender stereotypes. The card that I found had very few colors on it, but the few colors that did appear were shades of pink. Second, the wording used on the card was very similar to the phrases that Willer claimed would appear on cards intended for girls. The card that I found used the words "sweet" and "little." These two phrases are often used to describe baby girls. According to Willer, "words such as loving, cute, and sweet are often used to describe female babies." She feels that these terms are used to reinforce the gendered characteristics of how boys and girls should behave.

Overall, I feel that the card that I analyzed fits Willer's argument about baby cards to the tee.

Response for Wednesday: Baby Cards

After reading Willer's study, go out and find (or look through old scrapbooks, or look online) for examples of baby shower/baby announcement cards. Choose one card you found, describe it (or post a link if it's online), and explain if it fits Willer's argument about baby greeting cards. If so, how? if not, how is this card different?

--efleitz