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Guys & Dolls Hair House | Top Network
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Monster High: Ghouls Rule (2012)
The Monster High Ghouls Rule Draculaura doll is dressed up like a bat for Halloween. The doll features curly black and pink hair and dramatic eye make up which gives the vegan vampire a more edgy look. Large pink heart earrings descend ...
The Makeup Dolls - Airbursh Makeup and Hair Artistry: Bea...
We had such a fantastic trial with Jennifer and ooh honey, doesn't she look like a movie star!?!?!?! This ... The Makeup Dolls can be booked for bridal, engagement, boudoir, maternity and occasion makeup and hair. Please ...
SarahMacMiller: Hair Care tips for Reborn,Spring Filed do...
Well, it kinda depends what time or of day you're reading this, anyway tonight I am going to list some ways of how to care for your doll's hair. This will also be on the side of my blog, if you don't feel like having to look for this ...
Dolls Hairbrush: How To Care For Kanani's Hair!...
How To Care for Kanani's Hair! It's really easy. Just brush her hair and finger curl! TADA! By: Brittany "AG Dolls" "AG Doll Kanani's Hair" jellybean585 jellybean 585. Diposkan oleh admin di 03:56 · Kirimkan Ini lewat EmailBlogThis!Berbagi ke ...
If you have them inside - eklacom
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Blue Clover Kabukicho Hair Set | universal-doll.com...
Loving the staff's tutuHA look. My hairset girl working on my just out of the shower limp hair. The finished product. Teasing is hard work, but I don't like the glitch at the top. Selection of puri we took after the event and after it was ...
School Closings| villagegatenews.com
Hair Show in Atlanta this month, but after 15 years, McBride-Irby is now on to another adventure: Her own doll company. Last year, she ... So, I realized maybe it was because the doll didn't look like her, or didn't represent her.
Reborn Baby Dolls For Children | Twell wishes
Over the age of 5 should be the youngest determined to have a reborn as a doll, by this age it is easier explained to a child how to treat their belongings and look after them. There is no ... of the reborn is slim. Hair is microrooted using potential mohair and then glued inside the head, so really, as long as the hair is maintained and the child is taught how to treat their baby properly there undoubtedly is no presume why the reborn can't become the next big thing in toys.
Interview with Guys & Dolls Hair House | Top Makeup A...
I knew that I was wanting to do hairdressing from a young age I would chat to strangers and look at there hair and think what could I do differently, I was always playing with my hair and anybodies including my dads hair ...
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fbfanpost: What's your girl up to? --- ...
fbfanpost What's your girl up to? --- Click for more photos The wild ones Girls' night ...read more: - http://www.fbfanpost.com/2011... June 30 from FFDirect - Comment - Like auto-quote: Click for more photos The wild ones Girls' night out. Photo: Hobogestapo Photo: Hobogestapo They’re young, beautiful and think they’re invincible. On the face of it, today’s teenage girls are no different from those of previous generations. Except, writes Rachel Olding, that they’re sexually promiscuous and binge drinking like never before – and documenting much of it on Facebook It’s midnight on a Saturday and at King Street Wharf’s Cargo Bar, the night has soured. Sara*, a 17-year-old graduate of an exclusive north shore girls’ school, has been kicked out after tripping over a bar stool and nearly smashing a glass. Her friend Sophie, 18, has stormed out in a boozed-up sulk because the former Knox boy she’s casually sleeping with hasn’t appeared. Laura, 18, the third in this tight-knit circle, is the last one standing. Barely. Laura is so drunk that she can hardly talk but in a haze of double vodka cranberries she’s telling me how a night like this plays out. “My motive is to choose a guy and flirt with him,” she slurs. “If it’s someone I’m not interested in, then I’ll just sleep with them but if it’s someone I like, I’ll try to hold it from them for, like, four weeks.” We’re interrupted by a guy she knows who demands that Laura and I pash. “Have you two ever hooked up?” he smirks. “C’mon, hook up or get out.” I wear my disgust on my face but Laura ignores him and when a Pussycat Dolls song starts playing, jokingly gyrates up against some girlfriends on the dance floor. Faux lesbian kisses were cool in year 10, she says, but are a bit of a yawn now. Girls' night out. Photo: Hobogestapo Across the city, girls like Laura are out having fun. Or are they? In less than a generation, the binge-drinking epidemic, hyper-sexualised raunch culture and social media have collided, drastically changing young women’s behaviour and leaving them vulnerable to an array of physical- and mental-health issues like never before. “The problem is just enormous,” says Gordian Fulde, the director of emergency medicine at St Vincent’s Hospital, which treats about 100 alcohol- and drug-affected young women each weekend, a number that is rising each year. “Of course, there are an awful lot of girls sitting at home doing homework but when they let it rip, they really let it rip. And these days, if a girl goes out and gets trashed and vomits, maybe even ends up in emergency, they freak out at the time but you can see that they’re getting a badge of honour. The next day the photos will go up on Facebook.” Laura got her “badge of honour” in year 8 when she was 14 — the same year she lost her virginity. She was admitted to the Sydney Adventist Hospital in Wahroonga for alcohol poisoning and given only a 14 per cent chance of surviving the night. She giggles as she recalls drinking a bottle of vodka and a bottle of rum with Sara before passing out in a park. And the best thing? There was no hangover because the contents of her stomach had been pumped out through her nose. “I was fine! I was just really hungry,” she laughs. Her parents grounded her for three weeks but were too relieved to be angry and the incident seems to have had little effect on her drinking. “Once you start you don’t want to stop.” “I find that all my best nights out are when I’m hammered … I dunno, you just don’t worry about anything,” adds Sophie. Like the recent night when she drank half a bottle of vodka with orange juice before hitting Killara’s Greengate Hotel. After a bottle of wine there, she finished the night with Rob, the 18-year-old former Knox boy. He produced some ecstasy pills, which they crushed and snorted off a car bonnet before wandering in a euphoric haze until sunrise. “But I wouldn’t normally do that,” says Sophie. “I was just so pissed.” Line them up and Sophie, Laura and Sara are almost identical: all short skirts, bare, orange-tinged legs, smokily made-up eyes and long, dark hair that sees a straightening iron every day. They’re smart, with malleable dreams and a genuine, if at times tumultuous, love for each other. Just out of school, they tell me that their grade was a volatile one. One girl had sex with a guy during schoolies week only to find him in bed with two of her friends an hour later. Another overdosed on ecstasy at last year’s Mardi Gras. One friend has become a chronic weed smoker and can barely leave the house. And each of the three has had their own share of troubles. Laura’s businessman father died suddenly while overseas a few years ago, at which point Laura’s mother switched her and her elder sister to a new school and the family moved suburbs to start afresh. Now studying health science and nursing, Laura hopes one day to open a nursing home. Sophie, short and subtly stout, is one of five children – including one with a disability – and has had to shoulder more responsibilities at home than many girls her age. Perhaps that’s why she played up at school. Her first dalliance with drugs, at 17, involved a cocktail of marijuana, ecstasy and amyl nitrite. She’s studying education and working at an after-school childcare centre close to her family home in Sydney’s north. Sara, who lives with her family in the northern suburbs and is studying animal veterinary bioscience, tends to be over-shadowed by her friends’ man-eating ways but still hooks up with guys. Spending a month touring Sydney’s bars with the girls was an unfettered, depressing experience. I’m only five years older than them but their behaviour seems five times more outrageous than anything from my school days — just how much lower can the bar go? Theirs is a world in which giving a boy a blow job in the toilets is “pretty slutty” but you’ll shrug it off the next day. They “pre-load” — drinking a bottle of champagne while getting ready — then share another on the train on the way into the city. It’s all LOL, DTF (“down to f…”, the latest way of gauging whether a girl will “put out” or not), “wet pussy” shots and “f… buddies” (friends who have no-strings-attached sex). Waking up not knowing where you are is not unusual. Five nights out a week isn’t, either. With its concentrated areas of hedonism, the city has always been a magnet for teens — whether coming over the bridge, in from the west or along New South Head Road. “At [school] everyone was good friends with people in the years above; they’d tell us where to get fake IDs,” says Sophie. “You’d hear about these crazy times they’d have in the Cross. We just couldn’t wait to go there.” These days, venues go in and out of fashion as photos circulate on Facebook and the pack converges on the next new bar. Mondays are always Side Bar and Scubar, sweaty backpacker bars near Central Station. Wednesdays are for the Greengate, Thursdays are The Greenwood Hotel or Alberts in North Sydney. And a night out’s not cheap: Sara spends most of the money she earns from her two-days-a-week job at a veterinary surgery on going out — up to $100 on alcohol alone. “We’re doing what any girl our age would do.” “If you had a census of the number of girls who have hangovers on Sunday mornings, it’d be astronomical,” says Fulde, who sees the evidence for the alarming statistics every day. Fifteen- to 18-year-olds have the highest rate of hospital admissions for drunkenness of any age group; by the age of 18, one in three teens is drinking at a high-risk level compared to one in 10 two decades ago. For young women, the risk of being admitted to hospital with alcohol-related liver disease has steadily increased in the past decade. Paul Dillon, former spokesman for the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre and author of Teenagers, Alcohol and Drugs, last year visited the hospital bed of a 28-year-old Melbourne woman dying of alcohol-related liver cirrhosis. Eight times in the past year, Dillon has had to change the physiological information he includes in the talks he gives at schools as more is learnt about the impact of alcohol on the vulnerable, developing teenage brain. Once, he says, the common wisdom was that the greatest harm from alcohol came while people were drunk — judgment is impaired, the risk of accidents and sexual assaults is greater. “But now we’re learning more about some pretty significant brain-development stuff. I’ve been standing there [in schools] practically in tears, looking at the sea of beautiful young women who have no idea what they’re doing to themselves every weekend,” he says. “Yes, it’s just a phase for most of them but it’s a phase that is beginning much earlier — they’re patterns of drinking we’ve never seen before.” The night I meet the girls at Cargo Bar, Laura ends up flirting with Tom, 18, a check-shirt-wearing north shore lad. He is pushing her to go back to his parents’ place and she’s finding it tough to resist. She knows he has slept with a friend’s 14-year-old sister but that doesn’t faze her. The girls describe their attitude to sex as “non-judgmental”. Laura’s sexual exploits raised some eyebrows when, in year 10, she moved from her upper north shore school (“where every girl had slept with, like, five guys”) to another closer to the city (“like, only two girls in the year had had sex”). Young Australian women are now more likely than their male counterparts to have had sex – more than 61 per cent of year 12 girls compared to 44 per cent of year 12 boys, according to a report published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health last year. The report also found that the number of year 12 girls who reported having had sex with three or more partners had doubled — to 27 per cent in the decade to 2008 — and pointed to the effects of drugs or alcohol as a reason. Meanwhile, sexually transmitted diseases remain “a major public health concern”, according to a 2007 report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Between 2001 and 2005, rates of chlamydia in females aged 12 to 24 almost doubled. And for many young women, the sex seems less about pleasure than what people will think of them. “If you went home with a guy and didn’t sleep with him, he’ll tell all his friends what a bitch you are but if you sleep with him, he might be like, ‘Oh, what a slut,’ ” says Sophie. “I’d prefer to sleep with him so the guy would be happy rather than have him tell everyone I was a bitch. I don’t feel used. It’s just a normal thing.” Adds Sara: “It’s just sex; to us it doesn’t mean anything.” Being drunk makes it that little bit harder to resist, the girls say. Little wonder then that more than a third of sexually active young women say they have had unwanted sex. The only time I see Sophie lose her naughty smile is when she tells me that she has been pressured into sex “heaps of times”. “The number one story I hear from women is that they’re out at a party or a club and they’ll be flirting with a boy and having a good time and then they’ll go to a second location and start making out. All of a sudden the boy wants more,” says Nina Funnell, a former UNSW researcher looking at young people and their relationship to technology and sex. “The girl tends to go stiff and silent and that’s her way of saying, ‘Slow down’ … I say to guys, ‘She never said yes; she also never said no. The point is, you never asked.’ ” When asked about the finer points of a drunken hook-up, Sophie’s “friend” Rob says he has never given the issue any thought. “The sex just sort of happens, I guess,” he says. “If I go out with the guys, then it’s definitely all about hooking up but I try to treat [the girls] nicely. I’ve got friends who wouldn’t even bother putting in the effort.” The day after the night before, Laura tells me that she summoned up her last shred of common sense and went home without Tom. Nevertheless, photos of the girls pop up on Facebook a few days later – a blurry, dislocated, messy night of drinking, dancing and smoking captured in more detail than the girls can remember. “When I used to go out, the next day we would always debrief on the night’s events over the phone,” says Nina Funnell. “What’s happening now is that young people are doing a public debrief of the previous night’s events. For some, the photos on Facebook are even more important than enjoying the night itself.” Funnell recalls one girl telling her that she preferred to have a fake tan that looked hideously orange in person because it looked good in the photos on Facebook. A night’s highlight is to be snapped by the ever-present party photographer, a concept imported from New York where hipsters with cameras swim through nightclubs looking for anyone wild or sexy enough to immortalise on a trendy blog. These shots usually end up resembling soft-core porn – girl-on-girl action, legs spread — the racier the better. “If you like to pose, Sydney is the perfect city for you,” says Alex Singh, 27, who is behind Hobogestapo, a five-year-old collective of photographers who bounce between packed clubs and parties each week. It started as a way to get free drinks and climb the hierarchy of clubland. But in a world in which everyone wants to be famous, the photographers now have a cache of groupies. “As soon as the camera is pointed, they turn into different people,” says Hobogestapo snapper Pat Stevenson, 26. “They’re way more exhibitionist, especially when they’re wasted.” Sociologists and commentators lament the “pornification” of society and the “sexualisation” of women at younger and younger ages. “I mourn for the women of today,” says author and social commentator Melinda Tankard Reist. “We need well-rounded citizens and girls aren’t getting that opportunity. They think they’ll attract success and attention through sexual allure.” Sydney feminist and executive Sandra Yates offers an even harsher assessment. “They’ll be poor white trash in another decade,” she says. “Because while they’re out partying, their more studious, stronger-minded counterparts are sailing past them.” Even if these girls can make it through their wild years without physical-health issues, they still are vulnerable to an array of mental-health problems. Research indicates that high levels of alcohol consumption in adolescence lead to higher rates of depression and anxiety in adulthood. And at a basic level of self-worth, they’re not doing themselves any favours. “It makes for a fragile self-esteem if you derive self-worth from preening and … brief encounters on a dance floor with men who only admire you for your sexuality,” says UTS psychologist Louise Remond, who writes the Dolly Doctor column. The question is, where are the parents in all this craziness? The answer is as complex as the problem. Laura says her mother’s philosophy was “the day I turned 18, I could do what I want”. Sara and Sophie keep some information from their parents. “My mum knows how much I drink but I would never tell her about sleeping with guys,” says Sara. “And she doesn’t know I’ve done pills before.” “To look at young women’s drinking, we’ve got to look at our own drinking,” says Paul Dillon, who worries that parents’ sense of invulnerability is similar to their daughters’. And perhaps parents — the main source of alcohol for teenagers — need to learn to say “no”. Sara says her mother occasionally lectures her about binge drinking but she can’t really see there’s a problem. As the sun comes up after another debauched night, she declares it the best night ever. “Sometimes I don’t understand what all the fuss is about,” she says, lighting up a cigarette. “Of course you’re gonna go out and drink and do a few stupid things when you’re young but who doesn’t?” * Names in this story have been changed. Photos by Hobogestapo the (sydney) magazine is free with Thursday's Sydney Morning Herald - fbfanpost
moni - Slo: Post 9.8 Part 3
Il Sogno: moni - Slo Post 9.8 Part 3 August 9, 2010 - Comment - Like *-* - Mary 559 more comments should i click on it - Mary NEW POST! - Sticks + Stones
moni - Slo: Post 13.5
Il Sogno: moni - Slo Post 13.5 May 12, 2010 - Comment - Like 1st! - Sticks + Stones 539 more comments bye shane - poppy - GBR NEW POST! - moni - Slo
Funny Pictures of Trees, Beauty of Entertainment Circles ...
TV0 Fun Funny Pictures of Trees, Beauty of Entertainment Circles in China, Triple Fail and more - http://2leep.com/news... November 23 from 2leep.com latest links - Comment - Like Funny Pictures of Trees The collection of trees' pics more... Beauty of Entertainment Circles in China Some photos of beautiful China girl more... Triple Fail Haha, what a fail ... more... Crocheted Handmade Animals & Dolls for Kids While there are many dolls for kids from a plastic in classic retail shops, many of them are potentionally treats. more... Winter Night From Val Gardena Very beautiful and amazing wallpaper! more... Strategies for Your Beauty Routine Your hair, skin, and nails need a break as much as you do. Here, tips on how to cut back on primping to let your natural beauty shine more... Barack Obama?s 1 Trillion Dollar Bill Seems like some thing he would try and pass off as real more... The Most Beautiful Female Robots In The Future A gynoid is a humanoid robot designed to look like a human female, as compared to an android modeled after a male. more... Top 3 Detox Diets Prescribed By Dietitians ? Body Detoxification Women are going crazy with the latest detox diets... - pb:
moni - Slo: VISTO PARTY 3!
Il Sogno: moni - Slo VISTO PARTY 3! April 8, 2010 - Comment - Like Kiwi - Persona non grata liked this Finally the first one on a post!! - BAM / Bugsy2B - USA 1390 more comments Thanks meryn im all about what is posted on ae - nicky grass-Phil Hey everyone!! Good morning... just to let you know how addicted this is! I'm at the airport waiting and i'm checking the updates etc etc. a BIG THANKS to Meryn and aet!! :D and everyone else who translated!! - Elle Bbi - Malta
Funny Pictures of Trees, Beauty of Entertainment Circles ...
2leep Funny Pictures of Trees, Beauty of Entertainment Circles in China, Triple Fail and more - http://2leep.com/news... November 23 from 2leep.com latest links - Comment - Like Funny Pictures of Trees The collection of trees' pics more... Beauty of Entertainment Circles in China Some photos of beautiful China girl more... Triple Fail Haha, what a fail ... more... Crocheted Handmade Animals & Dolls for Kids While there are many dolls for kids from a plastic in classic retail shops, many of them are potentionally treats. more... Winter Night From Val Gardena Very beautiful and amazing wallpaper! more... Strategies for Your Beauty Routine Your hair, skin, and nails need a break as much as you do. Here, tips on how to cut back on primping to let your natural beauty shine more... Barack Obama?s 1 Trillion Dollar Bill Seems like some thing he would try and pass off as real more... The Most Beautiful Female Robots In The Future A gynoid is a humanoid robot designed to look like a human female, as compared to an android modeled after a male. more... Top 3 Detox Diets Prescribed By Dietitians ? Body Detoxification Women are going crazy with the latest detox diets... - scott willeke
Winckel: Pink v blue - are children born with gender pref...
Winckel Pink v blue - are children born with gender preferences? - http://www.guardian.co.uk/politic... December 14 from Bookmarklet - Comment - Like Eliza Piticari, Amir and MissGordi liked this "The Times and FT report today (£) that Hamleys, is ditching its separate floors for boys and girls along with their pink and blue signs and replacing them with signs that simply state the types of toys sold. The Times story says: Hamleys, the country's most famous toy store, has abandoned its traditional separate floors for boys and girls after a campaign on Twitter accused it of operating "gender apartheid". New signs in the store now state what type of toys are sold on each floor, rather than suggesting who should play with them. The campaign was started by Laura Nelson, a political blogger who writes under the name "Delilah" and who trained as a neuroscientist. She believes that young children's development can be limited if they play with only one sort of toy. She was horrified by the "sea of pink" on the girls' floor at Hamleys, which had fluffy animals, cookery sets and hair and beauty-related toys including a beauty salon called "Tantrum". The boys' department was all action and adventure, with cars, spaceships, science sets and construction toys. Hamleys did not admit that the dumping of the old signs had anything to do with the campaign, saying the move was entirely coincidental and designed to "improve customer flow". When I tweeted the link to the story this morning the responses ranged from "hurrah!" to "ridiculous". But what is the science behind gender and toys? Do boys really prefer blue and girls pink? Would girls always opt for Sylvanian Families over Power Rangers given the choice? Is there evidence for or against the "gender apartheid"? Pink v blue Kat Arney, a science journalist who works for Cancer Research UK, investigated the gender of colour in this Radio 4 documentary earlier this year, Fighting the Power of Pink. Her post for the Guardian here provides a brilliant summary of the scientific evidence. Arney points us towards this 2007 research which showed that in general when asked women tend to identify redder colours as their favourite – a finding reported widely as proof that women prefer pink. In that study Professor Anya Hurlbert from Newcastle University suggested that women might prefer pink as a legacy of their fruit gathering days when the preference helped them identify the berries from the foliage – an idea thoroughly disputed by the Guardian columnist Ben Goldacre here. Interestingly Goldacre quotes in the same piece newspaper articles from the earlier part of the 20th century in which mothers were encouraged to dress their boys in pink and girls in blue, proof he says that clothing tastes change over time. He writes: Back in the days when ladies had a home journal (in 1918) the Ladies' Home Journal wrote: "There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger colour is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." The Sunday Sentinel in 1914 told American mothers: "If you like the colour note on the little one's garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention." The problem both Goldacre and Arney point out is that studies such as the Newcastle one don't settle the nature v nurture arguments because they ask adults. Are girls born liking pink or are they in some way told to? The study that asked the youngest children, 120 aged under two, that Arney could identify was conducted by Professor Melissa Hines at Cambridge University and it concluded that if you ask children under the age of two, there is no colour preference, with both sexes preferring pinker tones and both also prefer rounder shapes. It concludes: The sex similarities in infants' preferences for colours and shapes suggest that any subsequent sex differences in these preferences may arise from socialisation or cognitive gender development rather than inborn factors. Dolls v cars Hines's research, the most up to date, did however identify a gendered divide in the preference for toys. Although not a strict rule, boys were more likely to look at cars and girls at dolls. Previous studies have found that this not only relates to the gender of children but their exposure to androgen ("male" hormones) in the womb. This American research even showed that there is a similar gendered preference for toys in monkeys leading some to conclude that children are born with gendered tastes in toys. However, Hines's research also identified that at the age of 12 months, boys and girls' preference for dolls was similar (57.2% of girls looked at the dolls compared with 56.4% of boys). By 24 months boys had shifted towards the car image (52.7% of girls and 47.9% of boys looked at the doll first). This, Hines suggests, adds evidence to the argument that part of toy taste is acquired rather innate. She writes: The current study adds to growing evidence that infants younger than two years of age display sex-typed toy preferences, with boys showing more interest than girls do in cars, and girls showing more interest than boys do in dolls. Within sex analyses found that the female preference for dolls over cars begins as early as 12 months of age, whereas boys of this age also prefer dolls to cars. The male preference for cars over dolls, or avoidance of dolls, emerges later, suggesting that socialisation or cognitive development, rather than inborn factors, causes the male avoidance of feminine toys. I think those figures from the Hines study are also interesting because they are not conclusive – at the age of two the gender divide is still not far off 50/50 - hardly figures to support an entire retail industry's marketing tactics. I'm going to talk to some of the researchers in this area but does anyone have any other evidence to add to this? Get in touch below the line, email your me at polly.curtis@guardian.co.uk or tweet @pollycurtis. 12.23pm: Dr Qazi Rahman, a psychologist who runs the psychology programme at Queen Mary University of London (which he describes as "strongly biological in its analysis of all aspects of human nature"), has written in with what is a pretty neat summary of the evidence on colour and toy preference. He reaches a similar conclusion to Hines: I think the literature is erring on the side of no robust sex differences in either adults or children (by "robust" I mean the same finding is replicable) ... However, there are sex differences in other types of cognitive abilities and psychological behaviours like engaging in rough-and-tumble play, certain types of spatial skills (but not all), and play preferences for objects with moving parts versus those that indicate some kind of individual (eg crudely - trucks versus dolls). Some say the earliest you can measure these abilities is in almost newly born infants, others say the tests only work at about two years of age and so on. So developing good psychological tests to use in youngsters might be a limitation in some of the science. I think a good test of these preferences is to examine them in kids of are gender nonconforming at a young age compared to children who are gender conforming. We know that gay men report have strong gender-nonconforming play interests as children. Rahman says that while the evidence is pretty conclusive on colour preferences, he thinks it is more strongly weighted in favour of there being some kind of innate preference for certain toys and games amongst boys. In this Rahman disagrees with the psychologist Cordelia Fine, who argues in her book that almost all aspects of gender is acquired. I've had several messages form readers below the line and by email recommending her book, Delusions of Gender. My colleague Amelia Hill summarised it very well here last year. I've emailed Fine (in Australia) and am hoping I'll be able to speak with her about our specific question later. I've also been recommended Pink Brain, Blue Brain, by the American neuroscientist Lise Eliot. She argues that any small differences between girls and boys are amplified in their socialisation and hard-wired into their brains this way. This is from the summary on her website: In the past decade, we've heard a lot about the innate differences between males and females. So we've come to accept that boys can't focus in a classroom and girls are obsessed with relationships: "That's just the way they're built." In Pink Brain, Blue Brain, neuroscientist Lise Eliot turns that thinking on its head. Calling on years of exhaustive research and her own work in the field of neuroplasticity, Eliot argues that infant brains are so malleable that small differences at birth become amplified over time, as parents, teachers, peers — and the culture at large — unwittingly reinforce gender stereotypes. Children themselves exacerbate the differences by playing to their modest strengths. They constantly exercise those "ball-throwing" or "doll-cuddling" circuits, rarely straying from their comfort zones. There's a fantastic debate going on below the line with plenty of suggestions of good evidence for me to follow. There are two areas I want to follow and wonder if anyone can help find evidence of: have there been international comparisons that might prove, or not, that colour preferences are culturally determined? Can anyone recommend people - academics of people who work in marketing - who can talk to me about how toy companies market to children? 1.35pm: In the nature v nurture argument about children's preferences for different toys, research in monkeys (mentioned above) has bolstered those who believe we're born with feminine or masculine preferences and mystified sceptics. American researchers in this paper (pdf), showed that monkeys have similar instincts to those observed in small children. The abstract of paper says: We compared the interactions of 34 rhesus monkeys, living within a 135 monkey troop, with human wheeled toys and plush toys. Male monkeys, like boys, showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys, while female monkeys, like girls, showed greater variability in preferences. Thus, the magnitude of preference for wheeled over plush toys differed significantly between males and females. The similarities to human findings demonstrate that such preferences can develop without explicit gendered socialisation. We offer the hypothesis that toy preferences reflect hormonally influenced behavioural and cognitive biases which are sculpted by social processes into the sex differences seen in monkeys and humans. Dr Stuart Basten, from the department of social policy and intervention at the University of Oxford has just sent in his paper analysing toy preference and gender, which reaches a similar conclusion (pdf). As in most of the working papers in the series, the over-riding conclusion of this piece is that both biological and social processes play a crucial role in shaping children's interactions with toys which, in turn, has been found to significantly impact upon an individual's gendered scheme and progression. Basten also includes this picture from the monkey study, which I quite like. Monkeys playing with toys in 2009 Hines study 2.16pm: I asked earlier whether anyone knew of any international evidence that different boys and girls in different cultures have different tastes in colours and toys. I was interested because I'm always struck when I visit my daughter's cousins in Sweden that children's clothing in particular is much less gendered than in England. Babies tend to wear more uni-sex bright patterns than pale pink and blues. Dr Rahman (see above) came back with this small study which showed differences between British born and Chinese born men and women. It says: We find robust sex differences in hue preference: the average female strongly prefers pinks and lilacs, while the average male has less marked preferences; both 'dislike' yellow - greens. These differences are more marked for the UK-born sub-sample (36 females; 27 males) than for the China-born one (18 females; 19 males). UK males prefer darker and less saturated colours, while UK females prefer brighter and more saturated colours. In the China-born sub-sample, both sexes prefer brighter colours, and the males prefer more saturated colours. (Unsaturated colours are "pure" colours; for example, an unsaturated red would be a stop sign and a saturated one might be a burgundy.) The study is small, and the Chinese born cohort were actually students at British universities, so the study is perhaps a bit limited. But it does suggest that there are cultural differences between countries as well as over time (earlier we mentioned the fact that in the early 20th century the blue/pink trend was reversed). 2.53pm: I've not been able to make contact with Cordelia Fine, who wrote the book Delusions of Gender, which so many of you have recommended to me via Twitter, email and below the line. From what I can see she didn't specifically look at the issues of colour and toy choice, but more broadly at arguments that men and women are hardwired to have different personality traits. According to the various reviews and interviews with her about the book, she systematically picks apart the existing science about the brain to dispel what she believes is a growing assumption that men and women are wired differently from birth. She argues that almost all of our characteristics are learnt. She said in an interview with the Guardian last year: There are sex differences in the brain. There are also large sex differences in who does what and who achieves what. It would make sense if these facts were connected in some way, and perhaps they are. But when we follow the trail of contemporary science we discover a surprising number of gaps, assumptions, inconsistencies, poor methodologies and leaps of faith. The article went on: Fine agrees that there are differences between men and women's brains. The male brain is, on average, about 8% larger. A small group of cells in the hypothalamus is bigger in men. However, "it's not known what this little group of cells does," she says. "It may have a physiological rather than psychological function." As for other claimed differences, she argues, there might be "engineering" reasons for larger brains to be arranged differently from smaller brains. She also points out that, because of the brain's plasticity in responding to the world around it, differences in male and female brains can't just be chalked up to congenital biological differences. "The circuits of your brain are a product of your physical, social and cultural environment, your behaviour and your thoughts," she says. "Gender as a social phenomenon is part of our neural circuitry." 3.09pm: Verdict There is no scientific evidence that boys prefer blue and girls prefer pink. Up until the early 20th century the trend was the opposite and baby boys were dressed in pink and girls in blue. There are also some - small - studies suggesting that adults of different cultures have different tastes in colours. It's clear that colour preference is learnt rather than innate. There is some evidence that boys are in some way hardwired to express an early interest in "rough and tumble" games and toys with moving parts and girls to prefer dolls and role-play games, but this is not conclusive because the studies are often in babies and small toddlers and therefore inevitably difficult to analyse. The differences that have been found are also often not very big. At two years, for example, 52.7% of girls in one study chose to look at a dolls face over a car, compared with 47.9%; not a huge variation. Those who argue that there is some sort of genetic or hormonal trigger that sets a gender divide in toy preference cite studies that show that girls who are overexposed to male hormones in the womb are more likely to like "boys' toys" and others that show monkeys of different sexes following similar patterns to children. This area is fiercely contested. However, even those who argue that there are innate factors emphasis that these are small and amplified by the characteristics children acquire from birth, which in turn differentiate and shape children's brains so that boys' and girls' brains might well look different. 3.34pm: We haven't in this blog been able to question any of the marketing techniques that might exploit - or some suggest help create - social norms about colour and choices in toys. My colleague Jon Henley wrote a very good feature on this subject in 2009, in which he was able to look more at the marketing practices. It includes the first reference that I can find in this context to the "gender apartheid" in children's toys. It was adopted by Ed Mayo of Co-operatives UK, former head of the National Consumer Council and co-author of Consumer Kids: How Big Business Is Grooming Our Children for Profit. Mayo was quoted as saying: It's staggering, the extent to which parents are now having to trade off their own values against the commercial interest of companies. Today's marketing assigns simple and very separate roles to boys and girls, and whips up peer pressure to police the difference. The feature goes on: All this happened, Mayo argues, "with the emergence of a children's market, and the need to differentiate between boys and girls: the need to make more money, basically. This isn't something that's genetically hard-wired, it's culturally created, and therefore it should be open to question." The children's market has now reached the stage, he says, where "it's no exaggeration to talk of a gender apartheid." My colleague Jane Martinson, the Guardian's women's editor, has also blogged on this here pointing out the Early Learning Centre doctor's costume labelled as being for boys on the Ocado website. Earlier this year the government's Bailey review of the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood looked briefly at the issue of gender stereotyping. The full report (pdf) says that gender stereotyping was raised regularly as a concern among parents. It draws on previous government research which found "no strong evidence that gender stereotyping in marketing or products influences children's behaviour significantly, relative to other factors" and concludes that retailers are simply responding to demand: There is a popularly held view that girls and boys play with stereotypical toys because they learn to see this as appropriate for their sex. This is contested territory: others argue there is greater evidence now of there being innate gender differences so that a desire to play with one kind of toy over another is at least as much about biological drivers as with socialisation and has to do with a normal, healthy development of gender identity (Buckingham, Willett, Bragg and Russell, 2010). What is not in doubt is that the commercial world provides plenty of reinforcement of gender stereotypes and is likely to do so for as long as there is customer demand. It's worth reading this blog (scroll down to the entry Sexualisation and Gender stereotyping? One response to the Bailey review) by Meg Barker, an Open University psychologist, in which she questions both this conclusion and the review's decision to prioritise the sexualisation of children's merchandising over the whole issue of gender despite both being raised as a concern of parents. Thanks to @AlisonAfra for recommending this blog via twitter. Below the line @trefusis makes the case that the gender factor helps expand the children's market: Of course, if we adhere to gender categories with toys and colour of accessories, then parents whose second child is a different gender from the first can be sold a whole new set of things. It makes business sense for shops to promote gender apartheid - in fact, the more difficult it is to find neutral things, the better. They don't want us to be able to hand things down. I think the whole role of marketing to children, including the claims made in the Bailey report, might be a good subject for Reality check to return to." - Winckel
moni - Slo: Post 3.6
Il Sogno: moni - Slo Post 3.6 June 2, 2010 - Comment - Like morning dreamers - moni - Slo 350 more comments NEW POST! - moni - Slo LMAO@ Shane. Don't! Those crazy girls should have invested in a tomtom for Vero instead of a stupid carriage ride. - omgwtf - GBR
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