The character of Abby Cadabby on Sesame Street was, as you may know, created by the marketing people. They wanted to draw in more girls interested in buying their stuff, and apparently a fairy princess was their solution to that. Which, whatever, she’s not the most annoying character on the show, so we cope. The thing, though, is that, when Abby goes to her little segregated fairy school, she’s one of three kids in her class, and the other two are boys. Even when they’re trying to appeal to girls, they still have to make sure boys aren’t put off by things’ being too girly.

This is a thing I’ve noticed a lot, when I watch TV with my kid. If there’s an odd number of characters, and the show isn’t explicitly for girls—and sometimes even when it is—the larger number of characters will always be male. Usually, if there are ethnic kids, they’re pretty scrupulous about splitting them between boys and girls, but if there’s only one ethnic kid, it’ll probably be a boy. It’s frankly depressing how often the look of the group seems to indicate that someone eventually had the thought, “Oh, crap, we should put a girl in here somewhere!”

Like Paw Patrol, a show I dislike for a lot of reasons. But first season of the show, all the pups, plus their human leader, were male. (At least as far as I can tell from the chronology of the show as pieced together by watching YouTube.) Then, they added Skye. Who is a secondary character, and who wears pink. Another girl was added; I don’t remember her name, but she wears purple. There are something like seven male characters, all of whom wear bold colours, and the two girls are in pastels, and particularly “girly” pastels at that. They added a human female, too; she also wears pink, and she’s in some kind of nurturing profession—it’s hard to tell what, from that show, because that’s more caring than I have—and has a cat. Which doesn’t talk, because cats don’t in that world.

Simon is very into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, as I’ve mentioned before, and while that isn’t a completely terrible show, its spinoff is. It’s called Minnie’s Bow-Toons and involves Minnie and Daisy owning a store where they make bows. All their problems are solved with bows. Many of their problems are somehow fashion related. Clarabelle Cow appears as a mechanic of some sort, but she’s also super clumsy—and has her own fashion crisis in one episode that’s solved with bows. They mention that they make bow ties, too, but almost every character to appear on the show, and certainly the recurring ones, are female. And they almost exclusively happen in the shop.

I don’t want my kids to grow up thinking that girls are only interesting when they’re part of boys’ adventures, and that’s what a lot of the TV options for them seem to suggest. Goodness knows I have my problems with the Disney Princess line, but at least those are girls’ stories. Sleeping Beauty gets a lot of grief for, well, sleeping through large amounts of her story, it’s true. On the other hand, we know from the bits where she’s awake that she’s a smart girl with a sly sense of humour. And, after all, Prince Philip doesn’t do a heck of a lot except get help from the good fairies; they’re older, but they’re female protagonists who shape much of the course of the story. A daughter of mine could do worse than grow up into Merryweather.

I’m trying not to write too many articles about children’s television, because I know that’s not the focus of this site, and that’s fine. But the thing about having a three-year-old is that I see quite a lot of the stuff, and there are some real problems with it that I don’t think get addressed in the Enormous Screen Time Debate. Yeah, I certainly could just limit his TV watching, and that would prevent him from seeing as much of this as he does. But it would still be out there, and it would still be shaping other people’s kids. Pretending it isn’t there doesn’t make the problem go away, after all.

Besides, what kids expect from the TV they see when they’re young isn’t too dissimilar from what they get when they’re watching movies when they’re older. I saw a study the other day that said that women speak something like 27% of all lines in the biggest Hollywood movies, and I’m surprised it’s that high, even in a year that brought us Moana and Rogue One and so forth. After all, Jyn was the only woman on that ship, even if Felicity Jones did get top billing.