January 6th, 2007
by
Ide Cyan
A special introductory episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures recently aired in the UK (…some foreign fans saw it by means of their time/space visualiser, ahem…). The Sarah Jane Adventures is a spin-off of Doctor Who, which — if you haven’t heard of it — is a long-running science fiction TV series about an alien, called the Doctor, who travels through time and space, usually with a human companion by his side, having all sorts of adventures.
In this case, the spin-off stars a former companion, Sarah Jane Smith, who was featured in the series during the 1970s, and is played by the same actress, Elisabeth Sladen, in a more children-oriented series than the current incarnation of Doctor Who. (Ironically, considering that the original Doctor Who was already aimed at children, being a family-friendly science fiction programme. However, the new series has sought to rally older viewers — with mixed results. That’s a topic for another entry, however.)
Now, I had a lot of issues concerning the Sarah Jane Adventures special that aired, entitled “Invasion of the Bane”, which was co-written by Russell T. Davies (the showrunner for the current Doctor Who, and an executive producer of this special) and Gareth Roberts. (I really didn’t like it, and it did things in terms of characterisation that were offensive, but which would require more contextual knowledge of the lead character than I can readily offer.)
But there’s only one that I’d like to focus on in this entry, and I’ll put it behind a cut for the spoiler-sensitive, and because I intend to illustrate my point.
In Doctor Who, the Doctor, in the original series and in the new series, has made use of a device called a Sonic Screwdriver. It’s nominally a simple screwdriver that works by sonic waves (the 1969 story, “The War Games”, shows this use of it), but it has become an all-purpose tool, that the then-showrunners decided to destroy within series in the 1980s, because it had become too convenient.
In the new series, resurrected in 2005 by Russell T. Davies, the Sonic Screwdriver has returned in force, becoming for all intents and purposes a kind of magic wand that the Doctor uses to perform tasks as diverse as unlocking a door, committing ATM fraud, and conducting medical scans. It has thousands of possible settings, but its use is not limited to the Doctor himself: on occasion, he lends it to his human companion, Rose, instructing her in its use, as required by the circumstances.
Thus, because male and female characters use it, it is shown as ungendered, and in practice, it is simply a (very convenient and technologically advanced) tool.
In The Sarah Jane Adventures, Sarah Jane has a Sonic Lipstick.
While the task performed by Sarah Jane using this Sonic Lipstick is similar to the uses the Doctor has put his Sonic Screwdriver to — she uses it to open a locked door — their appearances are very different.
How is a lipstick like a screwdriver?
One is a cosmetic. The other is a tool. They have very different uses. Though males and females may both make use of screwdrivers and lipstick, the stereotypical attribution of one to males and the other to females has given them gendered connotations, which, needless to say, link lipstick to femininity.
But these are science-fictional sonic devices, not the typical screwdrivers and lipsticks. The Sonic Screwdriver as itself was unmarked, ungendered. But the Sonic Screwdriver introduced as a lipstick is marked. Qualified. It is not a lipstick by function. Because the form does not follow from the function, it need not have been that form. It is qualified by its presentation in the form of an object that already carries with it extremely strong gendered connotations.
The attribution of the marked form to a female character creates a social division between the sexes, creates a gender attribute, and situates the masculine as the default (because it is unmarked). The pre-existing gender connotations of the form, which align with the identity of the user as female, multiply the marked femininity of the Sonic Lipstick, and extends usage stereotypes to a previously neutral tool, the Sonic Screwdriver. This promotes and reinforces sex-role divisions and conformity to gender differences. And it reflects on the character, discriminating against her, making her conform to gender stereotypes.
In a word, it’s sexist.
The defense against that which I have already seen online from other viewers was that the “lipstick” format must serve as camouflage, to prevent the detection of this alien technology among Sarah Jane’s possessions, if her handbag were searched.
But, again, I ask: why lipstick?
Sarah Jane Smith, in her original role as a Doctor Who companion, was a feminist-identified journalist. An investigative reporter. (And it is again as a reporter that she appeared in “School Reunion”, a new series Doctor Who episode that aired in 2006. In which she had no alien gadgets at all, except the robotic dog K-9, who was more of a pet and a character in his own right.)
Why is she defined, here, by giving her sonic “screwdriver” such a gendered form of camouflage as lipstick? Why not a pen? Something connected to her profession? Something that doesn’t have to be uncapped in times of emergency?
Why give a woman a Sonic Lipstick on a series aimed at children, whose other principal character was a young girl?
I don’t find it cute. At all. I find it insulting, and insidious.
Who looks at a lipstick and thinks, “this could be a little more sonic”?
The BBC has already marketed the Sonic Screwdriver as a product derived from the Doctor Who TV series. (I own one. It doubles as a pen, with the option to use UV ink to write secret messages to be decoded using the flashlight on the other end.)
Will they be marketing Sonic Lipsticks to little girls?
Somehow, I can’t see them pushing this on little boys.
Little boys will get to continue to emulate the Doctor, gadgets unmodified for human guys’ guise, while little girls now have their own, very special, very sexist, Sonic Lipstick aimed at them. On television, if not in retail yet.
It’s the kind of gross stereotyping Sarah Jane Smith herself should be exposing as an alien(ating) conspiracy, and smart little girls everywhere refusing to play along with.
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Ide Cyan at
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Filed under TV & Film, assorted, gender in marketing | Comments (25)
I’ll be linking this post at my own blog, thanks! This post is a really excellent primer on how to recognise gendered McGuffins within media. It’s right up there with magical earrings and compacts and so on.
Heh. I identified it as ‘sonic lipstick’ before she told anyone what the name of it was. I was thinking for awhile that it was cool the series stars a middle-aged woman and there was another lead woman she was fighting against in that episode. I’m fine if she’s all lonely and isolated because of her past experiences and what she’s trying to do now.
But then she adopts this special kid like it’s a lifelong dream that’s gone unfulfilled. The end of the episode annoyed me. Her isolation ending because of this group of kids.
And on another note, is K9 going to be AWOL for most of this series? Poor tin dog.
Torchwood is better. Everyone watch Torchwood!
Wow, I just added “gendered McGuffins” to my vocabulary. Awesome. They are everywhere and they are certainly annoying. Thanks Ide and Madeline!
For every tough female character who beats someone up with her high heels… I wish there were 100 who were not wearing high heels in the first place because they expect to be beating someone up, because they’re tough fighter cops or superheroes or whatever! Definitely add the “high heel kickbox to the face” move to the list of annoying and way overused.
Now if only we could add IN a gendered mcguffins for men — a magic lasso cock ring or something. Hahahah! Did I say that out loud?
A McGuffin is not a tool. It’s an object whose nature is unimportant, except inasmuch as it drives the actions of the characters in a story. The secret ingredient in BubbleShock, or BubbleShock itself, would be much closer to the McGuffin for the “Invasion of the Bane” special, for instance, than Sarah Jane’s sonic lipstick, which is just a tool she uses to gain access to the BubbleShock factory.
You might talk about gendered accessories, or gadgets, or plot devices (more broadly), instead. (A McGuffin is a plot device, but not all plot devices are McGuffins…) Although the word McGuffin is catchier, so it would be neat to come up with a similarly catchy term encompassing this phenomenon, to avoid confusion with the extant use of the term McGuffin.
And don’t feel too sorry for K-9. He has his own, Sarah Jane-less spin-off in the works.
Here’s the link to info about the K-9 spin-off, since I made a typo in the previous comment & it didn’t show up there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-9_Adventures
Ide, what do you think would be a good fsfwiki article on this? Gendered plot devices? I’ll create but if you (or other readers) think of a better way to describe this feel free to move / rename it appropriately.
I added some examples of gendered plot devices to the entry you created, but I vote to divert discussion about the entry itself to the entry’s talk page.
Gendered plot devices in general are innumerably vast, anyhow, in that anything that has to do with plot (…that has people in it, but not even necessarily) most likely will be gendered. It’s the gendering process I find — I want to say more enlightening, but I’ll settle for chewier.
[...] Also at Feminist SF – The Blog!, Ide Cyan was not happy about the gendering of tools in The Sarah Jane Adventures: [...]
I don’t know about you, but people borrow my pen all the time and then don’t return it.
You and I, outside of her fictional world, can debate marketing strategies, but we would be insulting the character Sarah Jane if we did not acknowledge that this is indeed a clever disguise that she’s thought up. She deserves credit not criticism. Because the form – does not follow the fuction yet is personal, compact, easy to concel, non-threatening and unremarkable in our society. Not much else is.
If out here it is /marketed/ as the Barbie-type version of the sonic screwdriver then that is sexist. If it is merely ‘Sarah Jane’s sonic screwdriver’ then it is not.
I came across this site linked from livejournal doctor who’s group. And i have to say, i disagree. Its a tiny, little, bit sexist, at a push. But that’s all. Because what you’re not taking into account is the situation of the character – she is a detective, trying to remain inconspicous and ‘under the radar’. She has to carry the sonic whateveritis everywhere with her, so it must be something she would normally carry. A big lump of metal like the screwdriver would attract attnetion, i should imagine. She probably normally carries a lipstick (most women i know do), and therefore it is perfectly reasonable that it would be disguised as such. It could have been a pen. Or, i’ve heard jokingly suggested, a tampon. But for the sake of a children’s light-hearted entertainment show, i personally think the lipstick is fine.
I say that I have to agree with Kirsty. I don’t find the idea of the sonic lipstick sexist at all – it’s an innocent, everyday thing that a typical woman carries around with her; because of this, it certainly does not demean her character in any way.
I tried to rationalize the sonic lipstick with the need for camouflage — after all, the Doctor doesn’t really need to disguise his stuff, but SJ does — but it’s a bit silly. Lipstick tubes are notorious for being used as secret containers, and anyone who checked it would immediately see that it wasn’t a real lipstick. It would have been more useful to have it camouflaged as a pocket torch, or if you really need to motivate why you’d want to keep it with you at all times, a key ring attachment — who would want to give up their house keys to anyone?
Besides, a sonic screwdriver is a screwdriver. It has a use for the sonic effect. What is a sonic lipstick? It’s silly. It’s not even a sonic screwdriver in disguise. It’s a sonic whatever, made to look girly.
OK, it’s a kiddie show. They probably thought it should be a fun, girly kind of James Bond type camouflaged gadget — but why? Why need to make it girly? So the male audience doesn’t have to feel threatened? Or so the kids won’t get the idea that a female hero should go outside the feminine role norm just because she is a hero? I remember being a girl and hating that all female heroes with very few exceptions had to be so quaintly feminine and use silly girly accessories just because they were female, and not cool, practical things like the guys. Like wearing high heels when chasing bad guys (or running away from them). Silly. And that was some thirty-odd years ago. Times haven’t really changed all that much.
Why do people assume make-up = evil? What is wrong with make-up? Many women, including feminists, wear make-up. I don’t see lipstick as some evil symbol of female opression, just as make-up. Also I don’t see why her taking on Luke as anti-feminist, actually I saw it as a progression of her character as it was established in the School Reunion she had never pursued another relationship because she waited around for the Doctor to come back, now that I saw a somewhat un-feminist. If she’d said she didn’t have a family because she wasn’t interested in having one or because she wanted to follow her career more than have a family that would have been positive and feminist but having it because she decided to wait around for her knight in shining armour (well the Doctor’s more of a professor with shining gadgets, but whatever) to come back then that’s kinda pathetic. SJA presents a much more feminist Sarah who (finally) gets over the man who left her behind, and who she relised she’d out-grown, and pursues a life of her own… but she’s lonely and has closed herself off to the world, a broken person. She takes on Luke because she relises she can be a good role-figure to this rather unique child much more than anyone else because they’ve both been “Touched by the Stars” so to speak, it’s not likely anyone else could understand him to the extent she could… well other than another ex-companion but she may not be in contact with any of them. She also makes friends with a girl she sees an spark of “companioness” (for want of a better word) in, like the Doctor she is impressed by someone who won’t take a beating lying down or sheep-likely wander into their own deaths. Sarah finally gets over the Doctor at the end of the episode when she lets go of her own loneliness and lets people back into her life once more. At least, that’s how I saw it.
Re: Grace on ‘why is make-up evil’? My favorite comment (of late) on make-up, high-heeled shoes, and other femme artifacts comes from Twisty, “Sermon” (2006/11/26). The gist is that it’s not evil, it’s just not feminist; it’s a patriarchal conspiracy to define “femininity”. But really you should read Twisty and also the comment thread.
As for why it’s evil — well, I can give a lot of reasons why it’s a waste of time, money, energy, and a little bit evil, too: Animal testing, lack of testing, inadequate testing on humans. Supporting and maintaining dress codes for women. Etc. … That said, I sometimes wear lipstick and other make-up, and I guess, per Twisty, I’d agree that makes me a hypocrite.
Alice L wrote:
You and I, outside of her fictional world, can debate marketing strategies, but we would be insulting the character Sarah Jane if we did not acknowledge that this is indeed a clever disguise that she’s thought up. She deserves credit not criticism.
I f you want to play intra-diegetically: according to the BBC’s website (but accessible from the UK only, so I’m linking to Wikipedia), the *Doctor* gave her the sonic lipstick. So much for giving her credit for the ingenuity of the idea!
But I’m not criticising her. I’m criticising the show’s writers and producers for coming up with this idea in the first place. THEY are the actual, real people who can be held accountable for it. Not her.
Maccine wrote:
don’t find the idea of the sonic lipstick sexist at all – it’s an innocent, everyday thing that a typical woman carries around with her
A typical woman carries sonic lipstick around with her? (And oh, the can of worms of the concept of the “typical woman”…)
Therru: good point about the notoriety of lipstick working *against* its value as camouflage, and the idea of a key ring attachment as a substitute disguise. Novelty keychains are pretty common, and not necessarily linked to gender.
Grace wrote:
Why do people assume make-up = evil?
I’m going to have to pull out the obligatory Joanna Russ quote here, for both you & Laura:
“The feminism I know began as politics, not rules for living. To call X a feminist issue did not then mean that there was a good way to do X and a bad way, and that we were trying to replace the bad way with the good way. X was a feminist issue because it was the locus of various social pressures (which it made visible) and those social pressues were what feminism was all about. Makeup, for instance, is a feminist issue not because using makeup is anti-feminist and scrubbing your face is feminist but because makeup is compulsory. Those who don’t see the distinction are building a religion, not a politics.” — “News from the Front”, in Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts p.77
I do have to admit make-up shouldn’t be considered an obligatory thing for a woman to use, that is anti-feminist but some women (myself included) like to wear it and if we want to we should be able too, so should men if they want but unfortunately the disparity of society means most men would be laughed at if they went out wearing make-up… or at least in noticeable make-up up. That is unfair. I still didn’t commit that much thought to it myself though and just shrugged it off, maybe the Doctor remembers Sarah using make-up an knew she wouldn’t have a problem with it. Anyway as I said I still think she came of as a better character at the end of SJA than at the beginning, as I thought she was still lingering on her memories of the Doctor to some extent at the beginning, her finally letting others into her life at the end was a positive and feminist sign at the end when she realised she didn’t need a man in her life, or to be in a romance to justify her existence. It’s just happens to be kids she’s opened up to because… we’ll because it’s a childrens’ show.
works & characterizations can have both positive & negative aspects at the same time; so Ide pointing out the problematic aspects of the lipstick in no way renders invalid other folks’ points about the positive aspects of the lipstick — and vice versa. so it’s completely possible that sarah gets some credit (even if undeserved) for being enterprising; or that the writers/creators get some credit for subverting the silliness of lipstick by making it functional; and so on.
the thing that i note is that, yes, lots of women carry lipstick; so it’s not an unreasonable decision to have the character do it — they didn’t have to stretch reasonableness to highlight femininity and feminine accoutrements. on the other hand, they do highlight feminine accoutrements, and solely by choice; because there are lots of things women carry around with them. (tampons … even more practical because most men would hastily look away from them, and not open them up!) by making such a central tool a lipstick the creators have highlighted the feminine accoutrement, and subtly (or not so subtly) reinforced the stereotype that women carry lipsticks around; thus adding to the pressure to women (and girls) to have lipstick.
the whole thing is subverted a bit by making the lipstick functional, but it’s a bit of a stretch, really, making it almost more magical because the form is so inappropriate for the function. (not that technological realism was ever really a feature of the doctor who universe anyway).
to me, it shows a bit of a lack of imagination on the part of the creators, and/or a conscious attempt to appeal to what people fondly believe are the particular interests of a particular demographic (8-15yo girls, maybe).
… but just as one can parse the lipstick, one can also parse the show — and frankly as grace points out, i’m happy that the show exists (although i haven’t seen it), because sarah was fairly overtly feminist, and i liked her a lot.
Since this isn’t getting a trackback hit and I get bounced back to commenting if I click the “trackback” link, here’s where many of the preceeding commenters came from:
http://community.livejournal.com/doctorwho/1404708.html
And here is a slightly less appalling related LiveJournal thread:
http://community.livejournal.com/metaquotes/5767981.html
And Ide posted an important update to the question of marketing on 2007/2/2: Sonic Lipstick
[...] month ago in Sonic Stereotypes I asked, Will they be marketing Sonic Lipsticks to little [...]
i’d rather have a screwdriver than a lipstick anyday
[...] Regarding Sarah Jane in the collage above, here is this post’s ObFeministContent: Who looks at a lipstick and thinks, “this could be a little more sonic”? [...]
(I’m aware that this is an old post)
Firstly i like the fact that everyone can have opinions in this world, so i’d like to share my views with you.
Here is something you should know about the Doctor: His pockets have the same technology as the Tardis- They are bigger on the inside. Which is why he can hide his screwdriver away in his pockets so easily.
Sarah cannot.
I’d also like to think that she shape of the tool is significant, both the screwdriver and new lipstick are thin and long, and can extend. So I doubt just any old thing could be used as a sonic device. If you have seen the recent episodes of Doctor who, a sonic pen is carried by a woman, which somewhat contradicts some of your comments .
I doubt the writers had any intention of Sarah’s lipstick to be sexist. Besides as you said “It’s a kids show”, which means it isn’t written or designed for 8 year old children to analyse or to be offended by the choice of some design and plot device.
Appoligies if something doesn’t make sense i’m writing this in the wee hours of the morning.
[...] lipstick. Back in the Inaugral Whoydensday Post Tigtog linked to Sonic Stereotypes at the Feminist SF Blog, which explains exactly why it’s so problematic that Sarah Jane has a [...]
[...] at Feminist SF – The Blog!, Ide Cyan was not happy about the gendering of tools in The Sarah Jane Adventures: Why is she defined, here, by giving her sonic “screwdriver” such a gendered form of [...]