{"id":13381,"date":"2013-06-10T02:00:51","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T06:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mmw\/?p=13381"},"modified":"2013-06-09T14:47:41","modified_gmt":"2013-06-09T18:47:41","slug":"how-do-muslim-girls-fare-in-u-s-kids-programming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mmw\/2013\/06\/how-do-muslim-girls-fare-in-u-s-kids-programming\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do Muslim Girls Fare in U.S. Kids\u2019 Programming?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My toddler cousins, like all children their age, were born into a world of rattles, Legos, diapers, and TV. Now more than ever, kids programming is a dominant and formative force in young children\u2019s lives. The average preschooler spend 32 hours a week<\/a> latched onto the TV screen, and by high school graduation has clocked more hours watching TV<\/a> than at school. Studies have already shown us that the way kids\u2019 TV treats race and gender affects how kids see their identities<\/a>, and that kids need to see someone like them on their screen. White boys, for example, have been shown to have higher self-esteem after watching TV, which\u00a0 is typically dominated<\/a> by characters matching their demographic, while underrepresented groups of children suffer from lower self-esteem after watching TV. So how come my toddler cousins see no little Muslim girls?<\/p>\n

The four most popular stations for kids programming in the U.S. are Disney, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and PBS Kids. Disney, arguably the biggest conglomerate, suffers from a shocking lack of diversity. Of its nine presently running live-action series, none of the characters are Muslim. Furthermore, Disney\u2019s only efforts at diversity seem to be a halfhearted attempt to fulfill the minimum threshold needed to meet minority quotas; three shows have an all<\/a>\u2013white<\/a> main cast<\/a>, and of the 46 characters<\/a> in the main<\/a> casts<\/a> of its currently<\/a> running<\/a> shows<\/a>, 37 are white. Both Jessie<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Phineas<\/em> and Ferb<\/em><\/a> do have little boys from Southeast Asia; these characters are horrendously stereotyped, both sporting thick accents that are often the brunt of jokes, and their religious background is not specified.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
[Source<\/a>].<\/figcaption><\/figure>As far as Disney goes, the only seemingly Muslim character is Princess Jasmine of the Aladdin movie, and her representation has its own host of problems. The Aladdin franchise, first released in 1992, was Disney\u2019s first nod to the existence of people who might be of Muslim background, by taking place in stereotypically Muslim lands, but, since then, has remained the only one. Many of the same discourses applied to Aladdin, Jasmine, and their friends are applied to Muslims throughout the world. The movie opens with a song describing Arabia as \u201cbarbaric<\/a>,\u201d replete with an earlier line of \u201cthe land\u2026where they cut off your hands<\/a>,\u201d which was edited out after the film received criticism for it. Jasmine is sexualized<\/a> both by her scantily clad wardrobe and her scenes with Jafar. When, in the movie, Jasmine is captured by Jafar and seen by him as an overtly sexual trophy, some argue<\/a> that her agency is effectively made nonexistent as her only power lies in her sexuality and ability to seduce Jafar into confusion. Furthermore, her father\u2019s treatment of her<\/a> echoes stereotypes that all Arab and\/or Muslim females are forced into arranged marriages. Of course, there are arguable positives to Jasmine\u2019s character; her personality is independent, fierce, and likable. She holds her own against her father and at one point reprimands Aladdin, saying \u201cI am not a prize to be won<\/a>.\u201d Regardless, Jasmine should still not be the only representation of a stereotypically Arab or Muslim woman in children\u2019s entertainment.<\/p>\n

Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon have similarly poor showings of Muslim girls and women or Muslims at all in their programming. PBS Kids, due to its concerted efforts at diversity, fares a bit better, with online resources teaching kids about Arthur\u2019s Muslim friend Ayah<\/a>, who celebrate Ramadan. Still, there is no currently running TV show with a Muslim girl in the main cast, or even infrequent guest cast, on any of these three stations. The resolute absence of Muslim girls in the thousands of hours of programming these channels produce on a regularly basis in astonishing and may even cause young Muslimahs to have lower self-esteem.<\/a> Furthermore, the white-dominated casts of most shows put on Christmas<\/a> specials with regularity<\/a>, without considering the possible alienating effects to children belonging to religions other than Christianity, like young Muslimahs.<\/p>\n

Disney, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon have huge audiences outside of the U.S., and Disney is the world\u2019s iconic children\u2019s entertainment company. The lack of representation on their programming schedules hurts not only the millions of Muslim girls in the U.S., but diasporic Muslimah children around the world. Studies show that underrepresentation or negative representation of a child\u2019s group hurts their self-esteem<\/a>; what does an absence do?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My toddler cousins, like all children their age, were born into a world of rattles, Legos, diapers, and TV. Now more than ever, kids programming is a dominant and formative force in young children\u2019s lives. The average preschooler spend 32 hours a week latched onto the TV screen, and by high school graduation has clocked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1508,"featured_media":13382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2111,2112,357,1912,1082],"class_list":["post-13381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-television","tag-aladdin","tag-childrens-television","tag-disney","tag-diversity","tag-princess-jasmine"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Do Muslim Girls Fare in U.S. Kids\u2019 Programming?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My toddler cousins, like all children their age, were born into a world of rattles, Legos, diapers, and TV. 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