The other day Alexander was watching some songs on YouTube.
One of them was the Firefighters Song for Kids from Bounce Patrol Kids. The song was catchy and the video was bright, colourful and Alexander loved it.
However the thing I couldn’t stop looking at was the fact that the only woman firefighter was dressed in a dress and thigh high patent leather/shiny boots that had a heel. (See the video below)
A dress and heels are not for firefighting! Women should wear pants, boots and the same outfit the men wear!
Why are women showing girls that they need to dress like this to fight fires? Firefighters don’t wear this and women firefighters actually wear pants and the proper boots like the men do. It’s a basic uniform for the job.
Oh and lose the dress and just wear the pants and uniform for all firefighters please.
Show girls that they don’t have to be different and the candy for people to look at, no sparkle needed. The video was fun and having this female firefighter in pants and boots like the men wouldn’t have detracted from the video at all! As you can see I am rather annoyed at this video and the representation of women and how it will impact girls.
Why is it 2019 and there are still such alarming differences for how girls and women are being portrayed? This is not acceptable and should looked at with more care. Young kids are highly impressionable and doing this just reinforces the fact that a girl needs to be in a dress and wear high heels, which is not the case at all.
This firefighter is wearing a better outfit to fight fires. Why can’t the woman be dressed the same?
Just in case you wish to know what firefighters wear here are some images taken from the Fire NSW Website:
I don’t see any dresses or heels do you?
Have you been appalled at how girls are getting shown in video clips and other media? Do they always have to wear skirts? Dresses? Why do dress ups for girls always have a sparkly skirt and dress option? Why can’t they have pants like the boys outfits do?
Let me know what has caught your attention and why it annoyed you?
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3 Responses
Lucy
April 11, 2019Great post! Totally agree with you. It is important to be careful and to always control what our kids are watching. Thank you for sharing and please keep it up
Shannon
April 24, 2019Hi Suzanne. Great article, and we agree with you! Once this was pointed out to us upon release of this video, we totally see the point and agree we should have costumed Alyssa just like the boys. We’re always trying to get better with every video and make sure we pay even more attention to this. We made the Firefighters video in early 2018. Here’s one of our latest videos about Construction workers made in 2019, how did we do with the costume choices in this one? https://youtu.be/17nQ74S5SfU We purchased these uniforms at an actual workwear store (RSEA) rather than a costume store, which helped a lot. With the firefighters video, we were shopping in costume shops to find a colourful bright red outfit. However we discovered that most women’s firefighter’s costumes for sale are very revealing and suggestive, so we struggled to find something appropriate (google ‘women’s firefighter costume’, it’s bananas!). This dress and coat was the most modest female firefighter costume we could find at the time. We had the boots in our costume box from a superhero costume previously, and found that buying new proper boots would be expensive for a one-off shoot. But in hindsight, that was the wrong decision. We should have purchased proper work boots and a genuine firefighting uniform, rather that going for the most modest “costume” look that was available. Because who wears a dress to a fire, right? Duh. We deeply regret that we portray the wrong message, because we’re focussed on helping girls (and boys) understand they can be anything they want to be! For example in our Occupations video we made sure to flip some gender expectations https://youtu.be/r6Oxqyd5qUw Anyway, we hear you. Thanks for the feedback – and it helps us grow and improve. We’ll do better next time! -Shannon (Creative Director of Bounce Patrol)
Laura
June 22, 2022It’s a shame that the firefighters is in the compilation which comes up on Amazon rather than the construction worker one. I’m here having the same thoughts about costuming. The superheroes also have no males wanting to dress up as female superheroes. The girls always wear skirts in all of them too. I’m glad it’s something that bounce patrol are acknowledging to improve though.