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drkfairy1278
Guest
Hey I read this article today and wanted to know what everyones thinks about it.
Fire "My Little Pony by Margot Magowan
Fire "My Little Pony by Margot Magowan
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I think it's just one woman's opinion and will make for an interesting discussion here.
Wonder what she'd do if she discovered there are (whispers) pony meets?
*teehee*
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- Apr 9, 2010
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AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Firstly, I have to say that her grammar and editing (repeated words, etc.) really distracted me.
I would like to preface the below statement by saying: "I am not a parent. I do not have biological children." I am a teacher and have many kids between the ages of 7 and 24 that I have observed, interacted with and have become my family. (Anyone who teaches will understand what I mean by that.)
That being said: She's nuts! While I am not a fan of the most recent version of the MLPs, the one thing I have always loved about ponies in general is that it takes imagination to play with them. Ponies aren't a video game that has a pre-set story line and essentially plays itself while the child pushes the buttons. Neither are they like so many "fashion dolls" that have impossible figures, piles upon piles of clothing and accessories and which (I have always felt) promotes "beauty consciousness" in girls at a very young age. Ponies (at least the old school ones that I grew up with) don't come with tons and tons of accessories that light up and make noise. When playing with my friends we came up with stories and adventures for the ponies to go on that involved a lot of "make believe" (and sometimes a trip up to the creek).
MLPs are mythical. Little horses that are multi-colored in hair and body and have cute, silly names. Complete fantasy. I believe that our children need more of that, considering how quickly they seem to be pushed to grow up. Maybe a little more MLP (or toys like them) would help them stay young in heart and mind a little longer.
Wow. I guess I had more to say on this than I expected.
I'm done with my rant now.
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- Sep 14, 2005
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Seriously? Like it or not, no matter what you try and teach your child, little girls are drawn to pink and purple. My daughter started saying her favourite colour was pink VERY early on. I kind of hate pink, so...she didn't get it from me! You cannot raise your child to be "gender neutral," and why is there an obsession to do so? There is NOTHING wrong with a girl being a "girly-girl" and liking Princesses and ponies. What makes a pony having straight hair more acceptable then a pony with curly hair? Why is being frilly and girly so unacceptable?
Look. I'm all for "girl power" and letting little girls know they can be and do whatever they want, but, taking AWAY the femininity from girls is ridiculous. Attacking MLP which (at least in the 80's) had pretty good characters, plot lines, and...wow...actual VILLAINS. The ponies had to work together and solve their problems WITHOUT violence. How is this a negative?
Can we PLEASE just let kids be kids?
Look. I'm all for "girl power" and letting little girls know they can be and do whatever they want, but, taking AWAY the femininity from girls is ridiculous. Attacking MLP which (at least in the 80's) had pretty good characters, plot lines, and...wow...actual VILLAINS. The ponies had to work together and solve their problems WITHOUT violence. How is this a negative?
Can we PLEASE just let kids be kids?
oh yeah her grammar makes it hard to read the article...
First of all... that's one frickin' sentence! Epic fail on keeping it simple. And when refering to the pony's tail, I love how she spells it "tale."
Though I also really love the comment from bobmc7:
First of all... that's one frickin' sentence! Epic fail on keeping it simple. And when refering to the pony's tail, I love how she spells it "tale."
Though I also really love the comment from bobmc7:
Last edited:
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I absolutely agree! What is wrong with being feminine? And allowing girls to enjoy the colors/things they are instinctually drawn to? I do think there is a fine line to be walked between allowing girly-ness and encouraging the "weak female who only likes to shop, do her hair and make-up and nothing else" mentality. But I don't think MLP crosses that line.
And YES! Let kids be kids for as long as possible!
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Clearly she's never seen the G1 cartoons.
(Actually, I can tell she got her examples from G3 books.)I agree with you guys that she doesn't know much about MLP and takes this too seriously. But on the other hand, I do think there's a danger inherent to the "pink girl ghetto." If you watch G3 MLP cartoons, as opposed to modern Transformers cartoons, there's definitely a different message. MLP: "Everyone get along!" Transformers: "Be tough and blow up your problems!" And although "blow stuff up" is a pretty poor lesson for a lot of life's problems, well . . . so is "everybody get along, conflict is SO TOTALLY BAD!" That message is just as dangerous as "solve everything with guns, pew pew!"
Actually, the "two ponies want to star in the same play" thing is a good example. I know what book this lady read. It's the G3 book where one of the ponies--G3 Cotton Candy, I think--is the director of a play. The other ponies keep coming up with random ideas of what the play should include--"How about if Rainbow Dash is a PRINCESS!" "Minty could do a clown act!"--and Cotton Candy keeps shooting their ideas down because they aren't in the script. Then the other ponies get all mopey and she relents and puts all of it in and they have the BEST PLAY EVAR.
I think they were trying to put across a moral lesson about being flexible, but at the same time . . . can you imagine how this would go over in real life? Real directors have to slap down ideas from time to time and if the actors are upset about it--so sad, too bad!! That is why the director is there, TO DIRECT. So, yeah, you can view the book's message as "be more flexible", but it could also be "give in the moment people start moaning and complaining." Not a good message for anyone, but especially not for girls.
This was something I enjoyed about the original G1 MLP. There was conflict. Conflict with villains and also conflict between ponies.
Example: In Somnabula, Surprise jumps out and yells "SURPRISE!", causing one of the ponies (I think Paradise) to accidentally burst some balloons. If this were G3, Paradise would have started giggling, teeheehee, because it was just SO FUNNY. But in G1, Paradise is Not Amused. She looks ticked off and irately tells Surprise to help her fix the "surprised" balloons.
Another example: Truly is helping the baby pony band practice for when the Big Brothers arrive. If this were G3--well, for one thing, if it were G3 they wouldn't even be practicing, since G3s never think about their performance until the day of the show. (See: Ladybug Jamboree, Dancing in the Clouds.) But if they WERE practicing, you can bet there'd be nothing but loving "you can do it" encouragement. Instead, we get Truly informing the baby ponies that "We're going to play this until you GET IT RIGHT."
G3 is filled with Stepford Ponies, ALways happy, ALways loving, ALways supportive . . . Yes, I do question if that's the best thing to fill very young (the target audience!) kids' heads with. No, I don't want a story where the moral is "punch a guy in the stomach", but to make a world so utterly devoid of conflict--that implies that any and all conflict is bad. And I couldn't disagree more.
S
sweetiebabyfizzy
Guest
+1
You pretty much said how I felt. She's a little over the top, but I do see a few of her points. That doesn't mean you should fire ponies and not let your kids play with them though. Make up your own stories, just like she said she does with her kids. DUH.
