Joanne Harris hits out at a ‘growing gender division’ in book jackets which is ‘a form of brainwashing’
Chocolat author Joanne Harris has attacked the “subliminal indoctrination” of children through gendered packaging of books, which she says gives “the false message to a new generation that boys must be clever, brave and strong, while girls should aspire to be decorative”.
Writing in The Author, a quarterly magazine for British writers, Harris described a shelf in her local supermarket stocked with the blue Brilliant Colouring Book for Boys, full of “rocket ships, Vikings, pirates and kites”, and the pink Beautiful Colouring Book for Girls, full of “princesses, puppies, flowers and cupcakes”.
It might appear to adults to be “a harmless marketing strategy”, writes Harris, but for children, who are “highly impressionable”, and for whom “ideas (including prejudices) adopted early on will follow them into adulthood”, it is “really a form of brainwashing, repeating the false message to a new generation that boys must be clever, brave and strong, while girls should aspire to be decorative”, and is “harmful in so many ways”.
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