Tag: Mattel

Women in the Workplace and Female Clowns on Stage

A commentator on the radio said  that the financial meltdown probably would not have happened if there were more women in high places in the world of finance because women tend to be more adverse to risk than men.  The males took on too much risk.  Their actions would have been tempered if there had been more women’s voices in the mix.

Apparently high testosterone levels are tied to high profits and when men had higher levels of testosterone they made riskier trades for higher profits.

Women approach risk differently.  They make less risky choices and choose safer positions.

Women outnumber men in the workforce for the first time in history.  But, the higher you go the fewer women you find.

It’s that whole harder for women than men to juggle  the personal and professional particularly when there are children.

Some formerly male professions have become dominated by women for example veterinary medicine (Mattel certainly saw that coming with glamour vet Barbie.)

Clowning is a performance form traditionally dominated by men.  There are certain expectations and structures.  “A man in a dress, funny, a woman in pants, not so funny”   Testosterone based gag development;  build, build, build, blowoff.  Estrogen based gag development:  circle around something getting closer and closer to the emotional charge.  Hmmm.

Kendall is working in the studio with a dozen women in less linear development of pieces, working together to develop a women’s style.

What will we come up with???

Remembering the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing

Once upon a time, the fact that I watched the lunar landing (You know, “One small step for man one giant leap for Mankind.”) marked me as a modern child growing up in an amazing time.  For the adults in my world, especially my grandparents who had grown up on farms with horse drawn farm equipment, this landing on the moon was an incredible thing.

 It didn’t seem like such a big deal to me when we watched the live broadcast on our black and white TV during the basement sale we held the summer after kindergarten.  It seemed even more ordinary to me when the televisions on carts were rolled into our classrooms so we could watch a lunar landing when I was in first grade and again when I was in second grade and then again when I was in third grade.  It was something I was used that some of the grown-ups couldn’t seem to get over the way my daughter and her friends are used to hand held video games and phones that take pictures and of course googling anything that pops into our head on the laptop computers we carry in our bags and use every day.

But just as suddenly as the reality of a man on the moon came into our lives it disappeared, like some  beloved relative , once the star of family gatherings who is no longer in attendance and nobody tells the children why.

The moon landings stopped.  Then there was an oil embargo.  Everyone worried about gas prices.  (According to Wikipedia the stock market crashed in 1973.)

 Mattel replaced their astronaut action figures with The Sunshine Family, dolls that camped, gardened and made pottery and leather goods to sell at craft fairs.

Lots of parents got divorced.

Mothers got crockpots to make easy one dish meals and went back to work.

The Waltons and Little House on the Prarie were on TV and The Adventures of the Wilderness Family was in movie theaters.

 The same parents who had fed their children orange powdered Tang and Space Food Sticks were making homemade granola and sprouting alfalfa seeds in jars.

 It was as though the culture had over-reached and then retracted. Children were bewildered.