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"he British actress Emma Thompson tossed her shoes across the stage and slurped a martini, Dean Martin-style. Jennifer Lawrence wore her hair almost West Point short, while the actor Jared Leto and the composer Alex Ebert put up their flowing locks in loose chignons. Diane Keaton wore a man's tuxedo to accept Woody Allen's lifetime achievement award. Even the annual Miss Golden Globe, Sosie Bacon, the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, was nudged aside by a new feature, Mr. Golden Globe: Amy Poehler dressed as a sullen teenage boy. It was a gender-bending Golden Globes, or at least, the hosts made an effort to celebrate gender equality."

Hamleys, which is London's 251-year-old version of F.A.O. Schwarz, recently dismantled its pink "girls" and blue "boys" sections in favor of a gender-neutral store with red-and-white signage. Rather than floors dedicated to Barbie dolls and action figures, merchandise is now organized by types (Soft Toys) and interests (Outdoor). That free-to-be gesture was offset by Lego, whose Friends collection, aimed at girls, will hit stores this month with the goal of becoming a holiday must-have by the fall. Set in fictive Heartlake City (and supported by a $40 million marketing campaign), the line features new, pastel-colored, blocks that allow a budding Kardashian, among other things, to build herself a cafe or a beauty salon. Its tasty-sounding "ladyfig" characters are also taller and curvier than the typical Legoland denizen. So who has it right? Should gender be systematically expunged from playthings? Or is Lego merely being realistic, earnestly meeting girls halfway in an attempt to stoke their interest in engineering?

"The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is the only research-based organization working behind-the scenes in the entertainment industry to engage, educate, and influence the need for gender balance, reducing stereotyping and creating a wide variety of female portrayals for children's entertainment."

Male and female images As one dramatic example, the image and representation of women and girls in the media has long been a subject of concern. Research shows that there are many fewer females than males in almost all forms of mainstream media and those who do appear are often portrayed in very stereotypical ways. Constantly polarized gender messages in media have fundamentally anti-social effects. In everything from advertising, television programming, newspaper and magazines, to comic books, popular music, film and video games, women and girls are more likely to be shown: in the home, performing domestic chores such as laundry or cooking; as sex objects who exist primarily to service men; as victims who can't protect themselves and are the natural recipients of beatings, harassment, sexual assault and murder. Men and boys are also stereotyped by the media. From GI Joe to Rambo, masculinity is often associated with machismo, independence, competition, emotional detachment, aggression and violence. Despite the fact that men have considerably more economic and political power in society than women, these trends - although different from those which affect women and girls - are very damaging to boys.

As your students skim the selections below, they might choose the two or three articles that interest them most, then answer some of these questions: What do these pieces have in common? What patterns do you notice? What do they say about the lives and roles of women and girls? About men and boys? How are ideas about gender changing? What do you think about those changes? What connections (PDF) can you make to one or more of the articles you chose and your own life? Why does any of this matter?"

"While the sexual exploitation of women and girls is rampant, there are many ways that you can help combat the media objectification of girls. Whether it is through writing, petitioning or joining organizations that promote gender equality and balanced gender representation in the media, here are ways in which you can help stop sexual exploitation of girls."

" am energized by the idea of creating a framework for learning that weaves my students' interests with the desire to push their thinking around media literacy.  The course began with setting essential questions that would guide our inquiry throughout the semester.  The following questions captures the lines of inquiry students were interested in taking on at the beginning of the course: How does Media affect culture and society? What problems do we see with representation of race, class, gender and sexuality in Media? How do we critically examine popular culture and push back against the biased representation of race, class, gender and sexuality in popular culture?"

"n this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes -- images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne's groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence."

"We're not doomed. But balanced gender representation is going to take some serious work. "

"Let's put something to rest: Facebook isn't spying through your phone's microphone to serve you ads for sweatshirts and seltzer water. It probably couldn't even if it wanted to. But if the social network isn't listening to you, that doesn't mean the rest of the world isn't watching. Advertisements in the real world are becoming more technologically sophisticated, integrating facial recognition, location data, artificial intelligence, and other powerful tools that are more commonly associated with your mobile phone. Welcome to the new age of digital marketing. During this year's Fashion Week in New York, a digital billboard ad for New Balance used A.I. technology to detect and highlight pedestrians wearing "exceptional" outfits. A billboard advertisement for the Chevy Malibu recently targeted drivers on Interstate 88 in Chicago by identifying the brand of vehicle they were driving, then serving ads touting its own features in comparison. And Bidooh, a Manchester-based startup that admits it was inspired by Minority Report, is using facial recognition to serve ads through its billboards in the U.K. and other parts of Europe as well as South Korea. According to its website, Bidooh allows advertisers to target people based on criteria like age, gender, ethnicity, hair color, clothing color, height, body shape, perceived emotion, and the presence of glasses, sunglasses, beards, or mustaches. We've been on the path here since at least a decade ago when the New York Times reported that some digital billboards were equipped with small cameras that could analyze a pedestrian's facial features to serve targeted ads based on gender and approximate age. "

"MissRepresentation.org and Common Sense Media have partnered to create Media Literacy Conversation Starters with a gender lens, for young people and families."

"Four years ago, the news that my wife and I were going to have twin girls coincided with the moment of my most fervent dedication to the notion that gender is, for the most part, socially constructed. The degree to which those differences are innate or socially nurtured is up for debate, but there's little doubt that popular culture and the marketplace go to great lengths to emphasize and capitalize on them. Before the twins were born, friends and family inundated us with hand-me-down "girl clothes."  I made sure to put anything with princess logos or imagery into the giveaway pile. The princess trope represented passivity, entitlement, materialism, and submissiveness, and no daughter of mine would wear a onesie that celebrated such loathsome values."

"Tt should be obvious that your gender doesn't hinder your ability to code, yet women continue to face an uphill climb into tech careers thanks largely to unspoken stigmas against female coders.  For its latest campaign, the nonprofit advocacy group Girls Who Code tackles this issue with satirical, delightfully deadpan humor. The new work, from McCann in New York, features young girls sardonically explaining how their boobs, their periods, their long eyelashes and more get in the way of their coding. "

"In an attempt to raise awareness about online bullying of women in sports, that is exactly what "Just Not Sports" did. In their new #MoreThanMean PSA, real men -- who were not the original authors of the messages -- read detestable tweets directed at sportswriters Julie DiCaro and espnW's Sarah Spain ... to their faces. The men struggle with their delivery as they digest the vulgar messages, and eventually apologize on behalf of their entire gender."

"In 2013, I found that, over the course of a year, about 25 percent of the people I quoted or mentioned were women. Two years later, a similar analysis yielded discouraging results."

Riley has an important message for all the toy makers and marketers out there: stop trying to force pink stuff on girls. They like other colors, too. And while you're at it, some girls like superheroes just as much, if not more, than princesses. If you were looking to add some inspiration to your Christmas Eve, watch this little girl's impassioned speech against gender stereotypes in toy manufacturing. We only wish we had been this articulate and impassioned when we were her age.

"Melissa Atkins Wardy calls it her "a-ha" moment. There she was looking for her first sippy cup for her then 6-month-old daughter. Her choices: Mickey Mouse, Diego and "Toy Story" characters for boys, and princesses -- and more princesses -- for girls. Already fired up, she walked through the toy aisles and saw what she describes as a further gender divide. Girls were offered baby dolls, princesses and sexy fashion figures; the boys section had superheroes, building blocks, science kits and dinosaurs. "That was it. There was no middle ground. I didn't see any dolls or cooking sets for boys, nor building blocks or fire trucks for girls," writes Atkins Wardy in her new book "Redefining Girly: How Parents Can Fight the Stereotyping and Sexualizing of Girlhood, from Birth to Tween." After that experience, she said in an interview, "Everything clicked and made sense to me."

Trailer for a new documentary on male gender roles

"Among men, the overconsumption of protein powder is enough to constitute an eating disorder, says Richard Achiro of the California School of Professional Psychology. Men are being driven toward a lean, muscular body by low self-esteem and gender role conflict, "which is an underlying sense of insecurity about one's masculinity." "The way in which men's bodies are being objectified by the media is catching up rapidly to what has been done to women's bodies for decades," said Achiro."

Last week, 17 people, most of them teenagers, were shot dead at a Florida school. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School now joins the ranks of Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine and too many other sites of American carnage. What do these shootings have in common? Guns, yes. But also, boys. Girls aren't pulling the triggers. It's boys. It's almost always boys. America's boys are broken. And it's killing us. The brokenness of the country's boys stands in contrast to its girls, who still face an abundance of obstacles but go into the world increasingly well equipped to take them on. The past 50 years have redefined what it means to be female in America. Girls today are told that they can do anything, be anyone. They've absorbed the message: They're outperforming boys in school at every level. But it isn't just about performance. To be a girl today is to be the beneficiary of decades of conversation about the complexities of womanhood, its many forms and expressions. Boys, though, have been left behind. No commensurate movement has emerged to help them navigate toward a full expression of their gender. It's no longer enough to "be a man" - we no longer even know what that means."