Robert Munsch Make Up Mess

In a westernized society children books are often guilty of aggressively reinforcing conventional gender roles by stereotyping the physical and personal characteristics of young girls and boys. This ultimately forces children who don’t comply with these stereotypes to be more vulnerable to bullying and self esteem issues. The book ‘Makeup Mess’ by Robert Munsch details and reinforces the materialistic and conforming stereotypes of femininity and what exactly it means to be a girl in the twenty first century. I personally choose to create a resistive reading of the book in the form of a satirical cultural jam. The book ‘Makeup Mess’ proclaims that in a utopian capitalist society young girls are destined to reform to the ideal of the ‘male gaze’,

Girls are constantly targeted by advertisers and marketers and influenced to go out and purchase whatever the latest fad might be. In the book ‘Makeup Mess’ Munsch reticulates this concept by alluding that Julie has no real concept of money. Society often suggests that females will never understand the true importance of saving money because someone, most likely a male romantic companion will always pay for her expenses. Munsch continues to suggest that young girls are constantly empowered by a sense of possession to go out and purchase new items specifically cosmetic products or clothes. I personally found it extremely degrading that Munsch suggested if Julie wasn’t going out to purchase new makeup products then she must of course be going out to purchase new clothes. Consumerism in relation to women is blatantly sexist in that it produces an ideology that female consumers are constantly purchasing extravagant items because they are incapable of spending money rationally. The theory continues to suggest that female consumers are searching to enhance their femininity to appeal to the binary gender