Within society there are objects that have been gendered, like Action Man for boys and Barbie for girls, aftershave for males and perfume for females, boxers for men and frilly knickers for women, however in this modern society were more and more people are openly breaking the gender binaries, these social ideals are slowly being broken as androgynous males begin to perform femininity and androgynous females perform masculinity. On the other hand it’s not only down to individuals who are breaking the gender roles, no, there are cisgendered females who still perform femininity yet play video games likewise with cisgendered males who perform masculinity yet watch My Little Pony.
In the article Of ponies and men: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the Brony fandom, Robertson talks about the negative outlook on this male dominated group, with this assumption that there is something sick, wrong, or ‘creepy’ about the way that Bronies subvert expectations surrounding gender, age, and the consumption of media (Robertson. V, 2013, p:27) .
Cartoons are targeted specifically for their target audiences, which are generally children and preteens because of this audience are able to relate to the storylines and characters. On the other hand certain cartoons that are targeted for these age groups have jokes that are aimed at adults or even contain intertextual references that a child would not understand. For an example in one particular episode of Regular Show they paid homage to the opening sequence of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion by creating a similar title sequence using a montage of clips of the shows main characters, to a child it’s nothing more than a montage of clips but to an young adult or someone who has consumed this product they would make the connection.
Knowing that the audience relate to the text, it seems taboo that men enjoying and relating to a show aimed at girls, as is the case with Bronies (Robertson. V, 2013, p:27), makes you ask yourself, what does a grown man have in common with a group of adolescent ponies. In the documentary Bronies, one Brony talks about how he has learnt from the stories, as in episode there is always a dilemma that the ponies find themselves in and the skills used to get out of these situations can be applied to real life circumstances (Putlocker.is, 2015).
Bibliography:
Ezproxy.bcu.ac.uk, (2015). Birmingham City University – Sign In. [online] Available at: http://ezproxy.bcu.ac.uk:2879/content/17/1/21.full.pdf+html [Accessed 9 May 2015].
Putlocker.is, (2015). Watch Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony Online Free Putlocker | Putlocker – Watch Movies Online Free. [online] Available at: http://putlocker.is/watch-bronies-the-extremely-unexpected-adult-fans-of-my-little-pony-online-free-putlocker.html [Accessed 9 May 2015].
Robertson, V. (2013). Of ponies and men: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the Brony fandom. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 17(1), pp.21-37.
Shanieze The Acafan 