This is exactly what I meant in my previous rant about gender biases in children's media.
Philip N. Cohen posted a great article on Family Inequality about Smurfette.
I'm told that there are valid backstory reasons for having only one female Smurf (if you actually want to talk about validity and backstories and canon in reference to The Smurfs), and honestly it just struck me as the kind of careless world-design you can get away with in cartoons for very small children- look at the original Transformers cartoons for another good example of that. I never gave the Smurfs much thought beyond that bit of silliness; they didn't seem worth it, especially since children's culture really isn't my cup of tea and I'm much busier being a Transformers fangirl-in-training. As an interesting note about how Internet browsing works, I followed a link from Powered by Osteons on Twitter to an interesting article about hilariously misinterpreted demographic data, and from that I followed the link to the Smurfette article.
Dr. Cohen posted an image of the poster being used to advertise the Smurfs Happy Meals (yes, I love my gender-biased messages with a side order of grease and fat).
"This one likes to cook, this one is smart, this one is athletic, and this one is a girl. That's who she is and what she does." That's the message here.
This seems to be a recurring theme in children's toys and media; one gender gets to define itself in ways not tied to a gender identity- interests, hobbies, goals, skills- and the other is continually encouraged to define itself solely based on its gender identity.
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