Gender Stereotypes In Boots

In the episode “Boots’ first Bike” of Dora the explorer, Dora is very excited to show Boots the picture of the bike she helped his parents get for him. After meeting Boots, they both decide to go to the bike shop to get Boots’ bike. During their journey to the shop they get to meet several characters and help them; they encourage Alisa to jump her ropes and the squirrel to roller skate. They help Betty distribute shirts according to size amongst the team, they also helped Little Piggy to sail her boat and finally encourage the little blue bird to fly to her mother. They finally get to the bike shop and get to identify Boots’ bike and Dora helps him ride it. The episode’s main message was that even if you can’t do something at first
Also, Boots who is a boy is wearing pink boots and has a pink face which is also against the pink is a “girl color” stereotype. The genders are thus portrayed quite opposite to the norms and more neutral. There was little verbal interaction with Dora and the adult but they mostly danced with her. The absence of adults bothered me because Dora spends a lot of her time alone travelling around through forests and lakes with no adult supervision and it may cause children to think it is alright to move around without supervision which is not safe. In addition, Boots, Alissa and squirrel learned pretty fast which is not realistic. Children may get frustrated if they don’t learn to ride a bike, skate or jump rope in as few seconds as shown on the show. After watching the show, and despite the issues I have concerning the show I still like it. The show is very educative and appropriate for children age 4 and above. The show is very beneficial as it educates children on a wide variety of aspects such as linguistic, analyzing and solving problems, counting, colors and social skills such as helping and interacting with