ORIGINAL ARTICLE Boys Act and Girls Appear: A Content Analysis of Gender Stereotypes Associated with Characters in Children’ s Popular Culture Sarah K. Murnen 1 & Claire Greenfield 1 & Abigail Younger 1 & Hope Boyd 1 Published online: 20 November 2015 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract We conducted a content analysis of children’ s prod- ucts in U.S. popular culture that depict male and female char- acters to determine the extent to which gender stereotypes were portrayed. We examined popular Halloween costumes (90 female costumes and 90 male costumes) from popular retail websites, 79 popular dolls and 71 popular action figures from national store websites, and Valentines found at two national stores (portraying 54 female and 59 male characters). The coding system was adapted from several different studies. Female characters were far more likely than male characters to be depicted with traditional feminine stereotyped cues (e.g., decorative clothing) and sexually submissive, hyper-feminine cues (e.g., revealing clothing). Male characters were far more likely to be portrayed with traditional masculine characteris- tics like functional clothing and the body-in-motion, and they were often depicted with hyper-masculine accessories such as having a weapon. Implications for children’ s gender-role de- velopment and the perpetuation of patriarchy are discussed. Keywords Stereotyped attitudes . Popular culture . Socialization . Human sex differences Introduction Although societal roles for women and men have changed in the United States since the second wave of the women’ s movement (Twenge 2009), gender stereotypes are still commonly portrayed in U.S. media (Collins 2011 ; Greenwood and Lippman 2010). A likely reason for the per- sistence of stereotypes is that the basic structure of society remains patriarchal, with a gendered division of labor and pressures to conform to stereotyped roles (Rudman and Glick 2008). Further, it has been argued that there is a back- lash against women’ s accomplishments in the workplace, resulting in increased cultural emphasis on gender stereotypes that support patriarchy (Douglas 2010). In the present study, we conducted a content analysis of products in U.S. children’ s popular culture that portray male and female characters—in- cluding dolls and action figures, Halloween costumes, and Valentine cards—to determine the extent to which the charac- ters depicted had gender-stereotyped characteristics reflecting the power differences between women and men in society. Although there has been much study of media representa- tions especially television and video games, other cultural products, especially those aimed at children (Rudy et al. 2011), have attracted less attention. The products chosen for our study contain male and female counterparts that we com- pared to see if there was a simultaneous representation of masculine-stereotyped characteristics for male characters and feminine-stereotyped characteristics for female characters. The products we examined offer children an opportunity to strongly identify with the character represented because they choose a specific character from an assortment available. For example, children interactively play with dolls and action fig- ures, increasing identification (Elias and Berk 2002), and when they wear a Halloween costume, they might Btry on^ the identity associated with the depicted character. We synthesized our coding systems from several other studies, creating a comprehensive scheme for measuring tra- ditionally masculine and feminine characteristics relevant to understanding the power differences between women and men in society. We argue that if cues associated with * Sarah K. Murnen murnen@kenyon.edu 1 Department of Psychology, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH 43022, USA Sex Roles (2016) 74:78–91 DOI 10.1007/s11199-015-0558-x