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‘Sexist’ photo criticised for depicting girl as nurse and boy as doctor

‘The children are cute. The sexism on their backs is NOT’

Thursday 14 March 2019 13:09 GMT

(Getty Images/iStockphoto/Twitter (@TheMedicalShots))

A photograph circulating on Twitter has been lambasted as "sexist" for seemingly depicting a young girl as a nurse in pink scrubs, and a young boy as a doctor in green scrubs.

The picture in question, which shows the children walking away from the camera and holding hands, was shared on Twitter earlier this week by an account called @TheMedicalShots.

"This is cute, isn't it?" reads the tweet's caption, which also includes a heart-eyed emoji.

The tweet has sparked a huge response on the social media platform, garnering more than 20,000 likes, more than 4,700 retweets and thousands of comments.

"No it's not. Why isn't she a Dr as well? Or why is the boy not a nurse?" one person tweeted in response to the claim the picture is "cute".

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

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1/12The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Anne Hathaway

The 32-year-old actress said she has already experiences job rejections because of her age. “Now I'm in my early thirties and I'm like, 'Why did that 24-year-old get that part? I was that 24-year-old once. I can't be upset about it, it's the way things are,” she told Glamour.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Helen Mirren

On news that Maggie Gyllenhaal had been turned down for being ‘too old’, aged 37, to play a 55-year-old man’s partner: “It’s f***ing outrageous. It’s ridiculous. Honestly, it’s so annoying. And ’twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. It’s so annoying.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Gyllenhaal revealed she was told by a Hollywood producer that she was too old, aged 37, to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man. “It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh,” she said at the time.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep has helped fund an all-female screenwriters group called The Writer’s Lab to encourage more women to pen Hollywood scripts. She previously told Vogue in 2011: “Once women pass childbearing age they could only be seen as grotesque on some level.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Emma Thompson

The actress said she thought Hollywood is “still completely s***” when it comes to treating women equally to men. ““When I was younger, I really did think we were on our way to a better world. And when I look at it now, it is in a worse state than I have known it, particularly for women, and I find that very disturbing and sad.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Elizabeth Banks

Banks said she was driven from acting to directing due to the lack of roles for older women in Hollywood. “"[Industry sexism] drove me to direct for sure. I definitely was feeling that I was unfulfilled and a little bit bored by the things that were coming across my desk. I mean look at Gwyneth Paltrow who has her Oscar [for Shakespeare in Love] and played fifth banana to Iron Man,” she told Deadline.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Viola Davis

“I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualised role in TV or film. I'm a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualised woman. I was the prototype of the ‘mommified’ role,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Liv Tyler

The Lord of the Rings actress said she only get cast in roles where she is treated as a “second class citizen” at the age of 38. “When you’re in your teens or twenties, there is an abundance of ingenue parts which are exciting to play. But at [my age], you’re usually the wife or the girlfriend - a sort of second-class citizen. There are more interesting roles for women when they get a bit older,” she told More magazine.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Cate Blanchett

The actress famously called out sexism on the red carpet at the 2014 Screen Actors Guild Awards. When a camera operator scanned her up and down, she said: “Do you do this to the guys?” In her Oscar acceptance speech for Blue Jasmine, she reminded the film industry that movies with leading women can still be successful. “And thank you to... those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the centre, are niche experiences. They are not -- audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Ellen Page

Asked if she had ever encountered sexism in Hollywood, Page told The Guardian: ‘Oh my God, yeah! It's constant! It's how you're treated, it's how you're looked at, how you're expected to look in a photoshoot, it's how you're expected to shut up and not have an opinion, it's how you... If you're a girl and you don't fit the very specific vision of what a girl should be, which is always from a man's perspective, then you're a little bit at a loss.”

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Zoe Saldana

The actress says she refuses roles where she has to play the generic girlfriend, wife or sexy bombshell. "It's very hard being a woman in a man's world, and I recognised it was a man's world even when I was a kid. It's an inequality and injustice that drove me crazy, and which I always spoke out against — and I've always been outspoken,” she told Manhattan magazine.

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The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood

Charlize Theron

The actress spoke to ELLE about negotiating equal pay for the Snow White and the Huntsman sequel: "This is a good time for us to bring this to a place of fairness, and girls need to know that being a feminist is a good thing. It doesn't mean that you hate men. It means equal rights. If you're doing the same job, you should be compensated and treated in the same way."

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

"How did you tweet this from the year 1950?" another added.

Some Twitter users took it upon themselves to make edits to the photograph, with one altering the picture so both children have the phrase "health professional in training" written on the back of their scrubs.

Another took their edit a step further, also removing any colour from the picture.

"I de-pinked it too, for good measure. #marriedtoaladydoctor #workwithladydoctors #everysingleday," the person tweeted.

While many have concurred on the view that the photograph is sexist, some have claimed assuming the "nurse" in pink is a girl and the "doctor" in green is a boy is, in itself, a stereotypical supposition.

"Why do people assume just because someone with short hair and wears blue is a boy? The gender stereotype is pure excusable sexist [sic]," one person tweeted.

"All the replies calling this sexist and gender stereotyping are making their assumption based on what - the hair styles? Really!?" another remarked.

However, it seems the overwhelming consensus among Twitter users was that the picture does perpetuate sexist stereotypes.

"Sorry, I live in a world where women can be doctors too," one person tweeted, alongside a GIF of actor Gillian Anderson in The X-Files rolling her eyes.

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A recent study conducted by gender equality and women's rights charity the Fawcett Society claimed that being exposed to gender stereotypes in childhood can have a detrimental impact on individuals later in life.

According to the research, seven in 10 women aged between 18 and 34 who were affected by stereotypes said their career choices were restricted.

It was also found that by six years old, many children associate intelligence as a predominantly male trait.

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