An Out of the Box conversation about challenging stereotypes

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Jenny Baker co-founder of Out of The Box cards Home | Out of the Box Cards

Jenny, Daisy Mojave Holland, Grace Rae, and Phoebe Reith set up the enterprise after a successful kickstarter campaign raised initial funds back in 2018.

Hannah and I have loved their card designs right from the moment we came across their website.

We were delighted to see that they had a Pro-ageing section of cards; we’re not aware of any other card maker which promotes the notion of pro-ageing, (in the UK).

Our conversation began with hearing about what motivated them to set up the enterprise; especially as they all had other day jobs. Their experience was that most birthday cards for girls had very stereotypical gender images and text. It was an act of passion to produce cards that presented different messages of celebration initially for girls.

Their website highlights their values driven mission to change attitudes and thinking about gender, to offer positive, empowering messages of celebration.

Jenny remembered some comments made to her in the early stages of the business being set up, it was highlighting how their cards would stay on the mantelpiece for some weeks after the birthday, in a way conveying a subversive message about challenging stereotypical views about gender.

The OOTB mission behind creating wonderful designs is to challenge gender stereotypes. This chimes with the Better Birthdays’ pro ageing (anti ageist) campaign. They are both about focusing on Birthdays as times to reflect upon and bring about change in attitudes to age and identity.

Birthday cards publicly reflect the stereotypical attitudes and views about ageing and gender.

“Card producers find themselves limited in how to craft messages about gender and card exchange by what resonates with their consumers’ experiences, as perceived through research and testing. In turn, the cards produced and the way they are marketed create public discourse and imagery that reinforce and reproduce existing gendered divisions of emotional labor”. Doing Gender Difference Through Greeting Cards: The construction of a communication gap in marketing and everyday practice: Feminist Media Studies: Vol 9, No 3 (tandfonline.com)

Our experience of talking with senior executives in the greeting card industry concurs with the conclusions of this research; it highlights how difficult it is to break away from this cycle of mutual limitation and reinforcement between consumers and producers.

I remarked to Jenny that I was struck by the statement in the “About Us” section of their website.

“Young women are under enormous pressure to conform to a very stereotypical femininity and they need wisdom and guts to navigate that and remain true to themselves. We don't want to contribute in any way to the message that what’s most important about them is their appearance or their size, even through a poor choice of birthday card. The girls we know are intelligent, creative, bold and full of potential. We want to celebrate all that's amazing about them, not put limits on who they are and what they might become. We’ve created cards, designed with girls in mind, that expand their horizons and treat them as adventurous, active and brave. “

The aspirational, affirmative language seemed to encapsulate the very positive approach to ageing that we were pursuing and the statement could apply to cards for people of any age.

Hannah and I have been working on various programmes over the past 10 years or so to change attitudes to ageing. The experience of delivering our Restor(y)ing Retirement as a part of the Transitions in Later life Programme made us decide to focus upon ageing across the life course. We found that many people coming up to retirement were tending to sleep walk into the societal expectations of retirees, after a lifetime of internalised ageism many had entrenched self-limiting beliefs about what was “expected” of them, what one should or shouldn’t do at that time of life. So much is focused upon “mopping up the mess” with people aged 50+ and little on changing the status quo and cultural attitudes to ageing throughout life.

So the Out of the Box mission behind their cards really resonates with our thinking behind ageing across the life course. OOTB cards affirm a person’s potential, support their dreams and hopes for the future and aim to bring out and celebrate the best (and uniqueness) of the person, whatever their age.

Birthday cards are an opportunity for everyday conversations with family, friends and colleagues to challenge and change our attitudes about how we feel about ourselves, be that ageing, gender or identity.

Our conversation concluded on words of optimism; we both felt there was an appetite for change emerging, challenging gender stereotypes as well as ageing.