NO MORE BOYS AND GIRLS: CAN OUR KIDS GO GENDER FREE?, BBC2, 9pm
WE must stop treating our boys and girls differently or they’ll never achieve equality. So says Dr Javid Abdelmoneim and, in this “provocative” experiment, he makes a class of primary school children go “gender neutral”.
I thought this was a load of trendy nonsense. Children think boys and girls are fundamentally different, we’re told. To prove his point, we have children mumbling that girls are pretty and men go to work. What else do they think? That puppies are cute and it would be really cool to be a spaceman? (sorry, spaceperson.)
It’s daft to draw conclusions about gender inequality because some nippers like pink dresses and some like robots. We should be campaigning for a world where a girl can wear a plastic tiara whilst proclaiming she wants to be a scientist. Let girls be girls and let them also be fiercely ambitious. One needn’t cancel out the other.
THE SEVEN AGES OF ELVIS, SKY ARTS, 9pm
THE grim anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred last week. The former was marked with its usual peaceful ceremonies of sending lanterns down the river, but the latter was overshadowed in the media with careless talk of a nuclear war with North Korea.
There’s no way to ignore these horrors, so let’s unashamedly indulge in yet another anniversary, one which is about music and glitter and style and rebellion.
With no apology, let’s remember the 40th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley, and remember the good things America has given us. This feature-length documentary splits Elvis’s colourful life into seven ages, going from the poor little kid from Mississippi to his life as a soldier, then to his career as a rebellious singer and heartthrob, to washed-up has-been, to filthy-rich Vegas act. Decades after death, he’s still making money and pulling in the crowds.
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