This morning I was looking through the remnants of the Sunday paper, and I picked up a catalog for toys from Target for the holiday season (yes folks, Christmas is upon us TWO months early. but that is a rant for another day). I was curious to see what kids are playing with these days. And I was shocked. I haven't really kept up with the toy market since I was about 10, but the way that the toys were divided into "Girl" and "Boy" toys was downright ludicrous.
The first half of the catalog was devoted to toys for girls. Everything, I mean everything, was pink or some other froofy pastel hue. Dolls including "Expecting Midge" (a pregnant doll) and "Bratz" (teenybopper dolls with too much makeup and skimpy clothing whose only goal in life is to shop) were featured prominently, and the catalog section was called "it's a girl thing". Meanwhile, the toys for the boys were soldiers and dinosaurs and robots. Even though the section was called "action-packed things", there wasn't a single photo of a girl playing with those toys. Even the video games were lumped together in the boys' section. It seems like gender equality has gone right out the window when it comes to toys.
Even toys that shouldn't be gender specific were coded to appeal to what a girl or boy "should" want. For instance, a bike that is EXACTLY the same in its build for boys and girls (i.e., that the bar in the center of the frame isn't sloped for the "girls" model) were colored differently, one pastel-ish, the other black and red. And the names - the girls' was "dee-lite", while the boys' named "Falcon" - were obviously geared towards "appealing" to each gender. Inline skates also come in the two separate color schemes.
Is this what we're teaching our kids? Such narrowly defined gender roles in children's toys almost certainly influence behavior and values later on in life. For girls, is being glamorous and becoming a shopaholic or being domestic and raising children the only two options that they should be taught to value? Why are so many boys' toys so focused on killing? Of course there are gender-neutral toys out there, but why are the gender-stereotypical ones featured so prominently? And why are toys that should be gender-neutral (subtly or not-so-subtly) coded to appeal to one gender or the other?
Personally, I think kids should play with boxes and pots and sofa cushions and use their imaginations, and skip the toy industry's desire to sell more useless, gender-stereotpyical merchandise.
When I was a kid the most fun I had was when my Mom got a new refrigerator.
I got the box. Out in the front yard for like four days, I was the cool kid. Forget my lack of mass amounts of Gi-Joe's and forget the fact that I had all of 2 (really old) Transformers. I had the coolest damn fort around. And it was pink...ok so it was brown but it wasn't a gender specific brown.
Funny, thing about this toy thing is. I picked up the same insert (for target) of toys and gawked at the prices, didn't even get to noticing these gender issues. But then again, Tracie always says I notice te money first. Ah, damn, I must be getting old, pragmatic and practical.