Let’s say you’re a little girl in a toy store. You walk down the aisles, touching all of the toys available to you. How lovely to have all of these things to play with! You finally land on a box of action figures. When you show them to your mother, she wrinkles her nose at the superheroes and army men. “Wouldn’t you like a doll instead? ” she asks. You don’t know how to answer. Maybe she’s right. After all, that’s what all the other girls want. Now you’re a little boy, and you don’t want those building blocks. You’re hooked on the barbie doll. Your father just shakes his head in disgust.
Find a toy more appropriate, son. ” But you don’t know what that word means. You just know that trucks are what all the other boys want. You suppose that’s what you should want too. This happens to children every day – but they’re not learning about the toy. They’re learning about reality, and what they can and can’t be. When you go to Target’s website, they have a “toy searcher. ” You can enter things like age, budget, character, and, unsurprisingly, gender. Here’s what’s frightening about that. When I click in “girl,” you can no longer click on Paw Patrol or Avengers in the character bar.
But it’s not like they disappear inconspicuously. You can see them, you just can’t click on them. Like they’re telling girls, here’s what you can play with. Here’s what you can’t. Furthermore, if you click Disney Princess and go to the gender bar, you can’t click boys. From the ages of 0-9, pretty much everything you do is gendered – to a pretty ridiculous point. And trust me, this isn’t a mistake. The toy industry feeds off of and benefits from these gender roles. This can really harm children in the long run – and that’s exactly the point of this essay.
Gender roles for children (in clothes, toys and the media) are, in all seriousness, ruining our society. Target, Kohl’s, and Fat Brain Toys all gender their toys on their websites. The especially scary part of that is that those are the first three websites that came up on my search for “kids toys. ” So why do we love gender? Professor Blakemore of NAEYC did a survey. She asked people to check whether the toys she presented to them were very feminine, somewhat feminine, gender neutral, somewhat masculine, or very masculine.
She found that toys that are very gendered are usually not conveying educational or positive messages – very feminine toys are focused on physical beauty, while very masculine toys focus on aggression and fighting. On the other hand, somewhat gendered toys help teach children skills for adulthood – somewhat feminine toys teach about cleaning, cooking and taking care of children, while somewhat masculine toys teach about building. No matter a child’s gender, they need somewhat gendered toys for both genders to teach them important skills for the future.
Kids who don’t conform to their gender’s stereotypes and norms face bullying from their peers and even disappointment and scorn from their parents. Toys teach kids what it means to be a boy/girl in a simple way that they can understand. When those tough questions are simplified, it’s absolutely addictive to children. This can be very limiting in the long run, as it basically cuts a kid’s potential in half. On the other hand, Richard Gottlieb of Fatherly claims kids are starting to be done with it. He says the toy industry has slowly lost its girl costumers as they become encouraged to pursue more traditionally masculine interests.
Unfortunately, boys are still buying it. That may be because gender roles take a much stronger hold in boys than in girls. In my surveys with elementary school kids, every boy answered no to ‘Would you ever wear a dress to school,” (excepting one answer of “Yes, people would laugh at me, and I like that”) while girls had varied answers to other stereotypical questions, such as “can girls play sports. ” But girls do feel a lot of pressure to get married and settle down. In my surveys, almost all girls said a definitive yes to both getting married and having kids.
Those who did not have a definitive yes said things like “I don’t know,” “it depends,” and “maybe. ” The most definitive no I got was “not really. ” Children also feed off of what they’ve been raised by when it comes to gay marriage and transgendered people. I got almost no “I don’t knows” for my question of “do you think marrying another girl/ boy would be weird” – it was either a definitive yes or a definitive no, usually with no shortage of exclamation points. From the ages of 0-9, everything you wear, play with, watch on TV, or even eat, conforms to your gender.
The toy industry is utilizing children’s discomfort with their gender for profit. You may think this doesn’t make a difference, but it’s affecting children’s mindset. You say gender roles don’t exist? Walk down a toy aisle. Watch little kid shows. Even just talk to someone under the age of nine. We force kids to believe in girl clothes and boy clothes, girl toys and boy toys, even girl colors and boy colors – and then freak out at them once they reach about the age of ten, telling them that “we’re all equal” and “you can be anything you want to be”.
If they’re under ten it’s “cute” and they’re just “pursuing their natural interests”, and then you make this random switch on them and all of a sudden it’s sexism and misogyny. Am I the only one who sees anything wrong with that? Take a step back and watch what you’re doing, because when you tell that little girl that she can’t play with those building blocks, “wouldn’t you like a doll instead,” you, my friend, are no longer talking about a toy.