A friend posted this on facebook and it was so perfect I couldn't not do a blog post about it. I love this picture for so many reasons. As the mother of
two little girls, I’m constantly surrounded by the typical “girl” toys. I
remember one year I went Black Friday shopping for Christmas gifts for my girls
and one of the things that I wanted to get was some hot wheels cars. No one
said anything outright to me, but I got a lot of funny looks like people
thought I was crazy. My girls are extremely girly, for lack of a better word,
especially my oldest. She loves anything princess and frilly and flowery and I
could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. I’ve tried hard to make sure that
they don’t only have what has been determined to be “girl” toys. I seriously
had to struggle with the decision to not pay an additional $75 for their play
kitchen to get more gender neutral colors instead of the pastels that I ended
up getting. I don’t feel like I have any support from anyone else in my life in
my worries about things like this.
When I was a kid, I loved Barbies and dolls and dress up.
But I would spend a lot of time with my brother’s Legos. Yes my brothers' Legos,
I was given Barbies and they were given Legos. I loved both and wanted to play
with both. Fortunately my home was an environment where sharing was encouraged
and even required so I got to play with both, but why didn’t I just have both?
In my parent’s defense I think I asked for the things they gave me at least
about half of the time. I didn’t realize anything beyond that I like to play
with my brother’s toys and wanted some. beyond that. Now
that I know more and have studied more, I realize how much a part of our life
these rules about what girls play with and what boys play with have become.
I love that the child that was given both toys played with
them together in the way that she wanted. That’s all what being a kid is about
is using their imagination and learning through play. Why limit them to toys
that have been determined to be for their gender. Cars and dolls can both be
equally fun for anyone, it shouldn’t have to be that boys play with cars and
girls play with dolls.
I really enjoyed reading this blog post. You talked about your daughters taste in styles of toys and even your own background of toys in your own youth. I myself babysit for a little girl that is three and I found it interesting asking her this past Christmas what she wanted as of new toys. When her and I looked through the Toys 'R Us paper she only pointed to the pictures of the "pink" toys. Already at three she is picking and choosing what matches with her "gender." She even told me she preferred the pink guitar over the darker grey/blue colored guitar! I thought it was so silly because no matter the color, the toys did/perform the same tasks. I just ended up getting her a Barbie Cinderella doll because I know she enjoys the Cinderella movie. The whole "gender" specific toys thing bothers me even and I don't have children of my own...yet. I feel you're doing the right thing giving your girl's amplitude of choices when it comes to toys because that is the way things should be. And lastly, the picture attached is hilarious! You gotta love kids!
ReplyDeleteHi Jill, I liked your post about the gender stereotypes, especially the picture. I have two children of my own, a boy (oldest)and my toddler (will be 2 in June). So when my son was little, my husband and I did like any other parents would bought only the gender type toys for him. He loved all his race cars even until these days, he still has most of them. Now that we have a daughter, we try not to buy her all the girly toys and I think it's kind of working consider that she goes to daycare where there are 4 other girls, 3 of them are a couple years older. They are influence by all the girl toys and funny thing is everytime I'd drop my daughter off they're all run up to me and brag about they have makeup and barbies (so cute and innocent) and I look at my daughter, she wouldn't touch any of their barbie dolls that are there but she loves playing race cars with her brother. I totally know how you feel about the rules and how the markets make it so much harder for parents. I'm sorry but I refused to buy two different type of bubblebaths because one has a picture of Transformers and the other has Barbie Doll or Disney Princesses. I'd buy Johnson brand and sometimes SpongeBob (only because they both like SpongeBob).
ReplyDeleteIt's really fascinating to me how splitting products into gendered versions is all about making money. Even with something as simply as bubblebath, there has to be girl version and a boy version. How is that something should be gendered?
ReplyDeleteHey Jill,
ReplyDeleteI really like your post because I try to change the toys/clothing in my neices lives. They both have brothers, but are obbsessed with pink. Although the younger pair do tend to try ad share toys with each other, which means there mom dictates whose turn it is. I enjoy the pictre a lot with your post because it makes me feel happy that some little girls do help mix their pure pink gender toys with some of the "boy" toys. It is hard to find any toys that are gender neutral, not to mention affordable. It is so ridiculus that toys are in two color ranges. Blue and pink, pink and blue. My second youngest newphe gets yelled at by his father because he likes to play with his sister's dolls and stuffed animals. He is three and she is four. I tend to call him out on that. I think there just needs to be a afforadable toy store that only sells toys in neutral colors; that store would probably make a decent amount of money from the parents with both boys and girls as children. Children lives should not be dictated be their gender.