Gender Stereotypical Toys

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.

Miss Representation

To oversimplify things, I think a lot of what the film was addressing is summed up in the statement that one of the people made that our world has always been this was and people don't question it. We get comfortable in our status quo and aren't interested in hearing anything that might be better. Change makes people uncomfortable. I subscribe to the same method of thought. I like my comfortable little life, and don't want to change things even if it would be for the better. People have accepted that women are portrayed the way they are in the media because that's the way it has always been. If you were to ask most of the men that are creating and promoting media that depicts women as less than men, they are probably not even aware of the fact that they are doing it. Of course there will always be those that are aware they have those attitudes and have no problems with the fact that the promote those ideas, but I think that those are in the minority. People accept what has always been going on in their life, usually without a lot of questioning. The first step to any real change is getting people to be aware that there is a problem.