Rattles and the Beginning of Gender Stereotyping

[MadrasT]

Rattles and the Beginning of Gender Stereotyping




Take these Fisher Price baby rattles--one for a girl and one for a boy. How do we know which one is which? Well, it says it right there on the packaging:

But let's take a look at these closely and note the differences. Immediately, of course, color is gender specified to the accepted pink/purple for girls and primary colors of blue/yellow for boys. The rattle for a baby girl, ages 3 to 19 months (you can't get much younger than that) is called the "Diamond Ring Rattle" Yes, because all baby girls should begin to desire what will eventually become a life long goal--to have a giant rock on their finger! The rattle for an infant boy is called the "Hammerin' Rattle." Of course, boys will be the ones to provide that rock by starting to learn a skill such as hammering. One implies passivity and a life of leisure--the other activity and learning.

For more gender reinforcement, there is the text. The little baby girl is "sweet" and the words are inside a bright pink heart with flowers. Boys, on the other hand, are "busy" in blue on red. Again, "sweet" versus "busy"...girls are described using a word that is a reflection of their disposition (God forbid you have a baby girl who is not sweet) and boys get to be busy (not sweet). Boys do, girls don't.

More at link:

http://princessfreezone.com/pfz-blog/2011/9/12/rattles-and-the-beginning-of-gender-stereotyping.html

Seeing this article today reminded me of another I saw recently:

Let Toys Be Toys Compares 1970s Toy Catalogue To Toy Marketing Today

Walk into any toy store and you'll notice a considerable amount of pink "girly" toys and darker-colored "boyish" toys. Rewind two decades, however, and you may find this stark separation by color didn't always exist.

Let Toys Be Toys, a group that asks retailers to stop classifying toys by gender, recently tweeted an image that shows how toy marketing has changed over the years. The photo on the left is a page from a 1976 toy catalogue. On the right, they placed newer, similar toys in corresponding spots.



To prove that toys are more gendered than ever before, Abadi points to research by Elizabeth Sweet who studies gender and children’s toys at UC Davis. Sweet says that toy advertisements were the least gendered around 1975, "at the height of the women's movement".

Let Toys Be Toys started a petition on Change.org to convince UK retailers to "stop promoting toys as only for boys, or only for girls". Ms. Magazine then launched a similar petition here in the U.S., specifically targeting Toys “R” Us and Disney. It reads, in part: "A little girl should feel like she can play with trucks and a little boy should feel like he can play with dolls if they want to!"

More at link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/let-toys-be-toys_n_3402972.html

Legos then:



Legos now:



I practically go into a meltdown every time I walk through the toy aisles in stores like Target because of this shit.

What the fuck has happened?

(I had that exactly Lego set when I was a kid. And wore pretty much the same scrappy clothes.)

[ismnotwasm]

1. I'm not doing it

I have 3 grandsons and 2 granddaughters and they are going to to the exact same kind of toys.

Fuck color palette sexism.

[NYC_SKP]

2. Toy stores used to be fun. Now they're just one cross-promoting advertisement.

Bright colored plastic crap, row after row, designed to promote consumerism and little more.

A typical ToysRUs store might have one shelf with scientific or hobby related material that isn't promoting some cartoon or movie crap.

The colors give one a headache.

[libodem]

3. Marketing

And advertising certainly help shape our choices in our expression of our x or y traits. I liked both boys' and girls' toys as a girl. I still do. I collect old toys and share them with my grandchildren.


The girl stuff certainly could be a little less obnoxiously, stereotypically pink. Do girls really like it or is it pounded into their brains by market researchers? Chicken or egg?

[CrispyQ]

4. Retch. They've pink-ified everything. I would hate those toys.

Blue is, & always has been, my favorite color. Also, every man I've seen, who dared to wear a pink shirt, looked really good in it.

Love that little red-haired girl! What a fab expression!