Working Through It: December 2011

There has been a lot written lately about the way most toys are very strongly gendered so that they are either "for boys" or "for girls". Parents have long found this frustrating and have worried about the impact. If your little boy likes Dora, or your little girl likes Ben 10, tough luck - you cannot buy any "gender neutral" merchandise for these characters, whether it's toys, clothes or lunch boxes.

Lego Friends
This month Lego launched a range for girls, which has attracted some controversy. Lego's market research showed that girls' interests are beauty, community, design and friendship; girls like to play make-believe in an indoor-worldy setting, while hanging with friends and looking pretty. Hence the Lego Friends range to meet this "need". (In other words, Lego has found a way to make its toys look just like Strawberry Shortcake and other existing toys for girls).

Lego Friends - Stephanie's Outdoor Bakery.
Yay, we girls love baking!

As a mother of girls I can attest that yes indeedy, they do like these things. But whether this is "innate" or whether it is what has been fed to them since they were one, is an unknown thing. Like most mothers I think it is a bit of both.

We all know little boys who have enjoyed playing with dolls and girls who play with trucks and Lego; at a young age all kids play with everything. Sadly and perhaps (perhaps) inevitably, this tends to disappear around 3 years of age when kids tend to gravitate towards the toys "for" their gender.

So is this necessarily a bad thing? I'm not sure. Is it limiting? I have no doubt. Is it "natural" or inevitable? I think to some degree yes, but I've no doubt we exacerbate it.

Whose fault is it?

When I found out I was having girls I happily and excitedly bought up clothes and wraps and linen in loads of pink, lemon and mauve. Having never been fond of pink, I found myself buying up pink clothes and pink everything and loving it. If I was having boys, I would have happily and excitedly bought up everything blue and green. It's natural and fun to celebrate whatever gender your kids are in this way. I always had other colours including blues, and the girls had toy cars, trucks, trains and blocks which were their favourite toys as toddlers.

Now the girls are six, they do strongly gravitate towards "girly" toys, and I do get annoyed at ads for whatever latest toys are marketed at them with emphasis on clothing design, beauty, "makeovers", baking, hanging out with pretty friends walking miniature dogs, etc. Because when they see these things, they do want them. And when they see things that are clearly aimed at boys, like Flick Tricks, Ben 10 stuff, or the rest, you can sense the peer pressure making them shy of expressing interest in these things, even if they are initially interested and even if I encourage it.

This works on boys too, of course. Squinkies look fun and exciting to all kids, but are "clearly" "for girls" - hence "Squinkies Boys" with motifs of skulls, garbage cans, ghouls etc. Hence too girls play with "dolls" while boys play with "action figures". (And why it's funny in Toy Story 3 when Ken is picked on for being "a girl's toy").

I am not too fond of Bratz dolls, but am not too bothered by Barbie. I loved Barbie when I was a kid (and Sindy - remember her?), and at least now you can buy Barbies in sporty swimsuits with flat-soled feet. Most of what I find distasteful in these toys is around the pushy marketing and the emphasis on playing with collections - a couple of dolls and a car/house/pool/camper are never enough! I get a little sick of the saccharine emphasis on friendship and the kinds of girly fun that these toys all have together such as eating cakes, having sleepovers and doing makeovers. What's wrong with having an adventure, or saving people from danger, or travelling to other worlds?

When my girls play with their Barbies, they are always going to balls, going on dates with boyfriends, or occasionally attending musketeer school; all the scenarios come from TV shows or the Barbie movies they've watched (I know, I know - but please, have girls before you judge me!). I have to admit I am shocked at how every TV show and movie for kids these days has "boyfriends and girlfriends", dating, or even marriage themes. Was it always this way?

Pink Stinks

In 2009 sisters Abi and Emma Moore started the "Pink Stinks" campaign, to protest the "pinkification" of little girls and offer more alternatives. Two years on it doesn't seem much has changed - yet. But there is definitely a feeling out there, that things are too limited for both boys and girls, and we don't want to go backwards after so many gains made in gender equality over the years.

Will the marketers catch on?

Interestingly, I have noticed that while little girls love everything pink around the ages of two to four, from the age of five or six they start to "move on" to other colours - usually via purple. (When I was a kid in school I remember it was from pink to baby blue). Thanks to school and peer pressure, my kids are now starting to reject pink as too "babyish" for them, at least in public. They'll still choose some pink things at home, but are more likely now to favour purple, tourquoise, white, blue or green.

Has the very saturation of pink created a self-limiting effect I wonder?
We can but hope.

Here are some of my favourite recent tweets on this subject:
(Apologies I have not yet worked out how to embed them prettily - will fix later if I can)