Gendered Toys

So, been spending more time in toy departments of late for new additions to the extended family, and I have to say I'm struck by how aggressively gendered and pink-or-blue the toy departments seem. Article about it in the NYT today tosses out some vague ideas of change over time since the 70s, although without hard figures.

Thoughts? I've always vaguely hated the idea of giving little girls dollhouses and pink crap and little-domestic-sphere-helper-themed toys, but by the same token I never know how much of that is feminism and me just personally not liking any of that stuff.

It can be both.

My parents just gave us whatever they thought we'd want to play with, basically. I had some awesome yellow Tonka trucks (the crane was the BEST) and Barbies (whose life was basically a soap opera. Barbie had an evil twin. Ken had an evil twin. Skipper was in danger constantly. The highlight was Evil Ken had kidnapped Skipper with the help of Evil Barbie, and if Barbie didn't raise enough money at her job of being an astronaut to pay a ransom, Skipper was going to get pushed down the basement stairs in Barbie's silver corvette!!!!!). It probably helped that there were four of us, one of us being a boy, and my parents just wanted whatever would keep us entertained. So if my brother wanted to play with dolls, PLAY WITH DOLLS, YOUNG MAN. Hell, it made them pleased his sisters were sharing.

It is pretty weird to me how it seems like even toys that "shouldn't" be gendered kinda are through color coding and stuff.

So I work for a retail company that sells the vast majority of its products to women. When we refer to our customers we generally say "she wants this" or "we know she responds well to such and such"

This is simply a market situation for us as far as I can tell. Despite significant effort, we just don't appeal to men as much as we appeal to women. I really tend to think that there are always multiple things at work...some of the gendered toy situation is likely just inertia...but it's always risky to discount market forces.

I would tend to think that the toy makers and retailers have good financial reasons to do this kind of targeted marketing.

I've been told several times that the heavy genderization of toys (and all kids and baby stuff, really) is so companies can sell the same shit twice to families with multiple kids. The pink/blue divide is a hell of a lot more pronounced now than it was when I was a kid and unisex was on trend.

Rose plays with whatever she wants and wears whatever she wants, pretty much not a single shit is given about that stuff in this house.

Yeah, the "we can sell it TWICE" thing makes a fucked up sort of sense, I guess, for pushing the pink/blue thing on toys that I don't think are ordinarily considered skewed towards one gender or another.

There is more to it that just economic reasons.
It's a cultural thing, ingrained and inherited. Changing the deeper rooted concepts of gender roles is something that will take generations still.

Presumably not generations in which we continue to retrench gender roles? Photo is epic.

My opinion on that matter is that the colour thing is only a side effect. It's only the coat of paint on the actual cultural standards. Standards that are passed on from generation to generation often unconsciously. A baby born today is not a blank slate on gender equality, the cultural memory it grows up with will heavily influence it towards a direction that formed over thousands of years, with evolutionary, cultural and practical reasons.
That's what I mean with generations and deeper issues. People focus on quotas and colours and laws concerning equality. But you can't just make equality spring to life like the right to vote. You have to slowly, patiently and consistently change the whole cultural environment, how kids grow up and teach it to their kids, over a long, long time.

It's going to the right that's horrifying.

Of course gendered concepts are old, but needless to say, that doesn't change the fact that marketing for children has become way more gendered since the 70s-80s (obvious example: LEGO), nor that the companies who do it shouldn't be named, shamed, mocked and lambasted in an effort to give children more freedom.

If companies do try to do something different, they're also liable to be confronted with a moral panic of some kind:

What I always find so fascinating is that if they (people who think we're trying to brainwash the children) truly believe that; why are they afraid of gender-neutral store and catalogue designs? Wouldn't kids gravitate towards what they want in a uniform gendered fashion? I think the "confusion" that they're so afraid of is not being told what their boys or girls (because those are the only categories that matter to them) should have according to societal prescription, not the natural order. It might be out of a sense of protecting their children's well-being, but if so, that will always to me be a sign that we should continue working to loosen up gender labels and not to beat our children over the head with the message "be yourself AS LONG AS YOU CONFORM".

I'm not sure if I'm off topic with this one or not, but I have a different sort of feeling about this subject. I don't think marketing toward a gender or color association is the biggest problem. I think people just need to not force certain standards on their kids to begin with. If society were less hard on kids fitting gender roles and saying 'That's a boy's/girl's toy, it's not for you!' or only giving them one color or style of item. Let them pick which ever they enjoy.

I was lucky as a kid, in a strange sense. My dad wanted a boy and had convinced himself I was one, so he had gathered a lot of boyish toys and stuff which I still got to have even after he found out the truth. I grew up a tomboy helping my dad with cars, but also doing girly things too. I had trucks and an easy bake oven, and I liked both, y'know? And I think I came out kind of well-rounded for being treated that way.

I got lucky again though, because in the part of American culture I grew up in, gender roles are much more leiniant for girls. It's not as shocking to see a tomboy in pants and playing with bugs and trucks and dudes, as it is to see a boy in a tiara doing make up with the girls. And I'm not gonna lie, I'd double take if I went to the park and saw one or two boys in tutus and lipstick with a group of girls, so I can get parent's shock. But that's more of what I would encourage to go away, that reaction over time. It'd be better if we could just say, it's kids playing, regardless of how they go about it.

My point is, I don't think you should change the toys or colors into all unisex. I think that's kind of extreme and would take a degree of fun out of certain things. When you get to sterile and non-offensive it's boring. Sometimes I like to do 'girly stuff' and enjoy it for what it is. I would just hope that things get less labeled as ONLY for one gender, and that anyone could enjoy what makes them happy without being told they're 'wrong.' I don't think it will ever change that certain toys/fads/styles will appeal more to one gender than another, but so what? I don't think you'll ever stop people from marketing toward what they think would sell. They wouldn't make any money if they didn't target certain audiences.

TL;DR: I don't think color marketing influences kids as much as their parents'/imidiate society's perceptions of what they 'should' be enjoying. I think kids should just be allowed to pick what they want to play with, without it all being designated generic so as not to imply one gender or another is an acceptable receipiant.

Teddybear of Death, while I appreciate your point, especially when it comes to the fear of boys being feminine, but I do react a bit at this notion that the people who are against the form gender takes today wants everyone to be all alike in some kind of boring, drab, grey existence of conformity. The alternative to boy things and girl things isn't a single gender identity in the middle, it's opening up the entire spectrum of behaviours and styles for everyone to adopt according to their character which includes what we call male and female behaviours (though perhaps the more toxic would fall by the wayside), just as the alternative to blue and pink isn't grey, it's a rainbow.

Some stuff is built in though - I have noticed that little girls love babies. Our 13-month old, who basically has only her brother's toys to play with, and can barely walk, will try to to chase down as poke babies. Thomas has never cared that much. I have seen this many times with many kids.

But culture also plays a very big part. We want to walk a fine line between stereotyping and trying to enforce neutrality. That catalog sounded awesome.

I noticed in the states when I went to a baby store how heavily and neatly the blue/pink split was. I figure it was due to most everyone knowing the sex of the baby before it pops out. In NZ I think/guess more people chose not to know so one does see far more neutral clothing and early toy options.

I was also disappointed that blue and pink were pretty much the only colors on offer. To a degree the big shops follow the trend here. My wife likes to shop at craft markets (real world etsy type stuff - plenty in Wellington) simply to get kids clothes with a wide range of style and colors.

My post wasn't directly in reply to your btw, I read yours after I posted because we were writing at the same time! Whoops.

I can understand that, having more colors that are not associated with a gender. I don't have a link to it on hand, but I know recently a little girl petitioned for neutral colored Easy Bake Ovens because her brother liked baking but didn't want a pink thing, and they decided to do it! They're making silver and another color that is not gender specific. I'm down with that. Why should cooking be directed only at girls? It's a life skill and pleanty of famous chefs are male.

I just really do fear the extremism people love to adopt in making everything generic as possible to not offend. Maybe that's a product of living in the states though. In school if you show any sign of having a religion or culture they try to play it down or you can even be punished for it! People take things too far. You put forth a resonable subject like this, and it turns into a monster and nobody's happy. Like awesome catalog with reverse roles as seen above. xD That's not what we meant at ALL.

Part of my thinking also is, if the gender role stereotypes die back a little, the gender-specific color marketing wouldn't be the most profitable means of action for the companies either. Thus, problem resolving itself if they start making colors that appeal to the more mixed market. But that's a waaay in the future cultural evolution thing, moreso than a plausible immidiate solution.

Eh, it's not a universal "built in" thing. My brother was super interested in babies, more than I was. Are girls more likely to love babies? Sure, I guess? But that doesn't mean a girl who doesn't give a crap about babies is weird. She just doesn't like babies. And that's what needs to be accepted.

Biology isn't destiny, dammit!

In these last few years I have to buy christmas presents for my nephews so I know what you're talking about. When I was little I don't remember such a sharp distinction between toys for girls and boys, now in a toy store you can spot the different sections from miles away since the colors are totally divided.
I'm a guy, but I hate to much to pass through the girl sections and see kitchens, crips, babies, etc. as if the only role for a girl is to be a "perfect housewife" and so she has to practice when she's still young. I feel the same for boy's toys that relate to specific jobs, like a toy workbench where a boy can imagine to be, say, a carpenter.
At the end of the day I think that colors difference is just the tip of the iceberg, what I find most horrible is that toys hints to specific roles you have to fulfill in society, as if you're predestined to do that. That's why I prefer more generic games that entertain you and let you acquire some coordination and improve your reasoning.

I don't really mind that some explicitly girly or explicitly boyish toys/clothes/whatever exist, it's really the pervasiveness of the divide that is annoying. Do we really need to make everything gendre-specific? Also, the specific decisions that manufacturers make when deciding which things are for girls and which things are for boys can often be offensive. I get annoyed when I see firefighters and police-themed toys pushed explicitly to boys (What? Girls can't be firefighters?), or cooking and cleaning-themed toys pushed explicitly for girls (Boys can't be cooks?). That sort of shit pisses me right off.

Purple? I saw one at Wal-mart the other day. I had one as a kid and I was more surprised at how different it looked in general moreso than the color it was. It looked like some sort of space microwave to me.

Actually, I did some Googles and it looks like the new ones are both mainly silver with either a pinkish purple or teal accent color.

Looks like standard colour triad (or tetrad) centered around slightly shifted pink. Kids' skin colour and other orange parts provide the final colour on the packages.

(at the same time it means the toys come with both the 'pink' and 'blue' colouring --rotate the selection by ~30% to see it better-- so, progress i guess)

It's fucking dumb that we socially condition kids into professions based on gender, and it's especially fucking dumb that this arbitrary typing uses legacy professions like carpentry.

Also toys should have MORE SPARKLES because sparkles are awesome and make me happy.

Don't read tooooo much into my post. I mean to say that there is a tendency - not destiny.

For example, even female and male chimps seem to demonstrate SOME gender-related toy preference play: http://news.discovery.com/animals/female-chimps-dolls-sticks-101220.html

This sort of realization doesn't mean we give up on toy "equality", it does make it harder to provide choices that don't automatically make some girls and some boys feel alienated and harder to discern if kids are just bowing to peer pressure and advertising rather than their own preferences.

An example of annoying toy typing: my wife wants to find a kitchen set for the kids that isn't pink as both kids enjoy playing cooking (and shopping), but it is quite a bit harder than one would hope: all the cheap sets are heavily color typed, the expensive $300+ sets tend to be more stylish with more color options... But...$300+

Hm, I was interested in getting Rose a kitchen playset for a while and at the time I was pretty impressed that only about 1/3rd of the playsets I saw were pink. Quickly browsing Toys R Us.com seems to be backing up my memory, but it's entirely possible that what they stock in the physical locations is highly gendered to match how pink they make the aisles and only their online selection has the unisex options.

The only cooking set I can think of off the top of my head that wasn't horrendously gender-targeted was a McDonald's kitchen set, which had McD's colors all over it.



Still a disturbing toy, but for completely different reasons.

http://www.toysrus.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=3254086

Really, that has a huge range of kitchens at all price points.

We got our son a toy kitchen when he was two. Green and white mostly. He's outgrown it now though - he uses it to block the door to his playroom when he's sulking these days.

Pssh, this is nothing new. There was a boy version of that thing when I was a kid:



I mean yes, you were expected to use it to make disgusting gummy worms and insects instead of brownies, but that's only because everyone knows that boys have a natural distaste for baked goods and prefer to eat garden pests.

The range of stuff available in NZ differs from what is available in the US.

That makes sense.

As an aside, I hear the girls Lego line has gone gangbusters. None left in NZ - and my niece wanted some so bad my sister had to get a friend to bring it in.

Now, Lego is an awesome unisex toy, but definitely has a "boyish" sensibility in most of the sets. The Lego Friends line is definitely girly, but I like that both styles of Lego still involve the same sort of creative play. It is as good a compromise as any and it seems kids respond to it - either through "generic" choices (Lego City, etc) or a more gender typical set

Lego Friends has apparently had a massive impact on Lego's profits this year. One thing that always strikes me about Lego is that certain lines may be designed to appeal more to boys or be based on franchises that are typically aimed at boys but lego's marketing is actually fairly neutral - I can't think of any Lego ads that actually show enough of the person(s) playing with the sets to reveal a particular gender.

And, of course, it's easy to point at the Friends line and claim that Lego are perpetuating gender role reinforcement but that line is based on a lot of market research and focus testing and appears to be exactly what girls want from a Lego set.

I think they're just trying to double sales, you guys are over thinking this stuff.
Everything was gender specific when I was a kid.

Think our son's kitchen set was blue and white.
He destroyed it with his Playskool tool set.

You might not be aware, but that's an issue.

THEY STILL HAVE THOSE AND I STILL WANT ONE! My mom's weirded out by gummy worms of all things, that's enough reason to want to waggle them around! And that's the true nature of a child not girly or boyish, but with an intense desire to be annoying. xD

Do y'all remember the Creepy Crawler kit that made rubber, non-edible critters and involved really hot metal molds? That, and my wood-burning kit, are two of my most dangerous (and favorite) childhood toys.

I just bought a few kilos of fireworks for new years. My wife thinks it's crazy but both girls love it (and have no concept of money).