Toy rant.

[danuv]

My mother took me to Toys R Us today to shop for Rhiannon's birthday presents. It irks me how totally gender based everything seems to be. Even the building sets are gender-ized now, house building sets in pretty girly colors for the chics and construction crew or alien space hero sets for the boys. Grrr. She asked for a 'workout Care Bear' and luckily they seem to advertise to both boys and girls. My nephew is an avid Care Bear fan. At least Rhiannon hasn't seemed to show any interest in those Bratz dolls because there's no way on earth I'm buying her any prostitot toys. It's bad enough that her friends are into some sort of Cheetah Girls thing, which by the looks of the dvd I picked up today involves preteens dressed in provocative clothing singing and dancing. Argh.

Comments

[macaholic.livejournal.com]

About 17-18 years ago, we bought toys for our kids that were not gender based. And, you know what, that is exactly what they gravitated towards on their own...without any help from us or anyone else.

Draw your own conclusions.

[danuv.livejournal.com]

Tv and friends are powerful influences. ;) Rhiannon isn't drawn strongly towards anything super-girly. She enjoys all sorts of things. I'd like to keep her enjoying all sorts of things but it makes it hard when you have to hunt for things that aren't covered in pink sparkles. Even the craft section has the 'Make your own jewelry!' section next to the 'Make gooey bugs!' area. Now Isadora is all pink feathers and sequins. I'm sure she's been influenced by tv but I know a lot of that is just her natural personality. I'm not saying that there are no differences in what kids will be drawn to but I believe they are also profoundly influenced by the input they are given. I don't think it's a bad thing at all for Isadora to love pink and Princesses and playing house, I do think it's a bad thing for her to grow up feeling there's a role she's meant to play in life. And wether that is intentionally fed to her (as it was to me) or not, having her inundated at every turn by the 'girly' things being almost -exclusively- about appearances and motherhood IS going to send a message to her brain that will stick. I'm definitely not trying to go all PC nuts here. I just want to give her as fair a shot at having a wide open future as I possibly can.

[macaholic.livejournal.com]

I should have been a little clearer...this was when they were less than 2 and not watching any tv at all.

[birdofparadox.livejournal.com]

well, the cheetah IS a strip club :P

[danuv.livejournal.com]

Hahaha. Um yeah and those girls almost look like they belong in it.

[birdofparadox.livejournal.com]

terrifying.

[weetanya.livejournal.com]

oyvey. i think i'm moving to somewhere gender-neutral, like, um......

[thehangedman.livejournal.com]

Most of the building/construction stuff used to be marketed toward boys. Now they just have girl-friendly ones.

Etch a Sketch is red and gender unspecific!

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

My parents were very conscious about buying gender neutral toys. I had lots of dolls and stuffed animals though. My brother and I played "political associatons" with them. They had a UN-like ruling council. This is what you get when you're one of the babies politicians hand around to kiss. Apart from that, my most memorable toy was a tonka cement truck. I hope that you can still get lots of totally neutral building toys like legos -I know they have gender specific adventure packs for legos now, but the basic blocks, well, a rectangle is a rectangle is a rectangle. I hope.