So...as I was perusing the WWW these last couple of weeks, I was trying to be as conscious as I could of gendered differences in marketing and presentation based on the intended target audience. I now see how easy it is to internalize what we see because gendered images and other media are everywhere! More often than not they are in your face, but we are so socialized into the gender binary and our expected roles, that we often don't even notice it.
As I was looking for my first actual post, I wanted my example to be very obvious. Well, thank you Toys "R" Us, you have made my life so much easier. Not only are there step by step instructions for parents to find the "right" type of toy for their little boy or girl, but the two categories are mutually exclusive.
If you have a girl click on the pretty pink box that says "Girls Click Here" over top of an image of two little girls playing with various kitchen accessories. Whereas if you click on the image of the lone boy playing with a military helicopter, you will be sent to a realm of toys that are designed with boys in mind. Everything from guns, swords, military action figures, tools and monster trucks!! What more could a little boy want!? When you enter the world of pink you can buy your baby girl, their very own baby girl, or more kitchen appliances, or (dare I say the dreaded "B" word) Barbie!
Thank you Toys "R" Us for doing your very best at ensuring the children of today grow up firmly rooted in the gender binary; and I guess those kids who don't fit into those two boxes will just have to shop at Zellers. Once you begin looking around at the different toys on the site, and how gendered they actually are, it almost becomes funny....in that frustrating, oppressive sort of way.
***Looie***
This site is funny. it is definatly very gendered!
ReplyDeleteLooking at how I babysit/treat my younger cousins can be a direct example of how I was socialized through gender roles. i didnt realise how early socialization could actaully stick so much.
When a little boy comes in with a scrape, I'd say "you're okay, so play!" and he'd bounce back out the door and play with Tonka trucks. When his sister came in with a pinched finger (without realising it) I said "awww sweetyy!! well if you weren't playing with that you would get hurt. let me kiss it better".
Looking back on it, i can see that girls are socialized to be 'babied' and be fragile and dependant. On the contrary, boys are taught to be rough and 'violent'.
Looking at barbie vs G-I-Joe is a good example of this. Barbie comes with all the house accessories, she's always smiling and everything is PINK. GI Joe is a macho guy who must always save the day! he goes on adventures and saves the 'helpless' woman.
It's easy to look back on how i was socialized to see it this way, but not so easy to break the cycle as it almost seems "natural" that girls play with pink "house" items, and boys are to play with trucks and outside toys.
~beautiful bombshell~
I find it almost scary just how many of examples like yours that i can think of. My real issue with such early gender-izing is for those kids who do not fit into those neat boxes...which is arguably most. If we allow kids to just be kids and play with what they want, there would be a whole heck of a lot less of the 'othering' that goes on. Parents seem to always be trying to force their child act out their respective genders (based on their sex), if we just allowed people to be people, i think it would give people a lot more room for safe self-expression and a sense of real identity...
ReplyDelete***Looie***
Ahhhh the notorious pink and blue. Everything is always so segregated, so opposite... the aisles of the toy section has one pink isle and one blue isle. It's obviously stressing the importance of conforming to one's gender. As a way of saying "we only want "normal" boys and "normal" girls, no homosexual or gender deviant children here".
ReplyDeleteI really like this example of the Toys R us website. I think the layout of it has to do with the Reflection theory we learned in class: that media and advertising reflects the values of our society. Well, we live in a society that is dominated by strict gender conformity and heterosexual relationships so it makes sense that a website like this would adopt and perpetuate these same ideals.
Everyone makes some good points!! I really like the Barbie/G.I Joe example.
Keekers
I find sites like these extremely frustrating because when I was little instead of playing Barbies like I was supposed to (as a girl) I love building things and playing road hockey. This made me feel really awkward while shopping in the boys section of toys r us. I think this awkwardness is what drives many children to conform to these binaries and gender norms.
ReplyDeleteThis also shows the pressure put on parents to follow these norms, because they dont want their child to feel like an outsider.
-princess consuela banana hammock
I spent some time looking at the toys R us page (good find by the way Looie!). I wasnt surprised that the girls section was full of barbies, and plastic food or that the boys section was full of tools and trucks. What I certainly did notice were that the educational toys for the boys were all science oriented and that the girls section were catered towards art. If art is considered "low culture" and science is "high culture" then what does that say about the binary division of genders? that women do not hold the intellect to understand things that are considered to be high culture and that boys should be pressured to be able to understand science in order to maintain their masculine status when they are older? This puts pressure onto people at a young age to try to like to learn science or art based off of their gender. Really, what I'm trying to get at here is that not only are the toys on the site gendered in a binary fashion, but so is their education.
ReplyDelete- Splinter2
I love that the pink and blue binary was mentioned.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago I was buying baby gifts for an expecting woman. Because the sex was't determined, I was told that I HAD to buy the baby yellow clothes. Somehow yellow is the only non-gendered colour.
While shopping I felt conflicted-- is any colour really neutral?
Some of my coworkers thought red was too "potent" for a baby girl, and that purple wouldn't be masculine enough for a boy. I saw the cutest green jumper but didn't want to offend the folks I work with. (Note how the discussion was shaped around girl = lack, boy = standard)
Besides, what's "potent" about a baby anyway.
And there's my rant :P
Macho muffin
I found this post really interesting. I was just in a Toys 'r' us over reading week and i was actually kind of shocked. I haven't been in one since i was quite young. It was interesting to see the gigantic walls of pink barbies and other dolls for girls. Almost everything was pink.The boy's sections however, were a whole array of colours; blue, green, gray, white, orange, yellow, red -just about every colour with the exception of pink and purple. Why were all of these colours considered appropriate for boys and only two colours for girls? I've always wondered why is it that there is such a strong gender association with colour.
ReplyDelete-Cat Woman
My friend is going to have a baby, and she had an ultrasound done and was told that it is going to be a girl, but that they cannot be 100% sure yet. Anyways I went to chapters to get a picture frame for the ultrasound image. You can get frames specifically for ultrasound images (of course lol) that have either a pink or blue border. Anyway I automatically go to grab the pink border frame and stop, not bc I am ashamed of my perpetuation of the pink blue division, but bc I said to myself, "Well I should wait till I know for sure that its going to be a girl before I get this frame" bc heaven forbid she has a boy and his ultrasound image has a pink border! My word. What's funny though is that my actions all came very "naturally" it wasn't until after that I noticed how ridiculous those actions had been.
ReplyDeleteIt's very interesting how our actions are controlled in many ways by how we have been socialized. I wonder, on a day to day basis, how many things we don't do bc we know it defies the gender role we think we have to stick to.
Shadows Dreaming
Shadows Dreaming,
ReplyDeleteIt happens to the best of us. The sad part is that we have to wait until we are paying for school 'til we realize just how socialized we are.
I honestly usually refuse to walk into these type of stores (Toys R Us) because they are strategically built to draw in people to certain areas (pink for girls and vice versa). If it is necessary for me to buy toys, I almost immediately think of clothes and books, because toys are always the same thing, geared to the same gender, each year there are just more hazards on the toys, honestly (too many scare stories). Years ago when I went into Toys R Us it was gender divided in the same way and I do not expect it to change anytime soon. I am honestly waiting for the day there are blue trucks for girls, or even both genders. And the website....omg, it is getting from bad to worst. The website is another way to advertise besides commercials and because kids are more frequently internet-savvy, they do as much subliminal messaging as they (heads of these toy stores) can.
Aaliyah jasmine