“No, You Can’t Play With That”: Toys and Gender Stereotyping
In the modern world, a person can observe young boys and girls playing with distinctly different toys, with girls tending to play with dolls and boys tending to play with cars. A common belief is that toys in early childhood condition the mind for later on in life, and subtly reinforce gender stereotypes between boys and girls which continue well into adult life. Lise Eliot’s book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps - and What We Can Do About It, demystifies perceived differences between the two genders. A major component of her novel’s claim is that the external environment increases small differences between genders, including exposure to different toys at a young age and societal reactions to children playing with those toys. Along the lines of Eliot’s argument, Elizabeth Sweet has observed differences in how toys are marketed for boys and girls.
Elizabeth Sweet, a Doctoral candidate UC-Davis, studied the obvious segregation of toys in stores. Similar to the title of Eliot’s book, Sweet noticed that pink aisles presented images of “beauty and domesticity,” while blue aisles contained toys conveying “building, action, and aggression.” Contrary to belief, Sweet discovered that the toy industry possessed an unexpected advertisement trend during the 20th century. According to Sweet, gender played little to no role in toy advertising up until the World War II era. However, by the 1970s, the disparity in advertising seemed to nearly disappear, showing girls playing with airplanes and boys playing in model kitchens. The gender divide soon reappeared around 1995, with few unisex toys being marketed at young children; this marketing tactic reappeared in order to sell more toys to one group since this is an easier tactic.
Marketing at distinct genders taps into cultural beliefs; many parents hold the belief that there are distinct differences between boys and girls, which can be seen in their toy preferences. Homophobia also plays a major factor, since parents do not want to risk having their children ostracized. Culture then continues to reinforce gender stereotypes, as few people want to step out of According to Sweet, companies like Lego have tried to pair supposed preferences for toys with supposed biological differences between boys and girls; this is troublesome, since social behavior is very difficult to inference from biological observations.
One of Dr. Eliot’s most important rules for parents it to “Watch out for Stereotyping” (page 102), allowing the parents to cater to the needs of their children independent of their gender, and in turn allowing their children to reach their full potential. Further on in her book, Lise Eliot comments that children do have tendencies to play with a certain toy, but these preferences are increased by outside forces, like parental involvement. Eliot concludes that children are naturally swayed towards certain things, but social factors could also play a big part, such as parents’ subtle reactions to how children play with toys seen as acceptable or unacceptable for their gender. Eliot comments that girls can be “more flexible” than boys due to outside reactions from parents and other individuals (page 110).
Eliot believes in maximizing children’s potential, and the advertisement of toys to specific genders result in the stereotypes she sees in adults. Eliot believes in differences between boys and girls, and the advertisement is marketed to increase these differences. However, Eliot’s aim is to raise children so as to develop them to be as well-rounded as possible, rather than playing up differences between boys and girls. Eliot does not seek to make boys and girls the same; rather, she sees deficiencies, encouraged by advertising and cultural training, which limits kids’ potentials.
Advertising was made by people, and can be seen as a type of encouragement when children play with their toys. While boys and girls have natural differences, societal reactions and encouragement push them to develop certain gender norms. Sweet cites advertising of toys as one major source of changing people’s beliefs about proper behavior for the two genders, and Eliot sees the negative effect that such encouragement can have on children. Perhaps, the importance with children is not to encourage them as gendered individuals, but rather as people, allowing them to reach their full potential outside the limits of our world’s gender roles, and react positively no matter what they play with.
Works Cited
No comments:
Post a Comment