I started a blog about this sort of thing over here: http://whatarewetraining.wordpress.com/

However, I don't have the time to keep it up. Anyone who is interested in taking over the blog, send me an email: whitneyarlene@gmail.com

I just want to see the idea go somewhere...

I noticed one of the saddest (to me) examples of this a couple of weeks ago when visiting a Target toy section with my mom, to pick out presents for two of my young (10 & 7) girl 2nd cousins. This was probably the first occassion/need I've had to shop for toys since I was a kid 20+ years ago....anyway, I went straight to look for the lego section, as such were some of my favorite toys back in the day. I was dismayed to see, at least in this particular Target store, the only lego toys available were very gender-specific boy toy sets, designed to build star-wars (& other supposedly boy-themed pop culture examples) play sets, and the likes. This was so disappointing, partially just to see legos so pop-culturally co-opted, but especially to see legos completely co-opted, and marketed explicitly to boys only. What happened to the comparatively genderless, uncommercialized primary colored blocks from when I was a kid? And when did legos decide only boys like playing & building with the blocks & sets?? So sad to see a toy like legos gone by the way of gendered marketing strategies....

what is the saddest part is that most people dont think twice about this stuff or buying such gendered toys for children. its horrible. they are like well of COURSE you get a pink kitchen set for a girl. duh. thank god my parents werent like that, and i grew up playing with trucks.

I work at a small independently-owned toy store and most things are just catorgized by type, not sex segregated. But people come in and look for very specific things for girls and different things for boys, it's sooooo frustrating. You can't just blame the store, frankly. If there was more of a demand for gender neutral toys and for less pink princesses, Target would be arranged differently. A woman a few weeks ago was looking for a toy for her 3 year old granddaughter and I went on and on about these great new remote control cars made for younger kids and she gave me SUCH a look of complete horror and said, "She's a girl."

And of course, it's not just little girls whose choices are limited. Why don't we let kids decide what kinds of things they want to play with and how they want to explore before they're bombarded with propaganda about boys vs. girls? It's EVERYWHERE. Grr.

personally, i would also like to add that girls toys arent things i wouldnt generally give to ANY child bc they are vapid and usually involve things like barbies and other stuff i dont consider to be a good message for EITHER gender. so no, i wouldnt want boys playing with "girl" toys either really.

The pink is hideous. When my son was 2 (he's 15 now), kitchen playsets came in teal green and beige--a bit more gender neutral. We had one. He loved it. He was really into cooking shows and wanted a kitchen. He played with the kitchen, dishes and food for hours.

Legos were my favorite toys ever. Stuff from their catalog only took TWO weeks to come. The best Lego set of all time was the pirate ship. And no, it wasn't some movie tie-in. It was a pirate ship that you built out of legos, and it just don't get any hotter than that.

Yeah, I'm female. But my mother kept my hair cut really short when I was little and so people used to think I was a boy. The nice thing about that is that nobody ever thought it was weird that my favorite toys were blocks. When I got older, I loved my electronics sets.

Oh. And now I do applied physics.

This is one issue that really burns me up. OK, fine, there are A LOT of issues that burn me and this is one of them.
My guess is that independently-owned toy stores might be slightly less gender-segregated. But attitudes of the public are still so traditional; it's depressing.
I rarely eat fast food but the other day I stopped in a McDonalds while on a long drive. The woman in front of me in line was with her two sons. She ordered a Happy Meal for one and the girl taking her order asked, "Boy or girl?" The answer was boy, obviously; my heart sunk when I heard her say it. I'm sure it's probably what McDonalds makes everyone ask. So my frustration is with a system that asks "boy or girl" when giving toys to children. How about, "Hello Kitty toy or Transformers toy?" Gah. It probably won't happen in my lifetime.

(Where, oh where did the girl-pony phenomena originate?)

A friend of mine had a theory about this. Let's just say, it involved a memory she had of riding her horse, and an orgasm...

I worked at a McDonald's right out of college (English major, of course), and they trained us at the time to ask which Happy Meal toy parents wanted by name (Hot Wheels or Barbie?), not by gender. But that was the nineties, and things may have backslid by then.

I do think it's good, though, that the toys themselves aren't as relentlessly gendered as they once were. I can get my nephew a toy kitchen that's not pink and frilly, for example.

I can sort of empathize with the folks who build the Target website, though. Gender norms are a fairly accurate reflection of the majority, and there's really nothing wrong with that, as long as description doesn't become prescription.

But how do you build a website that serves the needs of the many without making the few feel marginalized? I don't know the answer to that, but I'm pretty sure there's a better one than big banners that'd make you think that girls wouldn't like a remote controlled car, or that boys don't like toy kitchens.

Speaking of, why is the toy grill under "Girls' toys"? Every good chauvinist knows that girls don't grill!

(Where, oh where did the girl-pony phenomena originate?)

A friend of mine had a theory about this. Let's just say, it involved a childhood memory she had of riding her horse, and an orgasm...

I'm totally not arguing with you about the fact that gender roles are conditioned... but as far as argument technique, I'm not sure how well Target.com is going to work. Won't most people who don't think gender is conditioned simply argue that there is pink stuff for girls because girls like pink?

speaking as someone who horseback rode for 10 years, i think the notion of a girl and a horse is far more innocuous then driving home the point that women should be in the kitchen. girls and horses do have a special bond (not sure if its moreso then boys and horses) but until you know what you are talking about in terms of that lifestyle and love of an animal i am not sure its something that is condemnable.

as for the orgasm thing...i HAVE heard its possible lol.

Girls may or may not like pink - this is likely HIGHLY related to people like the grandmother in lilaeden's toy store. If you're taught that girls like pink, lo and behold, they end up liking pink! I explored the target website a bit and was so disheartened - they create this false split of "for boys" and "for girls" - when it might not even be there after you click the link. Example: under the 'sports' link (CLEARLY only for boys), there are girls in the ads (i.e. for swimming accessories). I don't know what kind of mixed message this is sending. And I was the most sad to see 'science' under the boys column only. Sigh. I miss my ant farm.

On a related note - my best friend has a 6 month old daughter that she regularly dresses in green and blue, because well, she LIKES those colours. It doesn't bother her when people mistake the baby for a boy (why would it really?), but what bothers her is the look of shock and confusion when she tells them the baby is a girl... we don't expect grown women to dress in pink all the time (I would guess that a ton of women's fave colour is blue actually...) - so why do we expect the same from babies? Oh right, because we gotta get them while they're young ;)

*cough*

i still buy "my lil ponies." for myself.

but when i was a little kid, my ponies went on world-saving adventures with my brother's ninja turtles. i also made my own swords, because while my mother would buy toy swords for my brother, she wouldn't for me.

you can still find non-gender legos, but they're for small children.

I would venture to guess that historically the girl/pony thing goes back to some sort of upper class gendered expectation. When families were "landed" or "planters" they typically had an equestrian portion to their estate. Boys were taught to ride to hunt, be overseers, etc....girls were given ponies at a young age and taught to ride sidesaddle like proper "ladies." Just an educated guess.

On the note of the McDs toys - this really bothered me when my daughter was young. We don't go to McDs much anymore, and rarely when she was little - but when we did, she would get a Happy Meal. I would ask Emily what toy she wanted and she would typically answer Hot Wheels over Barbie....I never posed the question to her, "girl or boy?" But sometimes would have to answer the drive thru person "boy".

Think about those McD toys and the expected "place" of boys/girls.....take the theory that men act/women appear - and those toys fit right in. Most of the boys' toys move, have wheels, or somehow have motion and moving parts. The girls' toys are generally motionless and more for looking at that actually playing with. That isn't ALWAYS the case, but I could make the argument for it based on statistics. Interesting.

Of course Bratz and Barbie dolls take the conversation to a whole new level - but that's a conversation left for another day.

I don't have children yet, but hopefully by the time I do there are plenty of toys aimed at boys and girls. I know already my kid won't get anything princess for one, I find that the most annoying thing retailers are trying to get little girls to buy into. And definitely will have a very limited supply of pink in her room.

My daughter calls this the "sea of pink" whenever we are in one of these stores. Did you all know that when you get a happy meal from McDonalds (ew) that they ask whether the meal is for a girl or boy in order to determine which toy to include? My daughter reported this to me a couple of years ago and I've since asked around. Seems it's pretty typical.

Not too long ago, a friend and I browsed the children's section at Target and found that 95% of "girls' toys" look (and often fragrantly smell) like whores, while any "boys' toys" have age-appropriate features, clothing and physiques (i.e. no huge tahs with unrealistically curvy figures, over-sexualized lips and eyes, and revealing clothing). If I ever decide to put myself through having children, you can guarantee I will scrutinize their play-things.

Not too long ago, a friend and I browsed the children's section at Target and found that 95% of "girls' toys" look (and often fragrantly smell) like whores, while any "boys' toys" have age-appropriate features, clothing and physiques (i.e. no huge tahs with unrealistically curvy figures, over-sexualized lips and eyes, and revealing clothing). If I ever decide to put myself through having children, you can guarantee I will scrutinize their play-things.

“If there was more of a demand for gender neutral toys and for less pink princesses, Target would be arranged differently.�

“Gender norms are a fairly accurate reflection of the majority, and there's really nothing wrong with that, as long as description doesn't become prescription.�

I think there’s a reciprocal transaction between demand and supply and description and prescription. The supply creates a demand as well as vice versa. Gender norms ARE prescribed and most people go along and thus the normative also reflects the majority.

My kids (a girl and a boy) always wore greens, reds, yellows, browns, etc. which were readily available, but now when I buy gifts, I’m appalled at how much more gendered clothes and toys are. Is it a backlash? Is it a misrepresentation of what 3rd wave feminism is all about? I don’t know, but I know I don’t like it.

p.s. the little toy stove looks so 1950s.

All the toys I've seen at Ikea are pretty gender neutral, and they have some of the best play-kitchen ware I've seen. In case anyone's looking.

I played with Legos as a kid and my mom and I actually wrote a letter to the Lego company asking why there weren't girls in the pirate and space ship sets. They wrote back that there wasn't enough demand to justify making all the sets with girls, but they sent us girl lego-people to go with the sets I had. So, basically, if you want better girl legos, write letters! And the boy legos work for girls too, just get the Harry Potter ones or hell, any of them. I played with pirate ships, space ships, gas stations, all sorts of boy legos and it was great!

I can sort of empathize with the folks who build the Target website, though. Gender norms are a fairly accurate reflection of the majority, and there's really nothing wrong with that, as long as description doesn't become prescription.

This is circular reasoning. You are defending a behavior by saying that's what the majority wants, but in fact the majority may want that precisely because of the behavior you are defending. Target does not *have* to market its toys that way; I am sure they could come up with many other more creative ways to market toys other than by girl and boy, that would bring them just as many sales.

The splitting up of the toys into boy and girl is so blatantly sexist it just drives me crazy. I can't believe it is 2007 and all the major retail stores still promote the stereotype that only boys play with construction toys and only girls play with dolls. And people wonder why there are so many more male engineers than female. Arghhhh!

There is a good alternative toy store in my hometown called Bennett's Educational Toys. They do not split their toys into boy and girl and they appear to have some good generic lego sets (that you can even buy online): http://www.bennettseducational.com/

I had one of those "play" kitchens in the 80's. Someone gave it to my mom secondhand to give to us (her 3 daughters). We never really used it. There's no fun in it, especially when our chores from a very young age were washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen.

If I remember, I'll have to ask my mom about that. I bet she kept it in the hope that it would make our actual kitchen duties more attractive - nice try, mom. :) We were certainly never encouraged to be housewives!

I did get very excited seeing the tool belt set under girls best sellers for ages 2-3... though sad because of how it stood out amongst the others.

Yeah, McD's routinely asks "Is it for a girl or a boy?" if the child isn't present in my experience. Since my daughter is not awfully into gender roles (though she does have a few My Little Ponies) I always make sure to ask her which she wants beforehand, and specify the toy and not the gender.

Since I have a son (5 yrs) and a daughter (2.5 yrs) I see a real mix of what they like to play with. Neither of them likes dolls, but they both love the train set, trucks, the miniature workbench with tools and legos. Oh, and flashlights, for some reason!

I usually have them both help me in the kitchen, so I didn't bother getting a toy kitchen set, but when I was doing research for good toys, I found good offerings from ALEX, Haba, and Melissa and Doug.

My husband also does not discriminate - he is as apt to teach our daughter woodworking and computers (both are his hobby) as he is our son.

Vervain: I was once clearing out an old cupboard and found a young women's magazine from the 1960s or possibly the 1950s, and on the problem page someone had written in to ask "I think I am in love with my horse. Is this normal?" Seriously.

oh, and one other thing...what is with those freakin' Disney Princess offerings?!!

I had one of those "play" kitchens in the 80's. Someone gave it to my mom secondhand to give to us (her 3 daughters). We never really used it. There's no fun in it, especially when our chores from a very young age were washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen.

If I remember, I'll have to ask my mom about that. I bet she kept it in the hope that it would make our actual kitchen duties more attractive - nice try, mom :) We were certainly never encouraged to be housewives!

oh, and one other thing...what is with those freakin' Disney Princess offerings?!! It is EVERYWHERE. Do I want my daughter thinking she is a princess? And why does she get to be so special and not my son? Also, why princess and not queen? Is she also supposed to be conditioned to think she's supposed to be young forever?
Okay, I'm sure I read WAY more into that, but those toys really bug me.

On a related, oh-so-timely note...

From the don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out and/or the ain't-karma-a-bitch department: Hasbro recalls Easy-Bake ovens "because children could get their hands caught in the front opening and suffer burns."

I've strived really hard to teach my daughter that just because she's a girl she don't have to play with so-called "girl" toys, and she has every right to play with toys so-called designed for boys. Well her 4th birthday is coming up, and I asked her what kind of theme she wanted? Her reply "Ninja Turtles" and so that is what we are having. I also asked her what she would like to be for halloween (never too early to start planning her costume), and her reply "Spongebob Squarepants". And when some of her friends tell her she cant do something because she's a girl, she replies "That's stupid, I can too, just watch me!"

Also, yes, lego is awesome. I used to play with lego and so does my daughter now; it doesn't impose any ideas on what you should build and lets you do whatever you think.

Or so I thought...

A few years ago when I was working for an engineering firm, a coworker won £100 in a competition. He had promised beforehand that if he won anything he would buy us a copy of a program called "LegoCAD" which let you make lego-ish things in your computer. But when it arrived, I was sad to see that it was all about cogs and wheels and pulleys and belts, and there was only one kind of brick and it only came in red!

So I think that even lego now is divided into sets for building civilisations with (as I always did as a kid, and as my daughter does) and sets for building machinery. I hope they don't further identify these with girls and boys respectively, but I suspect they may.

it's strangely coincidental that this story was posted today. i work at target (stocking shelves at 4 a.m. hooray!) and this morning i noticed how even on the shipping/schematic tags they label things "boy" or "girl." for example, all of the pink cinderella lunch bags are called "girl lunch bags" and the blue/red spiderman ones are "boy lunch bags." i was bewildered by the fact that they just didn't the licensed character names on the labels instead. it seemed like slap in the face to realized that even shipping containers prescribe to gender stereotypes. i almost threw up in my mouth when i saw it. tomorrow i'm going to put a mix of each in the different bins mwahahaha.

anyway, my point is that target sucks. even the shipping labels suck.

I refuse to be outraged until they add a military play set for boys. You know, so they can prepare our future brave fighting men to defend the free world by fighting yet another half baked conflict that we will inevitably lose.

When I was a kid, the church we went to had a Wednesday night activity for kids that was sort of like Girls and Boys Scouts for Jesus. I remember being SO PISSED that the boys always got to do the cool and fun things like camping, derby racing, knot tying, wilderness skills and so forth. And we girls got to do childcare, cookiing, etiquette, meal management, and so forth. Basically how to be good little Christian mommies and wives. THEN, the last year I was forced to be in it, they did away with the final year awards for girls. We used to get a "Susan B. Anthony" award for completing K-garten through 6th grade in this program. They ended up giving all the kids the metal with the MALE founder of the denomination's likeness on it. I had a BIG issue with that.

I swear I've been a feminist my whole damn life.

This post reminded me of when I visited my cousin's house last year. He's has a young son and daughter and my head almost exploded when I saw their rooms. The boy's room has blue walls with sport motifs everywhere. The girl's was painted pink, of course, with Disney princesses everywhere.

I do have a confession to make, though. When I was a kid I went to McDonalds every week and never, ever would have picked the "boy" toy. I'm sure my toy collection (think Barbies and teasets) have been the perfect ad for Target's girls' toy section. I grew out of that phase around age 10, thankfully. (I'm an engineering major and have a curiously strong aversion to pink, no doubt caused by my earlier overexposure to it!) I can only hope that the same will happen to my cousin's daughter.

I refuse to be outraged until they add a military play set for boys. You know, so they can prepare our future brave fighting men to defend the free world by fighting yet another half baked conflict that we will inevitably lose.

Um, that's called GI Joe.

The way in which toys designed for boys encourage violence and aggressive behavior is a whole other issue that I could go off on. I am not saying that the toys directly cause violent behavior later in life (my brother and I played with GI Joe but we were raised in a peaceful, non-authoritarian environment and we would often make the figures cooperate with each other). But if the child is not exposed to other more appropriate outlets and models of non-violent behavior, then the toys can be a contributing factor.

My sons want rainbows and kittens for their shirts and my daughter wants a pink martial arts uniform - not clothes they are gonna find unless I make them myself.

Legos have more gender neutral stuff on their website and there are often mixed use block sets even at target.

Fast food - we specify the toy not the gender - so cute things appear frequently in the boys lunches by their choice and the girl has her precious trucks. And they promptly fight each other for what they don't have themselves and then do it again to get the original item back.

Has anyone here heard of the Barbie Liberation Organization?