Gender Roles & Toys

            Before babies are even born and are determined to be a boy or girl by an ultrasound, they are rapidly labeled by colors, where blue represents a boy and pink represents a girl. Automatically, parents already have placed an agenda on what their kids will wear, what sports they will play, and what toys will be approved for them. Advertising companies such as Nerf and Mattel continue to tell kids what roles they should take on in life and how they should act and behave. The media says boys have to compete, build things, and also that they should like weapons of all kinds, while girls are told they should know how to cook, look pretty, play with dolls and learn how to be nurturing. These ads can lead children to believe the messages about what the ad wants them to be. This takes away the creativity and alters the mindset to what that child might want to do one day in life. Although we might not see anything wrong with the ads such as Nerf or Mattel, they are promoting gender specific roles in their toy product, thus leaving out the other 50% of their market. These toy companies should concentrate on making toys that both genders may be able to use so that no one will feel left out or embarrassed to pick up any toy they want to play with.

In one Mattel toy ad for a new M-16 Marauder, it shows a young boy crouching with his Mattel machine gun with the sounds of the gun shooting, “BRAAP, BRRAAAP, BRAP, BRAP.” We see these ads by Mattel all the time, showing boys with their guns having a shoot out or making them believe that they have all this power when holding their gun. In these ads you will never see a girl either holding one of their guns or playing with the guys in the field. This Mattel ad is showing how boys are the ones who should hold guns and be able to go to the battlefield and how they don’t mind getting down and dirty. Although they portray males as the only ones to use guns, we see females in police departments and also in the armed forces. These ads should be changed because there are women who find themselves using these weapons and it’s not always males in weapon-related fields. Both of these companies should show more women in their ads and show that a woman can handle a gun just as well as a male. This will show that any person is good enough to go to the armed forces and will promote that anyone can join.

            Women in toy ads are shown as nurturing, fond of playing dress up, or just as a housewife. Mattel shows a young blonde girl in a pink ballerina outfit playing with a doll called Dancerina. This ad says, “Because girls dream about being a ballerina. Mattel makes Dancerina.” This ad says it loud and clear that all girl’s dreams are just to be ballerinas and nothing else. This shows how the marketing for Mattel is interested in getting young girls to think and believe that they should think about becoming a ballerina because they can dress and dance like the doll. This limits the mindset of a young child, in this case a young girl, limiting her mind to think that girls only want to be ballerinas. Even though there is nothing wrong with a ballerina, we can see that from a very young age girls are shown that ladies should wear pink, look beautiful, and that they should take ballet because it’s every girl’s dream. There are many male ballet dancers as well. Instead they should let girls decide if that is really their dream. Whether it is to become a professional athlete, a doctor, or even an architect, these companies should encourage girls to pursue careers in these areas as well.

            Another ad was about the building blocks of Legos. Legos are a universal building set, meaning that anyone can use, whether it is a boy or a girl. Traditionally, however, Legos were considered toys for boys. Recently, Legos came out with a new line of Legos called “Legos Friends,” where it’s a line meant for girls. Girls can build their own house, salon, or even their own Sunshine Ranch. Legos before used to have only male figures, such as Batman, Spiderman, and many other male characters and never implemented any female roles until now. This was a wise decision for Lego, but they are still showing how women are portrayed as a housewife and that they don’t do anything else but stay home. This line shows how woman only want to build girl things and not anything close to what a male would build with legos. Shari Roan from the Los Angeles Times writes in her article “A New Lego Line for Girls is Offensive, Critics Say,” that this Legos lines implies that being pretty is more important than who you are or what you can do (Paragraph 4). They should be able to make more Legos for girls, but go about showing how women can also be superheroes or play sports. The creators of Legos should make the toys so the boys and girls will feel free to pick up any block, model, or series that they have to offer.

            From the very birth whenever a baby comes to this world when it’s a boy, the baby automatically gets blue attire while the girls get pink. In her article, Laura Nelson said, “Gender-specific color-coding influences the activities children choose, the skills they build and ultimately the roles they take in society” (Par 6). Color-coding doesn’t help children decide what they want to be or do in life when they are being told exactly what they should do. We will never truly find out how kids could grow on their own if were constantly showing them what directions we want them to go towards. Toy ads should be gender-neutralized so anyone can pick a toy and not feel that it shouldn’t be in their hands or have the feeling that someone is judging them based on the color of the toy.

 

Works Cited

Bennhold, Katrin. "Toys Start the Gender Equality Rift." The New York Times. The New York Times, 30 July 2012. Web. 08 Apr. 2014.

Kanazawa, Satoshi. "The Scientific Fundamentalist." Why Do Boys and Girls Prefer Different Toys? The Scientific Fundamentalist, 17 Apr. 2008. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.

Orenstein, Peggy. "Should the World of Toys Be Gender-Free?" The New York Times. The New York Times, 29 Dec. 2011. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.

Roan, Shari. "A New Lego Line for Girls Is Offensive, Critics Say." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 23 Jan. 2012. Web. 1 Apr. 2014