As the mornings get gloomier and nights get longer, the short-lived excitement and warmth of Bonfire Night leaves us craving a longer lasting equivalent; one to see us through the darkest and dreariest depths of winter. When the clocks strike midnight on the 6th November, our high-street shops gradually morph into corporate winter wonderlands and our inboxes overfill with products we must buy right away if we are to properly celebrate the season of giving. In the decade where watching the latest promotional offerings of our favourite department store has truly cemented itself as an annual event, what better is there to do in the midst of all of this festive madness than plonk ourselves in front of the comforting glow of the telly and soak it all in? Nestled between the pining penguins of John Lewis and the never-ending stream of reduced furniture offerings (seriously, how many times does the average Brit really need to buy a three piece suite?!), is a cherished favourite, the ‘Toys R Us’ ad. The power of the jingle alone can make even the solemnest of Scrooges flicker a smile. Are we to treasure the way they and similar toy manufacturers treat society’s youngest consumers though? The production and marketing of children’s toys is a year-round business, but for me the problematic implications of their relentless gender stereotyping in toys is more poignant than ever around this time of year.
The blue and pink decked aisles of toy stores seem to be the final frontier of out-dated gender stereotyping – a tolerated segregation in our supposed progressive and equal society. It shouldn’t come as a shock that toys labelled for girls are packaged up in pink and largely restricted to the domains of the four C’s: cleaning, cooking, caring and cosmetics. Likewise, boys’ toys face a similar situation. The toys they are offered reinforce masculine traits of aggression and lack of care. It seems that, like the bendable limbs of Action-Man that Barbie sorely lacks, boys have a bit more room to move imaginatively in their play. The roles of doctors, scientists, constructors, adventurers, and countless others are all encouraged and up for grabs, something that does not take place in the toys for girls.
What is surprising is that it hasn’t always been this way. The aggressive gendering of children’s toys can be traced back to the de-regularising of children’s advertising in the US in 1984. Marketers now had free reign to adopt forceful advertising tactics and all sorts of nasty things fell out from this (YouTube ‘The Nag-Factor’ if you truly want to be disturbed). But why go to all the effort of this gendered brainwashing nonsense? Using gender as a marketing tool primes children into the kind of products they will feel obliged to purchase as fully-grown consumers (over-priced pink blossom shaving foam, anyone?). Labelling toys this way reduces their longevity. Little Tommy isn’t going to want Lucy’s second-hand pink Barbie scooter, now is he? And if little Tommy does want that Barbie scooter, his parents are less likely to agree. All of this profits the distant few at the top.
And finally, does it all really matter? Naturally, many people are quick to defend that their days of fun with Barbie and co. have not left them psychologically traumatised or below-par from their peers. There is no solid evidence that the choice of toys children have on offer affects the type of jobs they pursue in later life. On the flip-side, there’s no solid evidence that supposed gender-traits are biologically innate. Suspicious sounding experiments have been funded by retail giants (I’m looking at you M&S) in proving that the need for pink is in our very genes. This appears to me to be a flimsy justification for sticking with the crowd. What anyone with an ounce of common sense can’t deny, is that if you’re stuck in an environment that has been drummed into you from birth that you are supposed to act and aspire to be a certain way, it’s very, very likely to affect how you view yourself and the world later on. So much for the season of goodwill.
Image Sources:
Picture 1 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2416131/Toys-R-Us-agree-drop-s…
Picture 2 http://infanciaemgenero.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/a-menina-de-7-anos-que-ex…
Picture 3 https://lh3.ggpht.com/YjrmPXmCnWmuQLnIDcyLJPOviH0LCTXuEhRIys9w4DqzVmRnKX…
Picture 4 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/opinion/sunday/gender-based-toy-market…