What’s the first thing people ask when they see a pregnant woman? The answer is, “Oh congratulations, is it a boy or a girl?” The world is so fixated on putting people into gender categories, that even a four month old fetus is put into one! Why does it matter if a child is dressed in blue or pink? Why is it acceptable for a girl to wear blue, but not acceptable for a boy to wear pink? Why can’t boys play with dolls and girls play with trucks? These are some of the questions that puzzle many people, but yet they are still accustomed to be the first to ask.
Where does this toy gender dilemma even originate from? According to Andree Pomerleau, Daniel Bloduc, Daniel Malcuit, and Louise Cosette, it all began with the parents of the children. The parents believed that it was almost more “natural” for a female child to play with household items, or more soft toys where if they played with them, they would not get hurt or dirty. It was more “natural” for a male child to play with toys that involved them to play rough, go outside, and get dirty. These assumptions made by the parents may actually describe why these children reacted the way they did in this experiment below.
In Cordelia Fine’s book Delusions of Gender, she describes the results of a study tested on thirteen month old babies. The study showed that thirteen month old boys favored more of the so called “boyish” toys such as trucks, cars, and other various vehicles (work equipment or otherwise). The thirteen month old girls, however, seemed to favor tea party items, baby dolls, and household toys, traditionally known as the “girlish” toys. When both genders of children were put in front of “gender neutral” toys such as blocks, the results show that both, boys and girls, would play with these toys as they would the toys supposedly associated with whichever gender they belonged.
This picture below sort of portrays what was displayed by the results of the experiment that Cordelia Fine explained.
Along with watching they’re parents, how else might children display actions of being aware that the world divides males and females in various ways? Another big reason that I really have witnessed was toys. One major way that children can view and see that there are toys specifically made for girls and toys specifically made for boys is through television. In research done by Isabelle Cherney and Kamala London, American children spend anywhere from one and a half hours to three hours or more of watching television each and every day. “Television programs with limited time to devote to character development often resort to stereotypes. Continued exposures to stereotypic information have been shown to influence memory and stereotypic conceptions of gender roles.”
Not only do young children get influenced by the television shows that they watch every day, obviously a lot more television watching is happening than when I was a kid, they get influenced by the commercials! I never realized this until we started talking about it in my Women’s Gender Studies class, but it really is a big deal. Think about it, how many times do you sit down and watch a show on Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, or Disney Channel and see a commercial that shows a young boy cuddling and feeding a new baby doll that does some new “real-life” activity. I, for one, have never witnessed any such advertisement, I almost think that sort of thing is not “allowed” in society. But, however in advertisements I have seen girls playing with what was traditionally known as a “boysih” type of toy. Why is it socially acceptable for girls to play with “boyish” toys, but not okay for boys to play with “girlish” toys?
When I was a child, especially around Christmas time, my grandma would always have all of the grandchildren up and we would all look through all sorts of news paper advertisements and kids toy books and we would each circle anything that we were interested in asking for Christmas from our grandparents. What I did not really notice was that all of the toys were color coated. Some were for blue (obviously for boys), where others were pink (intended to interest the girls). It never occurred to me until I seen this picture below. This picture not only shows that there is a definite color difference in the two almost identical toys, but actually the toy that is intended for boys is more expensive than the toy that is intended for girls! Also, as you can see, the “boys” laptop even has double the functions as the “girls” laptop.
Quite honestly, I think that this will forever be a mystery. Even the video below portrays a female who is quite puzzled, and even upset and outraged, about how the department stores try to force a girl or boy to pick a specific toy.
Coredlia Fine-Delusions of Gender
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