Courtesy of the Guardian, an educational slide show of girls' toys and boys' toys. (Hat tip: captiver, in comments.)
Be warned - the pink will make you nauseous. It's almost as bad as Stef's pink birthday cake, which you would think would appeal to all the little girls whose rooms look like a flamingo threw up in them.*
*Not my phrase, alas. I stole it from Stef.
6 comments:
Our four boys haven't gotten the boys/girls divide memo. At least not to the point of not wanting to get cool toys that are supposedly for girls.
So for example, Tommy (6) wanted (and is getting) the Barbie Glimmer horse and both he and his oldest brother (9) are getting Littlest Pet Shop figures for Christmas. The boys are getting other things too, like Lego and Meccano, Play-Doh, books, games and Star Wars action figures. However both Tommy and Peter specifically asked for "girls" toys after seeing them advertised on tv, being played with by girls.
I've also turned up to pick James up from kindy and had him dressed up as a fairy princess with pink net skirt, pink wings and one of those cone hats beloved by medieval ladies - it was pink too.
That's not to say my kids haven't been aware of the pressure to conform to gender stereotypes. Tommy quit learning ballet because of the hassles he got at school. But now he wants to learn tap dancing instead. Tommy and William also played rugby last season. But then they'll happily watch a Barbie movie on tv as well.
They seem more focused on what is actually fun to do, rather than on whether or not they are supposed to do it. OTOH pressure from peers at school seems to be much more concerned about gender appropriate behavior, which is a shame because I think it does cramp their fun.
At least none of the girl's toys have anything to do with killing people.
My boys don't tend to go for anything too far on either end of the gender spectrum but prefer things like lego (which they build houses with) and science things. Ferdi is into knights but that's because of Jane and the Dragon so I think he gets a pass on that one.
my two girls (3 and 5) love thomas, and Cars. they also love their babies, ponies etc. it is really hard to buy gender neutral stuff for girls. Even buying clothes that arent pink is difficult at times...
my wee boy is into pushing toys around the floor at the moment, but he plays with his sisters toys too....
@hungrymamma Yesterday I had 2 adorable little girls, dressed as fairies, running round the house with improvised wands killing bad people with their DEATH SPELLS
I've noticed the gender socialization divide far more with regard to clothing. I'm not very pleased my daughter refuses to wear her dinosaur t-shirts to school because they are too "boy"
The Child is one of those ultra-femme girly girls everything she owns is mostly pink except for the odd splash of purple. Nothing wrong with it in and of itself but thinking it would be nice to have some variety, I went out and bought her a cute black and white dress from pumpkin patch thinking it is still girly since it is dress. The Child refuses to wear it.
Sigh.
That slide show was pretty nauseating. A girls floor and a boys floor. Didn't segregation end years and years ago?
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