We live in a gender-based dichotomy, separating us as individuals from birth, between male and female. It all begins with our naming and from there we either wear pink or blue, play with action figures or dolls, continuously learning our roles as gendered human beings. Through these simple notions such as either wearing pink or blue, we become familiar and identify with our gender by acting out traits of masculinity and femininity. There is nothing genetically inherent in men to make them courageous, aggressive and dominating, or women to make them timid, nurturing and congenial. However, we identify ourselves and others on what it means to be masculine or feminine allowing us to acknowledge that gender is socially constructed.
Using an object as simple as a childhood toy, we can find difference based on gender between the toy preferences of boys and girls. We will never see a male child playing with Barbie Ballerina or a female child engaging in play with a Power Wheel Ford F-150 in any televised commercial or advertising display. Toy products marketed for children as young as newborns suggest gender specificity through the type of toy, type of play involved with the commercials used to market the toy.
After online shopping for children as young as two to three years I found before even browsing through the toy selection, that they had already been separated into toys for boys and girls. Once proceeding to the boy-oriented section, I discovered such toys as a fire engine, Go! Diego Go! Tough Trike™ and a play construction caterpillar. All of these “boy-oriented” plays toys already suggested occupation, character and courage.
The toy fire engine implied that boys who play with fire engines can aspire to be courageous fire fighters and very male oriented occupation. The Go! Diego Go! Tough Trike™ not only featured a male cartoon main character but was also described as tough; simply indicating the young boy who rode this bike was tough and resilient. These are also common traits of masculinity. What caught my attention the most however, was the play construction caterpillar. I assumed that boys would use this toy to play with in dirt or sand, pretending to build and construct based on the type of toy. This toy suggested the type of play that would result in the ideology that boys can grow up and aspire to be construction workers where as girls may not because this toy is not necessarily made for their consumption.
After leaving the boy toy section, I entered the “girl-oriented” toy section where I found a Pastel Play Kitchen, a Disney Ariel Ocean Salon™ and doll’s crib with an attached musical mobile, along with a matching high chair and stroller. All three of these toys suggest domesticity, motherhood and the ideology that girls must be fit into the very commercialized beauty beginning at a young age. While sons play in the mud with their caterpillars, young daughters engage in practicing how to care for a young infant, cook meal for family and at the same time, learn to keep up with her appearance for her future husband.
Boys who display feminine characteristics and girls who display masculine characteristics are social chastised for crossing gender lines. Gender stereotyping of children’s toys does indeed influence the development of individual gender through parenting, advertising and peer approval. These toys often correspond with gender stereotypes and behaviors such as emotional and gentle or dominant and competitive. Not only do children prefer gendered toys, but they avoid the use of opposite gendered toys. From birth, products are marketed based on gender and the social definitions of gender.
Even the way parents dress their children, had the affect on the way a child is able to play. “Frilly dresses do not lend themselves easily to rough and dirty play. Clothes for boys rarely restrict physical movement in this way and are made to withstand vigorous activity” (Newman, 112). Gender therefore begins the building blocks for character, sexual orientation, career goals, appearance and most interesting the type of toy a three month old boy will engage play with.
Newman, David M., Identities and Inequalities: Exploring the intersections of race, class and gender. (2007). McGraw Hill. NY NY
