Kids are growing up in a world where there are boy toys and girl toys. When you look in a catalog or any sort of advertisement for toys, you can clearly distinguish which toys are meant for girls and which are meant for boys. When did the gender inequality begin? Or is it just one of those things that evolved and eventually reached out into children’s toys? I personally think that, as much as we hate these roles, they are never going to be forever gone. It is just like racism. There is always going to be someone in the world who holds these views and is not willing to change them.
When a child grows up playing with a toy, they are going to carry some of these ideals (ex. changing the babies diaper after it soils it) into their future. This could be a good thing in the cases of nurturing or a bad thing. Young girls are the only ones, generally, that get early exposure to the care and nurture so this carries on later in life that woman are the ones supposed to be the ones caring for kids and men are supposed to be out fighting with guns. These ideals will be forever incorporated into future generations. As much as feminists or anyone who is against these stereotypes want to deny it, they will never be gone. Women talk too much, men don’t listen, men can’t cook, men are more aggressive, men like sports more, women are more nurturing/motherly, women like to shop and are more fashion forward. All of these are enhanced by early education toys. Men didn’t have the toy kitchens to introduce them to cooking. Men grow up believing that if they don’t play sports they are not manly. Woman grow up with dolls and other toys teaching them how to be nurturing or motherly. Men are more aggressive because all of their childhood toys involve fighting. Instead of having a quad that you use your feet to pedal, they are now all electronic. This new technology enables kids to chase and ram into each other easier and with more force. No wonder guys are more aggressive.
Playing with dolls or action figures or figurines or whatever you want to call them at an early age affects female and male judgement of what they should look like when they are older. If Barbie was a real girl she would be 6′ 0″, weigh 100 lbs., and wear a size 4. She would have a 39″ bust, 19″ waist, and 33″ hips. Is this really what you want your kid to think they should look like when they are older? The average model is only 5′10 and 110 llbs. Its bad enough that girls strive for this, but if you compare modeling to Barbie, modeling doesn’t even come close to matching up. I would much rather loose the fourty pounds it would take for me to model, then grow two inches and loose more than fifty. Think of it this way: the average woman is 35-27-37. That means she has a 35″ bust, 27″ waist, and her hips are 37″. Compare this to Barbie and we got a problem. Here is another comparison: high fashion models. Their bust is 32-35″, waist is 22-25″ and their hips are 33-36″. Their may be a little closer to Barbies measurements but it is still bigger. Consider the fact that these are high fashion models and not just runaway models. I couldn’t find an accurate source of runaway models measurements. And this is just for the girls side of things.
In my opinion, the Barbie of guys is GI Joe. Just like girls hope to be Barbie when they grow up, boys probably hope to be somewhat like GI Joe when they grow older. GI Joe’s measurements would be a 55″ chest and 27″ biceps. In other words, his bicep would be almost as big as his waist and bigger than most competitive body builders’. Is this the image you want your little boy to think they have to live up to? Not only does GI Joe portray the wrong image for males, it does the same for females. When you take your little girl shopping and are walking down the toy isle, your are gonna see Barbie and GI Joe as far as dolls go. Girls already think they should be like Barbie, so the counterpart should be GI Joe. Their future husbands/boyfriends should look like GI Joe and if they don’t they are not worth dating. This puts an even bigger stress on the guys to look like GI Joe.
One thing that really bugs me that is a little off topic, but I still want to briefly bring up is the scale. What does a number on the scale really tell you about how healthy or fit someone is? When you step on a scale, the weight that you see doesn’t tell you anything about your body composition (i.e. how much is muscle, bone, or fat). Muscle is denser and weighs more than fat so, if you are very physically active and have more muscle, you should weigh more.
So in conclusion, gender stereotypes are always going to be here. As long as you know what they are and can identify them, you should be able to keep yourself from supporting them. Don’t just grow up and be another Barbie in the world. We have enough of those, and others generally don’t like them. Be yourself and have people like you, or be a generic copy and have no one like you. I think the reasonable choice is obvious. Choose what you want, be who you want, and play with whatever toys you want.
Great post. I agree there is always going to be someone in the world who holds these views and is not willing to change them.
Splendid post Kimmi. I agree with you that there is always going to be gender stereotyping in the world.
Great post Kim. I find it very refreshing how you mentioned that if you grow up enforcing gender bias in the toys you ply with you may end up being like that particular toy, like Barbie. Gender stereotypes do need to stop and your proposed way of not enforcing it is very smart. good work.
[...] exact opposite. Think of it. The military in itself is breaking the gender stereotype. As stated in my post about children’s toys woman are supposed to stay at home and take care of the children while men go off and fight in the [...]