What’s the Harm in Your Daughter’s Play Kitchen or ‘Sexy Cop’ Costume?
We are well into the second decade of the 21st century, but the rigid gender norms of our children’s toys and costumes can make it seem like we’re still living in the Mad Men era. Little girls are pitched baby dolls, princesses, and play kitchens, while boys are encouraged to have fun with toy guns, building blocks, and sporting equipment. The girl toys are focused either on appearance or nurturing, while the boy toys are action-oriented or designed to teach problem solving.
The implicit message is that we are training girls for a lifetime of worrying about how they look and taking care of others, while boys are given a wider range of options.
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The limited number of options for girls is what mom Lin Kramer encountered in September while trying to buy her three-year-old daughter a Halloween costume at Party City. She complained on Facebook to the retailer that its costume selections for girls were more limited than those for boys, promoted “antiquated” gender roles, and were advertised using sexualized language.
According to Kramer’s count, 30 percent of the “boy” costumes available on the Party City website were based on occupations, such as SWAT team member, air force pilot, or doctor, while just under 7 percent of the “girl” costumes were—and that charitably includes the retailer’s cowgirl costume, which, given the outfit, is mostly about looking cute and is not appropriate for rustling cattle, unlike the male cowboy costume.
Other outfits offered were rife with sexism; both boys and girls were offered a cop costume, but the boy’s outfit was a miniature version of what a real-life police officer wears, while the girl’s featured a flouncy miniskirt and a low-cut top.
“While Halloween costumes are undoubtedly about ‘make-believe,’ it is unfathomable that toddler girls and boys who might be interested in dressing up as police officers are seeking to imagine themselves in the incongruent way your business apparently imagines them,” wrote Kramer. “Toddler girls are not imagining and hoping that they will grow up to become a ‘sexy cop’—which is clearly what your girl costume suggests; rather, young girls, just as young boys, see and admire their family members and neighbors offering service to their communities and delight in the idea of doing the same.”
You might think this was a continuation of a long-standing tradition of gendered toys, but those who study the issue, such as Elizabeth Sweet of the University of California, Davis, argue that because of deregulation of children’s advertising in the 1980s, it’s worse now than it’s ever been. After all, if you can segment a market into boys and girls and sell the same toys twice (one in a pink, girly version), you can make more money. So, despite the strides that women have made for equality—this year, again, for example, more women are enrolled in graduate school than are men, and in fields such as health sciences they make up the overwhelming majority—our toys give children a much more narrow view of gender roles in the adult world.
But what’s the real harm in gendered costumes and toys? Is this just adults making too much of something fun and silly for kids? Children learn through play; it is a tenet of early childhood education, and if their play is being limited by regressive gender stereotypes, then their learning is being limited too. As “Let Toys Be Toys,” a U.K. campaign to end gendered toy marketing, reminds us on its website, “Children don’t pop out of the womb with expectations about their future careers, or beliefs about what their work is worth, but the stereotypes we see in toy marketing connect with the inequalities we see in adult life.”
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Research has shown that children prefer toys they are told are made for their gender, regardless of what those toys are. So we are reinforcing that STEM careers or truck driving or architecture are fields for boys, and homemaking and nursing are fields for girls, when we suggest that Erector sets or baby dolls are made to be played with by one specific gender.
You might think everyone sees the universal good in divorcing gender from toy marketing. After all, we all need to learn the coordination inherent in throwing and catching a ball, and all kids benefit from expressing themselves through art (though the balls and art supplies have traditionally been sold in male and female toy aisles, respectively). But when Target announced earlier this year that it was doing away with its gendered toy aisles in lieu of a more inclusive sales strategy, it was met with an outcry from some critics.
When, during the fracas, one man posed as Target on Facebook, he heard from detractors who wrote comments such as “God created males and females differently. Why would you try to remove the differences?? Get a clue Target. Your stupidity is showing” and “My wife and I have 2 ‘boys’ and 1 ‘girl’ and we are not transgender. Therefore we will no longer shop and support your PC transgender store.”
But the issue with the toy aisles wasn’t about transgender rights. Instead, it was about offering all children equal opportunities in play and, more broadly, in life. “While there is absolutely nothing wrong with little girls who enjoy and want to dress up this Halloween as a ‘Light Up Twinkler Witch,’ or a ‘Doo Wop Darling,’ or an ‘Enchanted Stars Princess,’ there is also absolutely nothing wrong with little girls who might wish to give the ‘UPS Driver’ costume or the ‘Ride in Train’ costume a try!” wrote Kramer.
She went on to ask Party City to “open up your view of the world and redesign your marketing scheme to let kids be kids, without imposing on them antiquated views of gender roles.” After all, if we’re committed to ending the gender wage gap and increasing the number of women in STEM careers and in Fortune 500 leadership positions, then perhaps we should be committed to giving kids a head start by not limiting their options to sexy cop on Halloween and pink Legos the rest of the year.
Related stories on TakePart:
• See the Disneyland Display That Smashes Gender Stereotypes
• Yep, the ‘Pink Tax’ Still Makes Women Pay More for the Same Stuff
• Better Than Barbie: Dolls You Can Feel Good About Giving Girls
Original article from TakePart
