Yes I know we’ve only just had Halloween but the thing is I don’t particularly like Christmas shopping so I figure if I start it horrendously early then it’s not really Christmas shopping. It’s just shopping and I have no problem with that!
I’ve got most things already but I was in town today looking for a present for one of the brother-in-law’s munchkins. This one’s a little girl munchkin and not quite three so I was looking for something suitable.
After three shops where the only things I could find for girls were either the trappings of a good housewife, high heels and toy credit cards or things to do with horribly cutesy fairies.
The boys had pirates and aliens…the girls had washing machines and laundry baskets! Yes I know children like copying their mums – I used to have my own little carpet sweeper and dust pan and brush when I was a kid – but I had a lot of other kinds of toys too.
In this day and age surely we shouldn’t be stereotyping our children to this degree? The message from the toys on sale for little girls seems to be either stay at home and raise the kids or find yourself a sugar daddy…you don’t need to worry your pretty little head about anything more adventurous…
It seems like a depressing reflection of modern Ireland that the majority of the toys that actually do encourage imaginative play restrict that imagination to the humdrum. M&S has toy microwaves complete with ready meals (so much for encouraging kids to eat healthily) and in previous years I’ve seen McDonald’s play counters complete with plastic fries and burgers.
To be fair I haven’t seen the McDonald’s for sale but there’s a lot of supermarket checkouts out there…are we trying to tell the next generation something? If we want to encourage them to develop their entrepreneurial spirit surely there are cooler shops to run…and don’t even get me started on the play credit cards!
I suppose it’s a reflection of the superficial, fame hungry culture we live in today but when you can get stuffed chihuahuas in shoulder bags for the under fives it’s getting a bit sad. In fact only yesterday the Equality Authority slammed Pat Kenny, the presenter of the state networks Christmas spectacular, the Late Late Toy Show, for gender stereotyping. So it seems I’m not the only one to notice this.
Shouldn’t be be encouraging children to aspire to something a bit more than domesticity or being a wannabe footballers wife. Just because our generation is obsessed with easy celebrity do we really have to programme the next one to take the torch.
Why can’t they play at being paparazzi instead of the latest indentikit blond flashing her knickers on the front page of certain tabloids. I wouldn’t have minded getting her My First Tabloid News Desk with notebook, camera phone and moveable type…
I walked around one of the biggest toy shops in the city centre and couldn’t find anything that I could get excited about getting for a three year old girl. It’s all film and tv tie-ins or gender stereotyping. Even the famous Bratz dolls seem to do nothing else than dressing up and posing on the red carpet.
I couldn’t find any medical sets (she’s got two older brothers so I thought being able to amputate the odd leg would even up the score) although they did have nurses costumes…no doctors.
Even the Early Learning Centre which always used to be very careful about not stereotyping had pictures of little girls playing in the kitchen and little boys playing with their tool set. All the science sets have pictures of boys on them and anything aimed at girls is violently pink and usually has fairies on it.
For older children you can get typewriters and laptops but for the little ones it’s all cooking sets and baby dolls. I know this is something that’s been carped about for years (that’s how I know about the Early Learning Centre’s policy on gender stereotypes) and I can remember my mum having similar discussions with her friends it’s just a bit depressing when you actually go round the shops.
She’s going to be getting a lot of very conventional presents, all the tv tie-ins and pots and pans. I just wanted to get her something different…I’ll just have to keep looking.
Technorati Tags: Ireland, Family, Feminism, Media, Journalism
November 9, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Here from The Carnival of Feminists link.
Okay, you do know that there is nothing stopping you buying a present for a little girl from the “boy” aisles, right?
It completely stinks that the stereotyping is there and the only toys explicitly aimed at little girls are stupid, but it doesn’t improve matters to avoid buying toys for girls unless they have girls pictured on the packaging. By doing that you’re joining the conspiracy to limit this child’s choices in life. Buy her the “boy” toy and play with it with her and make it hers! That makes it a “girl” toy. Toys aren’t gendered in and of themselves. Our interpretations make them gendered. Just because the manufacturers and marketers are morons does not mean you have to collude in this gendering and limiting behaviour.
November 9, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Of course I’m aware that I don’t have to buy from the girl’s aisles…don’t be daft! That’s not the point I’m making at all.
The fact is there shouldn’t be girls and boys aisles. We shouldn’t be trying to make little boys into good little soldiers any more than we should be making little girls play at being good little wives and mothers.
The problem is, in Ireland, gender stereotyping is everywhere you look and toy shops are rigidly divided between boys and girls. Even the Early Learning Centre which , in the UK, has a very strong policy of not gender stereotyping toys, has the dolls and guns thing down pat over here.
There’s just been a major study by the Equality Authority condemning the level of stereotyping here.
it’s a real problem and one that really pisses me off.
And my niece lives a long way away with very traditional parents who won’t tell her she can become anything she wants to be. If we get her something that is seen as a “boy” present they complain and she won’t be encouraged to play with it.
So I’m stuck trying to find something that pleases both camps…something that is a little girlie but that’s not limiting. In the end I’ve given up – she’s getting a totally neutral Sesame Street doctor’s set and Winnie the Pooh!
November 9, 2007 at 8:12 pm
It was the “I’ll just have to keep looking”, which made me wonder. But the parents being far away and traditional would make it very difficult.
Gender stereotyping is lousy bad everywhere at the moment. I’d swear it’s got a lot worse in the last five years, and nobody seems to speak up or do anything and are in so many cases giving in to it and buying the appalling stuff. That, I suppose, was why I jumped (rather unfairly perhaps) on your ranting, but nevertheless appearing to accept the stereotypes as things to obey. And your final choices sound fine to me, given the difficulties.
I wonder why it’s become so bad lately. I’d swear it wasn’t this bad in the eighties or early nineties, when I was playing with toys. And straight after that (having much older half-siblings) I went to buying toys for their kids, and it does seem to be getting worse each year. I buy the kids’ toys exclusively from the “boy” section now, and it’s fortunate they’re happy with that, because I’m damned if I’ll buy pink, passive rubbish, but I used to be able to chop and change about, and it’s annoying never being able to get a toy with a girl pictured on it, or hardly ever.
It’s weird anyway, the more moves forward adult women make, the more steps backwards little girls seem to be be making. I wonder if they’ll be able to shake off the stereotyping as they grow up, or if in twenty or fifty years time all the fights of the twentieth century will be being reversed.
November 9, 2007 at 8:54 pm
I too am here from the Carnival and also have a 3-year-old niece. The top of her Christmas list is “anything princess or Barbie.” (Her mom wrote it.) Made me shudder.
I think I’m going to do some underhanded feminist propaganda and make her a scepter. How can a princess rule without a scepter? Ok, I know it’s not brilliantly feminist, but I’m struggling here…
Thanks for writing!
November 13, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Late response from a Carnival reader:
Even though you’ve already found what you need, I recommend crayons, washable markers, doodle pads, art paper, etc. (Can’t recommend play-doh to a 3 yr. old, though) Or, being the evil aunt, I often supply my nieces and nephews with loud musical instruments. Tons of fun, with the added benefit of being annoying to your brother or sister, which is, after all, part of the job.
November 16, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Welcome to toyland for girls. Yeah. It’s a definate problem.
I get my daughter lots of office supplies.
And don’t be afraid of the so called Boys section when shopping for girls. They have tools and puzzles and video games and trucks and blocks that girls like playing with as much as boys do.
At least you’re thinking about it – most aren’t.
November 20, 2007 at 5:17 am
Get her a drum!
My biggest regret as an adult woman is that no one got me a drum when I was a kid.
You can bet, my 5-year-old has got 3 of ‘em!