Okay, so we all know that McDonald’s has had gendered toys for years now, and it’s time that stopped being a thing. Barbies don’t need to be “for girls,” Hot Wheels don’t need to be “for boys.” More importantly, no one should be labeling them as such because giving a kid anxiety over wanting a toy that’s not “for” their gender is ridiculous when toys are for everyone.
Suddenly, McDonald’s is getting a great deal of praise for its latest toy line, tied to the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Because look, everybody! We acknowledged that girls like Spider-Man, too! Girls like boy heroes! (We are still pretending that we don’t know this?) Girls want toys with Spider-Man’s picture on it, so we made them—we did an AWESOME job.
Except, I’m looking at those toys right now and no, they did not. They did not do a good job. In fact, I’m sort of angry over what a botched mess this is.
Look at those toys. Just… look at them. Of course, the most obvious thing to say is “why are all the toys for girls pink and purple?” And there’s something to that still, primarily the fact that you’re explicitly telling boys that pink and purple means “lady thing,” guaranteeing that no boy will be happy if he accidentally gets handed the “girls toy” when he gets a Happy Meal. There is no reason why this division needs to take place. Kids like toys in general, and all the toys can be any color. There’s no need to segregate them by spectrum.
How about all the hearts? Moreover, how about the fact that the hearts are usually framing Spidey, or the images associated with him? Again, we’re encouraging girls to view this hero as a crush rather than someone to emulate. Because they’re girls and girls get crushes. Girls like to wear shirts that say “My Boyfriend is a Superhero,” right? They don’t want to be superheroes, and they certainly don’t want to be boy superheroes.
Being a girl who loved pretending to be boy heroes growing up, and being a woman who often cosplays her own versions of male characters, this aspect has a particular personal sting. I cannot be Peter Parker… so the only other option is to be in love with him!
But let’s set all that aside. Let’s take a good look at the toys themselves for a second, think about what they are for and what they encourage. Let’s look at the boys section, populated primarily by cars and figures, items that kids will run and jump around with, race across the house with, let fly to the ceiling and back. And then let’s look at the girls section of toys: beauty products, items to wear, notebooks to write in.
All of the girls toys are inactive. They encourage young women to sit in one place, to write and primp and be pretty. This is the same problem we’ve been having with gendered toys for countless years now—everything made for girls is telling them to be still and thoughtful. Everything made for boys is telling them to be energetic and physical. We’re still encountering this, even while trying to solve other pressing problems with toy marketing. This suggestion that girls don’t play the same way boys do needs to be pulverized, but we reinforce it at every turn.
Give that girl an Easy Bake Oven! And give that boy a compass and a fire-starting kit!
When all of these toys are in one big pile, in a variety of colors, when a boy who is less excited by action figures can ask for a notebook, and a girl who wants a Spider-man car adds one to her Hot Wheels collection without getting a look (or outright refusal) from a fast food manager… then we can celebrate. Until then, this is nothing to be impressed about. We’re being asked to applaud as McDonalds sits down to a dinner party where we’re all on the dessert course.
“Girls love Spider-Man!” McDonalds informs us in a booming, authoritative tone. They are so excited to tell us the news.
And one of us chokes on some pudding while the politest person at the table replies, “Wow, really? Just… you rascals. We had no idea.”
Emmet Asher-Perrin was always so angry when the girls toys had a comb or brush—she has one of those, thanks. You can bug her on Twitter and read more of her work here and elsewhere.
Yes, all of this.
First: “guaranteeing that no boy will be happy if he accidentally gets handed the ‘girls toy'”
Then: “Kids like toys in general, and all the toys can be any color.”
So, which is it? Can’t be both.
I’m not sure how my son would react to a pink Spiderman toy, to be honest. His favorite color has steadfastly been pink for a year or so, and he adores Spiderman, though is aware that he’s largely a red-and-blue creature.
As we don’t really do McD’s, though, it’s not really an issue. If you’re feeding your kids that food, you have bigger problems than what color their happy meal toy is.
@2, “My family is TOTALLY speshul and completely isolated from the surrounding culture! So why are you ninnies all obsessed with the culture your kids are soaking in?”
Look, it’s great that your family doesn’t push gender essentialism on your kids, it is. That is not a reality for most children. And hey, it’s great you can afford to provide your children with nutritous meals they enjoy! That is also not a reality for most children.
The initial part of your comment is specious and not worth addressing.
@2 Sure it can be both; the statements are not contradictory. “In general” is not the same as “universally”.
Kids like toys in general. But when companies specifically go out of their way to tell certain groups of kids _not_ to like certain groups of toys, many kids will listen.
@3 How about react to people who don’t understand something with less ad hominem and more explanation? Helping someone understand why they should be on your side has a chance of working. Trying to beat them about the head until they agree with you is more likely to convince them they shoud stop listening to you.
Defensive much?
You extrapolated a lot there, while also construcing a ridiculous straw man and then misuing the word specious and/or wildly misunderstanding the point I made, but I think your quickness to anger over a contrary opinion might help inform why you’re so quick to rally around anyone else’s righteous indignation over such small matters.
But the name-calling and assertion that I was taking a stance of superiority? Internet classique!
@2: My son gets to go there about once a month becasue of the play yard. That’s life as a parent.
My son, 3, also likes to wear my headbands sometimes. He would wear the Spiderman headband McD created. But why does the spider have to be on a purple heart? It could be a red spider web and no one would complain.
The article has a very valid point. McD could have made everything Spiderman related be Red, Blue, and Black. Those are his colors.
If my son was a daughter, I would be pretty sick of pink and purple at this point.
@3 “no boy” is pretty clearly contrary to the following idea of “in general.”
None of which is even to say the point is without merit, but the way I read it, when the author writes about kids liking toys of any color, it sounds like what is meant is “girls.” Again, the point remains the same, but they are, to my eye, contrary statements.
And, assuming you all are readers (which I feel is safe), I hope you can also put value in the idea that how one reads is always valid. Your experience says they’re not contrary? Fine. But mine says they are and, for me, water down the point attempted, which was all I was meaning to do, not call attention to myself for being “speshul” (Really?), though I am proud that we provide nutritious food for our children in favor of toy-accompanied junk. D0esn’t mean you have to do the same or think that it’s “speshul” that someone else does. (Why are people so angry on the internet and quick to call names?)
Honestly, I think it’s silly to complain about this. Girls generally like girls toys and boys like boys toys. That’s not to say that girls can’t play with boys toys and boys can’t play with girls toys. I played hotwheels with my brother when I was a kid. But I also played with dolls, because I wanted to, not because society pushed them on me. If your daughter wants a spiderman figure, ask for the boys one. If your boy wants a barbie, ask for it. So many people are so worried about political correctness these days that nobody stopped to think that nothing we do will please everyone. My daughter likes pink. That doesn’t make her wrong.
One wonders if the author has children, and if so, have they been agrressively raised by thier parents to conform to the views expressed in this article.
In the real world, one usually buys thier children whatever junk they argue for loudest in an attempt to gain 5 minutes of peace and quiet. Whether its a product of nature, nuture or of the oppressive expectations of society’s paternalistic gender baisis; little boys like certain things and little girls like certain other things.
Try to force your kid to take a toy they dont want, I dare you.
@5,
Defensive much?
Yes, I am defensive. I defend people who are being unfairly picked on. I take pride in that. If only you didn’t take pride in being offensive.
Definition: specious, apparently true but actually false: appearing to be true but really false
So, which is it? Can’t be both.
This is specious. It’s a deceptively simple statement that appears to be true, but actually isn’t.
Because it can be both. In an objective world where gender essentialism isn’t crammed down there throats, kids wouldn’t care, because they like toys. But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where children who don’t conform to their outward gender are terrorized, even by their parents. Was “no boy” a universal statement? No, that’s what’s generally understood by those of us on the internet to be a “generalization”(You should check out the definition for that one too), summarizing that we live in such a gender essentialist culture.
You extrapolated a lot there,
Stop spewing your judgemental attitude over “the problems” parents have by *gasp* allowing them to eat McDonald’s, and people won’t extrapolate judgemental attitudes on you.
@8
Girls generally like girls toys and boys like boys toys.
Because they learn at an early age, not conforming carries heavy consequence. This does not happen in a cultural vacuum.
My daughter likes pink. That doesn’t make her wrong.
This is a strawman. Liking pink is perfectly acceptable, for everybody. Not everything has to be genderized.
@9,
Whether its a product of nature, nuture or of the oppressive
expectations of society’s paternalistic gender baisis; little boys like
certain things and little girls like certain other things.
And this must change if we are to make progress. If your not going to help, will you please get out the way?
Try to force your kid to take a toy they dont want, I dare you.
No one is trying to force anything, we want more options, not less.
Again with the anger and just weaving all over the road with it.
Clearly, there are some personal issues at play here forcing you to assign all sorts of things to my person you couldn’t possibly know about someone from a few sentences in a comments section, so I’m going to let you have the sandbox all to yourself. Fling it about all you wish, and I will hope that someday you find peace.
uh, nobody’s being picked on, though. I mean, maybe me, by you, but I am a grown-ass man and laugh internet bullying off pretty quickly. I don’t know if you have been given an impression that barking loudly from your keyboard has been a force of society change, but I doubt it would do much to attempt to disavow you of such a notion.
Again, peace be to you.
@9 – “Whether its a product of nature, nuture or of the oppressive
expectations of society’s paternalistic gender baisis; little boys like
certain things and little girls like certain other things.”
And if it’s a result of the latter two you listed, then there’s a social responsibility to change that. Of course kids want what they want, and sometimes girls just want pink and boys want action figures. The labels are inherently unnecessary because they suggest that whoever doesn’t adhere to the labels is somehow abnormal. Which is not a judgement any kid should have forced on them.
And the point about active versus inactive toys still stands. Girls have no natural inclination against playing actively. But if you keep giving them toys that refuse to foster active play, they may lose their taste for it.
Comments at 10 and 12 unpublished. Hate speech, slurs, and phobic language have no place on this site.
To everyone else, just a reminder to keep the conversation civil, be respectful of others, and avoid personal attacks, as outlined in the Moderation Policy.
If you’re feeding your kids that food, you have bigger problems than what color their happy meal toy is.
This is an explicitly judgemental statement on parents who feed their children McDonalds. I, on the other hand, know that McDonald’s provides a more cost effective meal of nutritous calories, than people can buy at a grocery store.
I also provided two compliments to you in my first response to you, but apparently you are so busy being butthurt you missed it.
@15, That’s also a very good point, and one I forgot to engage with, which is wierd because it’s a literal fact of my life.
As my daughter has gotten older and more enmeshed in a media culture that I no longer control, I find her becoming more and more sedentary. When she was little I made sure that she had good role models of both genders in the media we consumed, but now the pressure to conform to what other girls like and do. So now, the girl who lived outside for 9 hours a day, rode bikes, played ball? She babysits and plays with her iphone. The one who couldn’t wait to go out for track in middle school now finds the possibility of marching band in high school tiring.
This is a real problem here, one that McDonald’s is exacerbating.
I thought this was a Science Fiction/Fantasy site? Was I wrong?
I really detest articles like this. Women and men ARE different. Embrace it. Isn’t telling your kids no this toy enforces stereotypes just as damaging as telling them no you can’t have that that is for boys/girls?
@7 “And, assuming you all are readers (which I feel is safe), I hope you can also put value in the idea that how one reads is always valid.”
Sure, your reading is perfectly valid. I assumed you were making a statement about the content of the article: that you felt the author was taking contradictory stances. If your point is that there was some inclarity in the writing, you’re probably right. It seems to me to be an odd thing to spend your time hashing out, but you’re entitled to have your own priorities.
On the other hand, if your point really is that the author is taking contradictory stances, then that’s different. If that’s your point (and only if; if it’s not, disregard the following as a shortcoming of asynchronous communication), then once you realize that there are other readings which don’t read them as contradictory stances, I assume you’ll revise your opinion.
@7 “‘no boy’ is pretty clearly contrary to the following idea of ‘in general.'”
Nope. “Boys” are not being contrasted to “kids in general”, which would certainly be wrong and hypocritical. Luckily, that’s not what’s being said.
The original statement is “no boy” will like _these_ toys in _this_ circumstance. That is, the specific circumstance in which “you’re explicitly telling boys that pink and purple means ‘lady thing'”. This specific circumstance stands in contrast with “in general”. Hope that helps clarify things.
(Obviously, “no boy” is a hyperbolic statement of “relatively few boys”; but that’s irrelevant to whether the two statements are contradictory.)
Actually, I have a son that loves pink and a tomboy for a daughter. I don’t like the way fast food resturants (because it isn’t just McDonald’s) treat the toys. However, it has sparked some very good conversations about how a lot of people make stupid assumptions.
Out of the second line of toys, the only one that would interest me as a kid would have been the spider man cards. So, I don’t see why McDonalds can’t have a unisex line of toys in their stores in this case. I actually think it would’ve implied in less costs for them to buy that stuff in the first place (economies of scale and so). Also, they could’ve created a Gwen Stacy action-figure/doll. They have an Electro doll up there, why not other characters?
Feigned outrage is an important part of American culture nowadays. Didn’t you know that?
That’s how an issue like this makes the news in the first place.
I remember when my brother and I were little, he would always ask for the Barbie toy, because Barbie is a pretty lady, and heterosexual little boys like pretty ladies. I would always ask for the Hot Wheels toy, because cars are f’n awesome.
@20 “It seems to me to be an odd thing to spend your time hashing out, but you’re entitled to have your own priorities.”
It took me a few minutes to catch that, have it ring funny in my hear, and point it out.
How much time and effort are you putting forth trying to convince me I read it wrong?
Yes. . . entitled. . .own priorities. . .mirror.
Speaking of which, I can’t belive I’m still hanging out here. First rule broken: Don’t go to the comments section.
Occasionally, I need the reminder why that’s a good rule. Thank you all for the refresher. Go be smarter than and angry at someone else for a while. I’m out! PEACE!
@17 “but apparently you are so busy being butthurt you missed it.”
Nope, he missed it because you surrounded it with personal attacks like “speshul”, which pretty universally cause people to stop listening to you.
It’s sad, because he reads to me as oblivious reagarding the issue, not malicious. When people fail to make a distinction between people who are oblivious (and so can be taught) and people who are malicious (and so should be punished); they end up missing a lot of oppurtunities to create allies, and instead teach people not to engage in the topic at all, by attacking them for daring to not already know what you and I know.
Now I think that the lack of dolls in the “girls” line of dolls may have to do with the oversexualization of tweens/young kids. I remember when I was a kid that 10 year old girls liked playing with dolls (Barbies and stuff). Nowadays it seems that 10 years old like to play with stuff that 13 years old would have liked back in my days. They are spending less and less time as kids (and more time as teenagers, even after they become adults, but that’s another topic).
And is that a spider man watch/chronometer shaped as a heart? Talk about being very inventive about their line of toys.
@Allie44, No one is talking about forcing children to take toys they don’t want to play with. We are talking about making more options available for children to choose. It’s not about trying to make children little genderless robots, it’s about allowing them options.
@26, This is a tone argument. If the fact that I come across a bit rude is enough for a person to feel that 50% of the population doesn’t deserve equality, being nice will get me nothing. This is a hard learned lesson. I used to be a sweet and smiles and rainbows when engaging in these topics, and I learned at the end of the day, none of that makes the medicine go down.
@29 And what did being not nice get you?
McDonalds is out to make money, not promote social equality, and in this, who even cares? Do they prevent girls from picking the “boys” version or vice versa? No. McDonalds and every human in the Western world knows that pink is targeted at girls from the tender age of Zero.
Why the gendered colors? Tho’ I didn’t notice colors of toys when I was a kid . . . I didn’t wonder why the Legos that my grandparents had on hand for us grandkids weren’t pink . . . I didn’t wonder the same thing about the Lincoln logs or dump truck or wooden blocks or metal car that my folks got for me . . . Just like I didn’t wonder why the Barbie car and dolls’ clothes they got for me were pink. I just enjoyed playing with the toys.
And I like pink, but dark green has always been my favorite color :).
@Randall and @19 Allie: I’m with you guys. I think this is a lot of hooplah over nothing. I also don’t really enjoy these soap box articles that have been coming out lately.
If you think these toys enforce gender stereotypes then don’t buy them. If you say “Well my kids MUST have their McDonalds!” then just ask them what toy they like and get it from the cashier. I seriously doubt any cashier is going to say “But that’s a BOYS toy! You can’t have it!” IMO, it’s you who are enforcing the stereotype by being so billigerently angry that they dare categorize toys into a general “this is probably what boys would like” and “this is probably what girls would like”. Never did McDonalds say you could not have whatever toy you desire.
Personally I think trying to blame society for gender failings is really just shifting the blame. It’s not hard to explain to child the concept of generalization. At least I grasped it easily when I was a kid. It never once bothered me growing up that it was labeled “for girls” or “for boys”. I understood that it was just general categorization – most other girls did like Barbies. But my parents made sure that if I didn’t like Barbies it didn’t make me less of a girl.
As to the article: “Being a girl who loved pretending to be boy heroes growing up, and being a woman who often cosplays her own versions of male characters, this aspect has a particular personal sting”
Um okay, so you’re just personalizing the argument and you think that makes it valid? Because I never wanted to be a boy anything growing up. I wanted to be Wonder Woman or Catwoman (okay she’s kind of a bad guy but I loved Pfeiffer). Or Xena. Why would I want to be a boy? They have cooties! (snark)
DougL@31 – Actually, Emily’s OP references and links to an article that discusses the story of one young lady who encountered some employees of McDonald’s not allowing girls to pick the “boys” version of toys. It’s a pretty interesting article by an amazing high school age girl, and I would encourage you to check it out (if you haven’t done so already).
As to who cares? Clearly Emily does, the author of the linked post does, and at least a few of the commenters here do.
I would be interested to hear why you personally (at least by implication of your post) do _not_ seem to care, if you’re willing to share. No shade being thrown, I’m just honestly curious.
@31 – McDonald’s makes that money regardless of what color the toys are, so coding them is unnecessary in the first place–kids would want the toys anyway. And more importantly, yes, some cashiers were preventing this–there’s a link within the article where someone did research on that very issue. McDonalds has only now stated that they’re working to change that across all their franchises.
@33 – Re: cashiers preventing kids from getting the toys they wanted–This actually was an issue, as stated above in this comment.
“As to the article:” Personalizing the argument was an effort to prevent generalizations; it is very common for people to make arguments like your last paragraph in order to enforce the gendered norm. By giving my personal experience (which I freely admitted to, rather than insisting I was correct without example), I was attempting to point out that some little girls may not have felt the way you did growing up.
And their experiences are valid too.
our 3 year old wanted the spiderman car. nearly threw a fit when that’s not what she got. so proud of her! (except for the tantrum part)
@2:
This. A hundred times.
@17:
Aeryl, I really like most of the things you say, and agree with you a lot… I can’t even begin to fathom this though. I feed a family of 6 from the grocery store on less than $200 a month. Thats about 1/10 of what I could do it for at McDonalds, and its a lot less money. Of all fast food in the US, McDs is the least healthy, by far. There are some choices that aren’t as bad as others… but they don’t come in a Happy Meal, and are much more expensive.
and a fun factoid: historically, pink/red was associated with boys and blue was a “girl” color. only in the last few decades has this changed (generally, before WW2 it was reverse from today’s socially accepted “norm”).
@37, As I’ve pointed out before, McDonald’s is a more cost effective option for many poor people. And, sure being poverty can be considered a problem, it’s a problem beyond most poor people’s capacity to solve, so it doesn’t need to be framed that way. Food snobbery doesn’t feed hungry kids.
Great post Emily !!!
Just so you know my daughter always asked for the cars and trucks and not the pink Barbie. Today she is a licensed engineer.
Also can you clarify is my Barbie Star Trek dolls considered to be action figures or dolls?
Keep up the good work well done!
I’m totally in favor of McDonald’s not labelling the toys as boys or girls toys. I will be the first one to admit that I most definitely steer my boys towards traditional boy toys… but that’s because I like them. I also steer my GIRLS towards traditionally boy toys because… that’s what I like. I want my kids to like the things I like. And my kids WANT to like the things I like, so that works out well.
But sometimes it has worked the other way, like My Little Pony. My girls became obsessed with it, so I watched it with them… and I know waaay more about that show than any other guy I personally know, dad or not. And its awesome.
That being said, parents absolutely have the right to steer their children towards whichever toys they think are appropriate. Parents get to decide what is appropriate for their children. Always. End of story. Right now McDonald’s is deciding what is appropriate. Let the parents decide. Have a couple different lines that appeal to different demographics, stop asking if its a boy or girl, and ask what the parents want their kids to have.
There’s an easy fix for this problem. Don’t take your kids to McDonald’s!
Stay home, eat a good meal (that means learning how to cook, ladies and gentlemen), and the little ones can play with whatever they can find in the back yard (maple seeds make for excellent spaceships). Oh yeah, they’ll be forced to use their imaginations, and who knows, some day they may end up having their books reviewed on Tor.com.
There. Fixed.
@39:
I doubt most families of 6 in america make less than me, but since I’m not willing to put my wages on here, I guess I can’t really quantify that. Buying grocieries is far cheaper than McDonalds. And far healthier. I’ll just leave it at that.
Saying poor people can’t afford grcieries but can afford McDonalds is… I don’t have words for it, but the math doesn’t work out.
Have to absolutely agree with Randall’s last line (from comment 2)… McDonnald’s isn’t the best standard for anything you want to introduce your children to..
I mostly agree with the post, specially about how the toys should all be in the same big pile, in all different colors and all… But I tend to think that children should be allowed to be children, and girls should be allowed to be girls… And most children tend to go for standard girl/boy themes when very young. Hasn’t stopped many girls to grow up to be strong, successfull, independent women, or boys to grow up to be sensible men who can be single fathers, stay at home fathers, or men who evenly split the housework with their wives.
As I see it, it falls more to parents to be able to filter these influences and raise their children to be what they want, than exclusively to marketing campaigns… I mean… Your children aren’t going to buy their lunch and/or toys alone, are they? So you can ask for the boys’ toys even if you’re child’s a girl, right? Who’s gonna forbid you? If you don’t care that people look at you weird for it, so won’t your chlidren when it’s their turn.
Ok, media should help move things along in the right direction concerning sexism, but, hey, that’s what sells and that’s all they’re really concerned about, and sexist people also have their right to buy whatever toys to their kids as they like, no matter what the rest of the world thinks.
Anthonypero@43:Part of the problem comes in with accessibility. Sometimes, a source of fresh food is not available–not in walking distance for example. So, types of fast food become the only close source of food. Or, the person might not have a kitchen in which to prepare fresh food.
@19:
Tor.com isn’t JUST about SciFi/Fantasy. It’s about culture, too.
Sure, women and men are different – but there is more variation WITHIN the categories than between them. We’re all human.
@30, Less heartburn.
@41, As someone who studies this stuff, you are wrong. Yes, you can find food cheaper than a Happy Meal at McDonald’s, but what’s the caloric content? That’s the most important thing to remember, aside from needing food in all the food groups, kids need calories. And if you are on the edge of starvation, a 75 cent can of Coke or a $4 Happy Meal will go further than almost anything you can get for a comparable price at the grocery store.
No doubt there are poor people out there who have no alternatives to junk food, but aren’t we really talking about middle income and above here? After all, we are precisely the kind of people who can afford to take time out of our day to obsess over silly first-world things like gender issues at fast food restaurants.
34. KiManiak
Well, I am a fan of equality because it is stupid to care whether someone has boobs or a different shade of skin, or about who they find attractive. I am quite sure if we hadn’t stepped on women for our entire existence I would be living in outer space.
Pink for girls, blue for boys is something invented by the toy industry of the 1900s and it’s kind of stuck. Is it a symbol of something sinister? Is paternalism? I don’t think so. I am more worried about little girls in Afghanistan getting acid thrown on them for going to school, or heck, even for adult women in the US who were human trafficked in one way or the other to be slaves of varying sorts. Pink and blue toys don’t create those problems and are not related to those problems.
Random thoughts,
1. Aeryl is right about fast food being an important source of affordable calories. Google it.
2. My daughter has valiantly attempted to raise my grandchildren by impressing as few as possible external gender norms for toys and clothes and play. Nevertheless, my grandson loves to smash his trains together and my granddaughter loves to put on mom’s pretty shoes and stomp around in them (3 yrs and 18 months old). Some portion of gender preferences seems to be hard wired in most kids.
3. McDonalds still messed up big time here. Pink Spiderman is just wrong on so many levels. There are less overt ways to make variety of different toys that would appeal to different play roles and still keep the standard color pallette. You can make wallets and Gwen Stacy figures and icky spiders and Electro figures, knowing that girls will typically (but not always) choose from one pile and boys will typically (but not always) choose from the other pile.
4. I suppose the real driver of the problem is the drive thru. In the store, the clerk could hold out a box of whatever they had on hand that week and the kids can pick from whatever. But for drive thru you need a fast way to select toys sight-unseen. “Boy or girl” is an unfortunate way to do that but it’s easy to see how it evolved.
5. Usually the promotions are no so overt. The choice might be between ponies and robots, or unicorns and motorcycles, so you don’t have to specifically exclude boys from liking unicorns and ponies and girls from liking robots and motorcycles.
6. When I worked at McDonalds 25 years ago, the most common parent criticism of Happy Meal toys is that they appealed to boys and there wasn’t anything that appealed to girls. I guess the company thinks having two toy lines is progress. Is it? I can’t tell.
Dear McDonalds,
We speak geek. You sadly do not.
Lys
@50, I am a person in poverty talking about gender issues on the internet.
Gender issues aren’t silly.
Gender plays a significant role in shaping people’s lives. It’s huge.
Gender equality would be a nice thing, but we don’t have it.
And those pink toys suck. In the first place, they mostly aren’t even toys – they’re trinkets. Boys who got those in their Happy Meal will complain, because you can’t DO anything with a lot of those. Most girls won’t, because it’s not nice to complain.
You know what else is a gender issue? Judging people for eating fast food. Congratulations for having transportation, kitchen appliances and cooking utensils, a meal-friendly schedule, and an income that allows you to budget for your grocery purchases. A lot of people can’t put all of those things together on a daily basis. The societal default is to assume that those people are bad mothers.
I know a lot of you are totally past that and would criticize fathers for feeding their kids junk, too. I’m thrilled that you, personally, are so enlightened. The society you live in is not.
Sigh. I was a McDonald’s manager from the mid-1980’s through 1990’s. During that time, while the company offered the usual toys seen as specifically gendered- Barbie/Hot Wheels, etc- we were trained (and in my stores, I made a big point of) to NOT say ‘boy or girl toy,’ but to . be specific- ‘Barbie or Hot Wheels?’ Unfortunately, things seem to have changed over the last 20 years. I now have a 4-year old great-nephew, and when we do go to McDonald’s, what I hear from the staff is ‘boy or girl toy?’ (And yes, I bitch at increasingly high levels about this).
@43 “Saying poor people can’t afford grcieries but can afford McDonalds is…I don’t have words for it, but the math doesn’t work out.”
A week of groceries IS less expensive than a week of McD’s meals, but the upfront cost of the groceries is a lot higher than the cost of a McD’s meal. Time and transportation can add significant costs to groceries that, while not always quantifiable, can make home cooking completely unaffordable. My favorite discussion of this issue is in Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier. Chapters 3 and 6. Highly recommended.
Well my daughter was very happy to get her pink and purple Spiderman toy last night and does not think it sucks. She asked if we could eat at McD’s last night, since I had to be at work early and didn’t have time to make us dinner before I dropped her off at her mom’s house, specifically so she could get a “Pink Spiderman Toy!!!” (as she put it, lol).
#54
Since you have access to the internet, enlighten yourself to the possible alternatives. It will help you and yours in the long run, especially in regards to future health costs. (But if you really can’t shake the fast food habit, there are other toy stores pretending to be restaurants besides McDonald’s, some of which might not make the traumatic decision of changing the color of Spider-Man’s pajamas.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-gustafson/true-costs-of-so-called-cheap-food_b_4337423.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/05/eating-healthy-vs-unhealthy_n_4383633.html
http://healthland.time.com/2013/12/05/eating-healthy-is-cheaper-than-you-think/
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/cheap-healthy-15-nutritious-foods-about-2-dollars
@59 – I’m a middle class person who thinks about class and gender issues on the internet and in real life. And I hate it when people tell poor people that the problem in their lives is that they aren’t enlightened enough.
Hate it.
Don’t feel too terrible – it’s a trend with a long history, so you’re far from the only person who has failed to notice that enlightenment doesn’t fill bellies.
But let’s consider this, please:
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/cheap-healthy-15-nutritious-foods-about-2-dollars – Nothing on that list qualifies as a meal all by itself, which the page acknowledges. I mean, I guess you could eat the canned tuna straight, but it’s about the price of a McD’s hamburger. Or the beans. I wouldn’t, but you could.
http://healthland.time.com/2013/12/05/eating-healthy-is-cheaper-than-you-think/ – Results of research, but not intended to provide practical guidance, nor do the author’s think that’s the problem – “Ultimately, however, the researchers suggest that production systems
that make healthy foods more economical to produce, and therefore are
more in line with processed food prices, are necessary. That way,
healthier foods may become more accessible, health care costs for
chronic diseases related to poor diets may also start to drop.” – apparently, Harvard thinks the problem lies with manufacturers, not with a lack of enlightenment among the poor.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/05/eating-healthy-vs-unhealthy_n_4383633.html – regurgitates an article a lot like the one from Time, from the BMJ.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-gustafson/true-costs-of-so-called-cheap-food_b_4337423.html – Says we need to consider the true costs of cheap food – I skimmed, but I gather it’s unhealthy and bad for the planet. That’s true, but hardly a problem that’s going to be addressed by even a very enlightened person who’s struggling to make ends meet.
@59, Stop recommending individual solutions to systemic problem. I am very well aware of the long term risks of eating fast food.
Know what’s worse? Starvation
Moderator note: This discussion is becoming more heated and personal in tone than I’m comfortable with. Let’s please try to keep things civil and on-topic — thanks.
Yeah, we take the kids habitually to Mickey D’s once a week after church, just as a treat. I almost had a rage stroke when I saw the Spider-Man toy given to my daughter and then compared it with the marginally cooler toy given to my son. Seriously, it’s Spider-Man. I’m a 35 year old woman, and I like Spider-Man. Everyone likes Spider-Man, up to and including my 7 year old daughter. Now to be fair, the week before she was somewhat disappointed when she got a Skylander’s Giant as opposed to a My Little Pony. That has less to do with the fact that none of us have any idea what Skylander’s Giants are (show, video game? Still confused) and more to do with the fact that she adores MLP and was trying to see how many of those she could get (total little geek magpie). You know who else has no idea who Skylander’s Giants are and greatly enjoys MLP? You guessed it, her brother. Seriously, it’s children’s entertainment, stop gendering it.
Great article. I love purple, so I would definitely want a purple toy, but the color distribution is ridiculous, and the thoughts on the inactive/active toys (as well as Spider-Man being a crush object instead of a person to emulate) are really good (although it does look like there is a ‘boy’ journal too). It seems like it should be so simple – why can’t they just have Spider-Man toys, and that’s that? And you know, if they want to include a headband or a journal or whatever, that’s cool too, but that they had to default to the pinky purple color scheme…(I love purple!)..*sigh*. If they want to have toys in a few different colors too…that’s cool as well, but the obvious boy/girl demarcation is lame. At any rate, as a girl, I would have been totally into the ‘boy’ toys (and probably the girl ones too) and it never would have struck me that they were ‘boy’ toys. Why do we have to make it that way?
My three year old son really likes to watch these YouTube videos of this guy that does reviews of Happy Meal toys. One of the videos he likes is in fact, some old Spider Man set from the 90s. After going through all these pretty cool toys that all had fairly neat features/actions, the last toy is a Gwen Stacy toy who was a non-articulated figure with a few snap on dresses you can mix and match. My husband and I were a bit o_O at that. And in fact, whenever he watches that one, I would think, “Man, if this toy line was out now, Tor.com would have something to say about it!”
At those who are saying that getting food at a grocery store is less expensive than buying a meal at McDonald’s or any fast food place should know that grocery stores do not put their stores in places where there is povetry. Unfortunately, those people only have the LUXURY of going to the nearest convenienc store, where there is probably no fresh produce or meat; only canned products; or to the nearest fast food place.
My mother used to shop for me out of the boys’ section because everything in the girls’ was pink, and that was boring (of course, now you can choose from pastel yellow or green too).
The emphasis on gendered colors in the US is, honestly, out of control.
@66, Yup. My daughter has lots of boy stuff, typically because the license stuff she wants is girlified. The only licensed clothes she’s got that’s from the girls section, is her Batgirl shirt with cape, her Ariel shirt, her Rainbow Dash shirt, and her reversible Marvel sweatshirt she got from her BFF for Christmas from Hot Topic. All her other Marvel, Spongebob, Batman, Minion stuff, is boy’s clothes I find at Big Lots. She bunches them up in a knot in the back so it looks cute and not baggy on her.
The idea of assigning genders to colors is absurd. I wore a pink shirt today, my balls didn’t retract into my abdomen and turn into ovaries. There are plenty of innate biological differences between the sexes, but a genetically wired preference for a certain color certainly is not one of them.
@67 – I haven’t actually looked into it that much, but have you hear heard of Ashley Eckstein’s (the voice of Ahsoka) line of geeky girl clothes? The idea is that you can get things like t-shirts, etc, that are actually fitted for girls (and aren’t necessarily pink and sparkly) instead of drowning in a baggy t-shirt.
On the topic of girls being encouraged by merchandise to crush on superheroes rather than be superheroes: I saw a high school girl yesterday totally unironically rocking a Captain America sweater over a collared shirt, and her posture and bearing made it VERY clear that the message was “I want to BE Captain America”, not “I think Captain America is SO HOT!” It happens. Girls shouldn’t have to go to specialist geek girl clothing stores if they want to express themselves this way.
This piece is narrow minded and a very poor commentary. This is smart marketing by McD’s and more so a great promotion for the movie. To suggest that McD’s is promoting any type of gender discrimination is insulting. On a large scale boys like blue and girls like pink. Why is this a problem and why is it an issue for you that this company appeals to the masses. The only problem is with some of the young employees, most of which are high school aged kids, that don’t take accountability seriously at that age while working at a part time job. They’ll toss a kid any toy they feel like handing out. In most cases if the boy wants a girl toy or vice versa most will oblige. It’s not McD’s policy to force a gender based toy on either gender. The gender basis for the toy is just a classification for the toy type, a simple way to differentiate the free products they are offering, again, which appeals to the masses. Most companies use color to appeal to the market segment they are attempting to reach. Why does that suddenly have to be wrong because some people have an obstructed view. If your a woman and you don’t want to wear a pink dress, don’t wear it, if hearts don’t appeal to you don’t buy them. If you’d rather wear a suit and tie wear it. No one is forcing anything on anyone, we live in a free market economy. My daughter played with her easy bake oven for hours because she wanted to, my son played with it too. She also collects Barbie dolls but my Son has no interest in them. They both played with toy cars but my son still does and my daughter has lost interest. Types of toys and many other products are tested in sample markets and provide actual results and answers to questions as to what people want. The sample markets are driven by gender, race, age, body type, physical attributes. It makes sense, I wouldn’t try to sell a wheel chair to a marathon runner. Why force a boy toy on a girl that doesn’t want it. Many girls do like pink and they do like hearts and it’s pretty cool to see Spiderman promoted that way. I’ve always loved super heros, especially Spiderman but my daughter didn’t, maybe if she sees these toys Spiderman might appeal to her more and and we could have another interest in common to make our family stronger. These marketing methods are effective and proven and used to drive interest. This article on the other hand is just one point of view which I guess the author is entitled to but it is very narrow.
I love how people say “marketing works” is this just-so way, completely ignoring the implications of the fact that the marketing itself is the external pressure enforcing these gender differences.
Boys like blue and girls like pink, because for 30 years we’ve all been “told” this by marketers. Boys are active and girls are inactive, because those have been put forth as the ideal behaviors for them, by marketers.
Our entire culture, poisonous, backwards, regressive, oppressive, sexist, racist, and classist as it is, is that way, because of marketing.
But we shouldn’t DO ANYTHING about it, because it works. Which depends on your definition of “works” I guess. I see a broken culture, I don’t know what “works” about that, accept for those that are already privileged. No wonder why some people are just “Happy” “Dudes”
Again, no one is forcing anything on anyone, accept the marketers. They force girls to accept their roles as the passive love interests of men, they force boys to perform masculinity or be ostracized. Asking for a range of toys isn’t forcing, limiting the options as to what is considered acceptable is.
“Our entire culture, poisonous, backwards, regressive, oppressive, sexist, racist, and classist as it is, is that way, because of marketing.”
Really? Really? I realize there is a need to justify all of those gender studies, and “Amerikkka is Evil” classes from college, but come on. Do you realize there are many countries in the world that punish women for going to school? Slavery is a REAL thing in the world today, women have been stoned to death recently. If you have the luxery of getting irate over pink Spiderman toys, I think things are pretty good.
Regardless you are missing the REAL problem. Every and I mean EVERY women’s bathroom sign has a little stick figure wearing a dress! The nerve!! women arent all little princesses who have to have on skirts! Welcome to the 1800’s amiright?? amiright??
Comment #75 unpublished, in the interest of keeping things civil (let’s try to avoid name-calling in the thread–thanks!)
I love pink & Barbies and even I see everything that’s wrong here. Spider-Man is not pink. There are “girl” Spider-Man characters if they tried even harder but they are comic things not movie things. They didn’t even make an effort and throw Gwen Stacy in there. But regardless, all the analysis here about the choices is accurate. Sure, girls “might” like a notebook, but school supplies generally have comic hero notebooks in their original colors without the need to objectify Spider-Man as a love interest and forget the hero part.
Aeryl,
While I respect your opinion I think your view of Marketing is backwards. Marketing does not tell people what they must want it is used as a result of being told what people actually want. Women/girls are not told they have to like pink the fact is that they just do. There is nothing wrong with that. I just don’t understand why there is a need to percieve a problem in this area when no problem exists.
As for a broken culture I’m guessing you dont have many real life experiences. I’m not sure who told you boys are active and girls are inactive but from what I can see activity is not driven by gender. I see female sports teams from little league on to college to the olymics and into professional sports. I see women as the heads of companies, in managerial positions and business owners. It just takes getting out there and doing what you want rather than sitting behind a pc linked to the internet making absurd observations. Did you know that a Sr Vice President and Chief Communications officer of McDonalds is a woman. The Sr. Vice President of Human Resources is a woman. The Sr Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer is a woman.
There is no marketing anywhere in the real world that tells young woman to be inactive or passive love interests of men. If it exists I’d like to see it.
First of all, Aeryl pretty much took the words out of my mouth. Yes, marketing IS a give and take of people influencing the market, but to completely deny the market’s influence on what people want and their beliefs? I have a toddler, I call shenanigans on that assertion, I see every day how marketing influences him. Now, of course, as a diligent parent, I do my best to mitigate negative influences but…yeah. But the fact remains there are certain interests he has SOLELY because of marketing. They’re not bad interests, but still.
No, girls don’t ‘just’ like pink. I don’t mind it, actually, but it was NEVER one of my favorite colors. And I DO know girls that were told they had to like it and wear it even if they didn’t actually want to.
We HAVE made many advancements, but I also see a broken society, not because of pink Spiderman toys in and of themselves, but of the assumptions behind them. Sometimes it just leads to crappy plastic stuff. But it all piles up, and leads to other things, like Nigerian girls being kidnapped for daring to go to school by a group who keeps girl hostages as sex and kitchen slaves, which is currently in the news. No, I’m not saying I am as outraged over Pink Spiderman as I am about that, or that they are morally equivalent, just that they are symptoms of the same problem that manifests itself in different way in different cultures and situations.
Also, I only know Aeryl from what I read on Tor.com, but I am pretty sure she has had some ‘life experiences’…but she can stick up for herself.
@79, In Victorian England, pink was considered a boy’s color, as it was associated with red, which was more aggressive. Blue, was considered calming, as was associated with girls. So you can take you “girls just do” and put it in your ear.
I won’t even address the “must not have real life experiences” crap, because it’s obvious from your comments that you haven’t even put much consideration into your thinking.
Also this:
There is no marketing anywhere in the real world that tells young woman to be inactive or passive love interests of men. If it exists I’d like to see it.
This demonstrates that you didn’t even read the article, or look at the pictures. Because that picture is a perfect example. All the girls “toys” are passive. There are headbands, bracelets, hair combs, wallets, and notebooks. No web shooters, action figures or toys. But you won’t see it, because you refuse to.
@74, Don’t be disingenuous. Those cultures have marketing too, we just don’t call it that. Marketing, fundamentalist religious education, these things are all the same thing, they use the beliefs of a few people, in positions to have the most impact, and spread them through an entire culture, corrupting it. Do you think the people who kidnap girls for going to school, weren’t marketed to believe that it’s evil for girls to go to school?
Such passion on display. Would that it were employed to valuable effect.
I think education and discussion are very valuable. Certainly better than just better than ignoring or not questioning it.
Also, passion is not a zero sum game; I can be passionate about this and post a few thoughts on an internet forum, and also be passionate (and more active) about other ‘more important’ things. (I do think this is important, actually).
Furthermore, your comment is a bit irritating, as you are implying what one should and shouldn’t be passionate about, which can have the appearance of trying to shut down a discussion.
LisaMarie,
I agree with alot of what you say ad your point comes across well. You make sense, but just a few points and yes I agree, Marketing does influence peoples beliefs and wants. That is the point of marketing in general. I just do not believe that it forces these beliefs and wants on society nor do I believe that from a gender point of view that society, in the US, is broken. I believe that as a nation we are thriving in this area.
I agree with you 100% that parts of US society are broken, there are murders, racism, brutality, bullying and a list of other crimes on society that certainly should be fixed and made better. “Nigerian girls being kidnapped for daring to go to school by a group who keeps girl hostages as sex and kitchen slaves” is certainly an atrocity and an infringement on basic human rights and I pray to God that someday this will be overcome. However that is a completely different topic as its driven by the beliefs in that country and not based on gender marketing campaigns. I do believe in this country women thrive and the thought that anyone being kept as a slave or denied the right to schooling is disturbing. I didn’t make it into every college I applied for but I made the most of my opportunities. I’m not rich but I judge the level of my success based on the fact that I have a wonderful family that is happy, I have two sons and a daughter that I hope will have everything they want in life. I hope they live as long as they want and never want as long as they live.
As for pink, I do believe girls in general like pink, not all girls but many. I like pink. My favorite band is Pink Floyd, I have a pink shirt and pink ties. I happen to also have more blue shirts and blue ties than pink because thats what I like, not what I was told to like. It’s just a color and people have the right to buy and own what appeals to them.
I also know that McDonals is more expensive, calorie wise, than many, many foods you can buy much cheaper in your local grocery story. I can get alot more hamburger from a $5.oo pound of chop meat than I can from 5 cheeseburgers on the dollar menu.
(Note: Comment edited by moderator)
Stay Well Lisamarie and thrive!!!
@84:Explaining why someone else who you don’t know may not “really” be in poverty is, perhaps, not the wisest course of action.
Think of that three pounds of hambuger. What if you don’t have a local grocery store? What if you had to take three buses out and back to get it? What if you don’t have means to cook it? What if you have to work 12 hours a day just to barely float? Lot’s of things can interfere with easily getting and changing 3 pounds of meat into food.
#81 – Apparently now we are back in Victorian England. Your use of the “Was” speaks loudly. Has human nature changed so much that blue being calming has since changed to active? Pink being aggressive has now changed to passive. Your arguments are all over the place.
As far as the toys, like I said earlier and I will remain consistant, is that the toys while being classified as boys and girls are available to both genders. Since when is using a notebook passive. Sure you sit to write but you write to be creative and learn and make yourself smarter. Is it wrong to want to become smarter, should girls just go outside and play? I do hope you open your eyes to a wider view and don’t pass on this oppressive thinking. I for one would love to see you become an entrepreneur and I would love to see how you market a product. I for one believe that Hillary Clinton can wear a pink dress AND be president.
DougL@51 – Thanks for sharing. You have some points (equality of gender, of the races and of sexual orientation) that I could get behind.
It seems that you have your beliefs and values, just like anyone else. You appear to value/care about the problems of international abuse of children, human trafficking, etc., and that is laudable.
Here’s a point to consider: If you wrote a blog on this space about what you value and someone were to challenge just because their values were different than yours (“Why spend all this time talking about that other stuff when child poverty/apartheid/ethnic cleansing/etc. is far more important”) and in a non-constructive way, it is likely that some of the same people who are defending Emily’s point would defend/support yours as well. There can be multiple important issues out there to discuss. Just because one person doesn’t share the values of the Original poster doesn’t mean their point isn’t valid or important.
I personally just don’t see a commenter’s need to belittle Emily’s point just because that commenter doesn’t share her values.
I’m all for challenging certain points if one sees a flaw in the logic/reasoning, but I am surprised by the number of commenters who have come on here to say that what Emily cares about isn’t worth caring about just because they don’t value it; as opposed to challenging her point due to errors, flaws, inconsistencies, etc.
Anyway, you sound like a good guy and I wish you well in any of your efforts to address international abuse of children, human trafficking and slavery.
@86,
The entire point of my statement was to demonstrate that it was an artifical construct then (boys like pink, girls like blue) and it’s an artificial construct now.
(Comment edited by moderator, in the interest of keeping things civil. Everyone: please try to focus on the issues being discussed and avoid direct personal criticisms and judgements.)
Comment #84 edited by moderator (update: and #88 removed for the same reason), in the interest of keeping things civil. Feel free to disagree with one another in a respectful manner, but dismissing/ casting aspersions on the credibility of other commenters is not conducive to having a useful or constructive conversation.
Everyone: please try to focus on the issues being discussed and avoid direct personal criticisms and judgements.
@88, Good lord dude.
Never once in any of those statements I made about people in poverty using McDonald’s for calories, did I ever say it was about me. Or is it just that you can’t work up the energy to get upset about something unless it involves you personally?
While I am in poverty, I am fortunate that I have a good quality grocery store less than one mile from my house. That I had family members who could give me appliances, negating the need to make such sacrifices. I am fortunate enough to have an employer that allows me internet time on my breaks. Don’t assume you know a thing about me, just because of the things I advocate for.
@84 Most people in poverty in America have at least some internet access–these days, it’s a necessity for many jobs, even low-paying ones, to have email. If you have a laptop (probably a cruddy old one, possibly secondhand, which you’ll continue to use until it breaks down completely) you can get on the internet without paying any number of places, thanks to so many malls and coffeeshops offering free wifi. (For the coffeeshops, you can avoid having to purchase anything by parking outside and using the computer in your car–most hotspots extend a bit beyond the boundaries of the store itself.) If you have a computer assigned to you at work, you can use that–and even if you don’t have a PC at home or work, getting online is as simple as going to your local library and using the computers there. The fact that you’ve never had to consider these options doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
As for your argument about cooking from scratch being cheaper–yes, it is. It also requires access to a kitchen, access to ingredients, time to meal plan and grocery shop, time to actually cook…all things that middle-class people take for granted, but people in poverty often don’t have. There’s also the issue of things that are cheaper in the long run, such as stocking up on groceries, having higher initial costs. An impoverished person is more likely to have $10 on hand at any given time than $70-100 for groceries. It doesn’t matter if cooking would save you money over time if you can’t afford to buy groceries right now. This is called the “have to have money to save money” problem, and has been extensively studied. The fact that you’ve never had to deal with it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Contrary to what a number of politicians like to claim (speaking of marketing driving people’s beliefs), they’re quite a resourceful bunch. Because they have to be. For the poor, there is no room for error.
Moderators: feel free to strike the first line of my last post. It was ill-considered and I apologize.
@93: Edited–thank you for being so conscientious; it’s appreciated.
I am saddened by all the commenters that found the need to come in here and question why this article is here/why we are talking about this. If you don’t care about this issue, fine (that saddens me too, but w/e), you don’t have to comment at all. There are plenty of articles here on the Tor blog that I skip over, because I’m not interested. But why come in and try to shut the conversation down completely?
For me, going directly to the issues of the toys, the fact that there are girl and boy toys to begin with is what’s so silly. Why don’t they just have unisex toys? Then, as the former McD’s manager mentioned above, the cashier can simply ask which toy they want.
Ha. Now I kind of feel bad that pink and purple were my favorite colors as a little girl way back when. I was a kid whose parents taught me I could do and be whatever I wanted, but when I had the choice those were my colors.
But not for Spidey.
Spiderman has always been blue and red for me. When I had Spiderman toys (like a really cool Spiderman watch
that my dad got me (it has vibrating radioactive spiders!)) they were blue and red. If anyone had tried to give me a pink and purple Spiderman toy I’d have thrown it back at them as a fake.
McDonald’s screwed up. They’re insulting girls by offering them fake Spiderman on all levels (hearts? really?), like we can’t admire the real one for what he stands for in the colors that represent him.
@Aeryl – You didn’t do a bad job of explaining that the preferences of people as a group tend to follow cultural norms. That you don’t even need an analogy, the genders assigned to colors have swapped relatively recently, just shows how clear the issue is. If someone misses your point, either they have problems with reading comprehension or they don’t want to believe what you’re saying.
I wasn’t interested in “girl toys” as a kid, but even if I had been I probably wouldn’t have asked for one because I was socially savvy enough to see that even if my parents didn’t outright refuse (I know plenty of people who got that response), it would bring me a whole lot of negative attention from other people.
You know what really drives me nuts about this whole thing? That every time someone insists that something as arbitrary as favorite color is an innate biological characteristic, certain people get a little more resistant to the idea that there are any differences at all between men’s brains and women’s brains. Sharing a study which determined that men have greater tissue density in the left amygdala and women have greater tissue density in the anterior cingulate gyrus isn’t advocating any social norms, but you’d never believe that to hear some of my former friends tell it.
@97, That study sounds fascinating. Did it suggest any reasons for it? Not being a neurologist, I don’t know exactly what those parts of the brain control, but I wonder if there isn’t a “nurture” reason behind it, versus a natural one.
@98 – There weren’t any causes proposed that were other than speculation because the study in question was a meta-analysis of other studies that have quantified the differences between men’s and women’s brains. One researcher suggested that prenatal hormones played a part (likely), but that since most of the studies looked at adults, social/environmental factors may also play a role (also likely). In the case of brain anatomy, nature vs. nurture is a false dichotomy. Some times even a specific factor isn’t clearly nature or nurtue. Elevated levels of cortisol can cause damage to the hippocampus. Two possible causes of elevated cortisol levels are chronic stress and a thyroid disorder. Is one nature and the other nurture? The end result, at least with regards to cortisol-induced hippocampal damage, is the same.
The conclusion of any of these studies is always “it’s too soon to say what causes these differences and what, if any, behavioral implications they have.” As to the structures in question, those were just my two favorite examples. Since you’re interested, the amygdala is involved in strong emotions like fear, emotional learning and pheromone detection. The anterior cingulate gyrus is involved in error detection and attention. I’d speculate on whether that’s connected to differing rates of ADHD, but that’s really just a guess.
A small study in Spain conducted on people who intended to change their sex but had not yet begun any hormone treatments or undergone surgery found that in certain white matter structures the patients’ brains were closer to the structural norms of their preferred sex than to their birth sex. To my knowledge it was the only study of its kind, and there wasn’t enough information to determine any causal relationship, but it’s food for thought.
I realize this is getting pretty far from the original topic, but neuroscience is kind of my thing and I’ll talk about it at any opportunity. :P
To get back to the topic at hand, isn’t it interesting that today we consider red and pink to be two different colors? We consider blue and light blue to be different shades of the same color. And the Victorian idea that red and pink were both appropriate for boys suggests that at the time pink was considered a pastel version of red. But today, red is a “boy” color and pink is a “girl” color.
@99, Thanks for the reply! What I was more getting at, with the nature vs nurture thing, is that there are behaviors and attitudes different genders are expected to perform, and if by conforming to those expectations, we are then developing the parts of the brain that coordinate with that.
Like do men have a bigger left amygdala, because our society teaches men they must be aggressive and the amygdala develops because of that, or if the aggression perhaps comes from the enlarged amygdala.
Fascinating stuff!
@99: You are onto something with the colors.
In many 18th paintings you can see a male figure in pink walking with a lady. That was shorthand for “this guy is a rake/player/good lover.”
Pink was a very masculine color.
The brain study is fascinating. I have a friend currently undergoing the gender swap treatments (male to female). Wonder what her brain would show.
@100 – Perhaps most tellingly, the emotion most strongly associated with the amygdala is fear. It’s still not socially acceptable for men to show fear, but anger is often a way of dealing with fear because it feels less paralyzing. A couple of studies have been done with children and teenagers, which is good because there’s been less time for them to be affected by social pressure, but young adults are still the norm because if you’re doing your research at a university you always have a steady supply of undergrads who will happily lie in an MRI machine for two hours in exchange for a $5 Amazon gift card.
@101 – I think men and pink are making a comeback. Certainly nobody gives my pink polo a second glance (yes, I often wear it with cargo shorts; no, I don’t pop the collar).
As for your friend, her brain wouldn’t be identical to that of a woman who’s always been a woman, but it wouldn’t look like a man’s brain either. So far I don’t think anyone has studied how hormone replacement therapy affects brain structures, so I’m waiting to see what happens there. Interesting stuff.
Different people of *all* genders like different colors. It’s telling, though, that our society spends a lot more energy on keeping boys away from pink than keeping girls in it — also food for thought. These are the things that are girly, clearly signified, and you *must* avoid the girly or forfeit your place!
To assume that all or even most girls just naturally gravitate towards pink things like zombies because “brains!” simply flies in the face of all reality. Consider how in most of Asia, South, East, and Southeast especially (which is, let’s face it, where most human beings live), pink is a perfectly normal — ubiquitous! — color to see in men’s traditional clothing (especially of the higher, richer, silk-affording classes), in all sorts of shades, and often in men’s Westernized clothing as well, and is expected to signify absolutely nothing about a man’s masculinity or effeminacy whatsoever. (Note how, also, in quite a few of these cultures, deep red is a color for women to get married in.) Note how pre-Victorians, European men — especially the ones wealthy enough to show off — wore all kinds of bright shades including pink (as well as fancy wigs, and powdered faces). Dark tones were ushered in because of religiously-motivated asceticism (and likely ability to keep it cleaner-looking longer) — and even here, we’ve now got proof that even the Puritans dressed in colors, not just the black in which their portraits may have been painted.
(For another subtle but very culture specific and completely arbitrary gender marker, see how many men in K-pop bands feel perfectly comfortable in the sort of deep V-necked outerwear an American man would consider unmasculine — without losing any sex appeal to Korean women or emulatability to male fans. What’s inherently sexual/gender-al one way or another about a V-neck? Nada.)
To attribute this to the gender of a brain is just ridiculous.
To assume that the term “marketing” can ONLY apply to a capitalism-driven ad campaign is also totally missing the larger picture. Think instead in terms of ideology, if that helps. Dominant power structures drive ideology, because they’ve got the largest, most effective means of disseminating and repeating messages until people believe them. Religion, philosophy, yes, but also ownership — chiefs, landholders, governments, political priestly castes, multinational coroprations. The prevailing mode of ownership has the most ability to determine ideology — what people believe is appropriate, or positive, or negative. In a theocracy, religion will determine these things. In a society where the state has the lion’s share of the power, the state’s propaganda will determine this. In a capitalist society, what drives these repetitious messages is advertising (media, which is pretty much wholly funded by ad revenue, as well as straight-up ads themselves). Ideology exists to justify the rule of those who rule, whichever form that ruling class takes.
It’s up to responsible members of any society to look critically at the structures that are delivering these messages, to think about who is ultimately in control of these structures, and to think about what it is they actually want from you. What are they telling you about *yourself* to feed your need to support their actions, or put money in their collection boxes, or buy their stuff? Not to write them off and merely “good” or “bad” — it’s so much more complex than “this good” and “that bad” — but to realize that the big picture is actually pretty freaking big, not binary, not simple. Not to passively accept that these pervasive messages are simply natural and biological and inescapable. Not to passively accept that this is just how reality works (when reality works completely differently for plenty of people whose points of view are totally accessible nowadays because, you know, Internet).
It is disturbing to me how the color coding of children’s clothing and toy floors in large stores has become so uniformly one color. Boys – neon, girls — not even a nice dusty pink, no, the most blinding, garish pink imaginable. I was born in the 70s — this has not always been the case. There was pink, sure, but there was also moderation, and things like Legos and Tinkertoys were just in colors, not in sex-based colors. And yet! People still bought toys and used them! Without needing to be handheld, herded and fishhooked into choosing the “right” toys for their brains and/or genitalia.
(I also have a problem with companies taking outright crap merchandise, shoddily made, badly sized, etc, — coloring it pink and then marketing it to women as though that’s going to work. Case in point, certain “women’s tool kits.” Every woman I know who uses tools at all — basically every woman I know except one — just ignores this and buys normal tools. What makes them “women’s” besides the color? My drill is dark teal. Why can’t tools simply be sized to the purchaser? I’m a woman; I’ll argue from the other side: What if a small guy needs the smaller tools? The selection will be pink. Even if he likes pink, he’ll be shamed for getting tools that he can use more comfortably simply because societal messages have told him and his peers that pink is absolutely not and cannot ever be for him, and using the tools makes him somehow less than what he is.)
I think the passion on both sides of this argument comes from the fact that people are talking about their own children here, or remembering their own childhood.
I suspect that my granddaughter will be by for Mother’s Day, so I will have to ask her what she likes. Knowing her, I suspect the boy’s toys will be far more interesting.
The most segregated place in America are the toy aisle of your local store. And, when you consider the fact that the little kids who like Happy Meals are in an a period of their life which is pretty much asexual, it is sad that we choose that moment in their life to push different gender roles so hard.
Full disclosure — I think all the toys are pretty bad and add very little to a child’s out-of-the-box thinking or creative play, but yes, it does have an effect when the boys are given actual figures to make up stories with, to act out adventures, and basically to identify with a character *doing* things, as opposed to more or less just wearing the (pinkified) image which does little more than signal “I like this thing” — the end. The notebook is nice, but it has nothing to do with who Spider Man *is* or what he represents — action, saving people, helping. Children learn by pretending, they develop by modeling behaviors in their play. I’d be extremely happy for my daughter to model writing as a behavior, but any notebook could serve the same purpose as a Spider Man one — not so with the action figures.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25857895
Gender biased toys affect career choices. They limit what children believe they are supposed to do, feel, and think. This is not okay. Period. It’s good to let your children play with whatever they want. It isn’t good to let profiteers tell them what they want, directly or indirectly.
Lisamarie @83
You misunderstand me greatly. I have no problem with this topic, nor with a substantial portion of the commentary. Quite a notable number of comments, however, have entirely left the scope of the post, and focused on the person of other commenters. In a place like this, that is entirely wasted, because it isn’t agreeable debate, it’s hyperbolic ad hominem, and rather than working to bring a different perspective to someone else, it entrenches them in their viewpoint, if only for the sake of defending themselves, or returning fire.
Passion employed to useless effect.
I find this whole converstaion fascinating. I don’t think there is any question that societies throughout history have decided on a societal norm for male and female, and many of these societal norms contradict other societies. Simple observation will tell you that this isn’t genetics, then.
The larger question (going primarily unasked on this thread) is “Is this inherently wrong?” There are obviously examples where it is wrong. If society is pushing girls to be sedentary for some reason, this would be wrong on a few levels. But a lot of the comments seem to fall on the side of “Its evil for society to have social norms for the sexes.” I’m not sure I can agree with that wholesale. Nor am I sure its possible to eliminate even if we should.
EDIT: I would also add that I think its wrong to ostracize people because they don’t follow the societal norm, or are otherwise unconventional. But this doesn’t make the societal norm evil. The evil comes in trying to enforce what you believe on another. If a person has the strength of character to turn their back on the passive coersion of societal norms, then more power to them. They shouldn’t then need to suffer from more active forms of coersion.
Why have the “norms” if you aren’t going to enforce it?
That’s where you losing me, is that norms exist for no other reason, than to be enforced, societally, socially, legally.
Should we have social norms for people? Absolutely. I just don’t see why those norms should also differentiate between “boys norms” and “girls norms”
Freelancer@107, I apologize, I thought you were referring to the entire post itself! Sorry!
I’m far more concerned with the dilution of crap toys into food products that aren’t that great for children, that will more than likely end up in a landfill within a year or so, while we push more manufacturing dollars into China. I may not agree with the assessment that pink toys equal girl toys, but in that very case, all those I have known that do have female children buy/select whatever toy they can in those instances, and a lot of kids can look past the colors, because it has Spiderman, Batman, whatever on it.
Yeah, I can’t read any further down this thread, but I really HAVE to address the people who are accusing @Aeryl of “not having life experiences”. Actually, I for one greatly appreciate @Aeryl‘s candor about his/her challenging socioeconomic background, and IMHO it’s a huge relief to have some social diversity on this board. It gives me hope for the future that there can be articulate Aeryls out there managing to love literature through public libraries or however else, and that tor.com apparently ISN’T just an echo chamber full of middle-incomes and above. It’s all the richer for it.
Lisamarie @110
No need to apologize, I think I’ve seen enough of your commentary hereabouts to know that we agree far more than disagree, and you were defending an ideal, not attacking me. Besides, I was completely non-specific about my flippantly phrased remark, which left it able to be interpreted as you have done.
This is the very reason that I’m often much more verbose than perhaps I ought to be. When I’m not, misunderstanding is not only possible, but likely.
We’re good.
AP @108
Completely in line with your thoughts, brother. But some must always choose to be in your face about their stand on an issue close to home.
I think what gets overlooked in such discussions is that companies try to appeal to the “average” [in order to maximize sales] – of course not all little girls prefer pink… but on “average” it is quite popular [if not their most popular] colour for clothing & toys. A lot of folks seem to think it is the company “forcing” girls or “brainwashing” them into wanting pink toys etc… really not the truth, give more credit to kids and parents – they aren’t sheep. As a father of two little girls myself, who has never pushed my kids into choosing for gender bias, my oldest prefers purple and black and really digs manga – while my youngest is more your “stereotypical” pink princess [literally will not leave house with head to toe pink ensemble.. LOL]. If this company thinks these toys will sell and be popular, nothing wrong with them producing them… sales will determine if they guessed right or not.
Aeryl@109:
You make societal norms sound like laws passed by a governing board with a police force to make sure we all adhere.
Societal norms don’t exist to be enforced. That implies some sort of planning. Societal norms form organically, because a majority of people think alike on certain issues. They are defined by culture. They can change “quickly”, as the culture changes. 10-20, 30 years. One generation to another, etc… The only thing that makes a societal norm a norm is that most people in multiple generations agree with it, within the context of the culture. In the past, those norms may have included much of the country, but its been a long time since America was monolithic enough for that to happen. Heck, most individuals in America participate in more than one culture nowadays.
Societal trends on the other hand… those can be manipulated by individuals, corporations, through marketing, etc. They can change in weeks or even days. They tend to transcend across cultural barriers (in the US, at least) as well, for a short time. Eventually, if enough people decide the trend makes sense, it may become a cultural norm. But that takes decades. The pink for girls / blue for boys is a good example of a trend. It may have been well on its way to becoming a norm… but I think that’s not going to happen. Too many cultures within the US completely reject it now.
Trends don’t need decades, nor to make sense, in order to flourish.
Dig, dog?
@Free… didn’t say trends needed decades or to make sense to flourish. I said they may need that to become norms. The flourish and invade culture in days. Generally, in decades, they will have either petered out or become norms
In the linked article about McDs refusing to give someone the “opposite gender toy” – everyone (including myself) seems to assume that the article describes a single instance of this occuring to one person. In fact “42.8 percent of stores refused to exchange for an opposite-sex toy.” It was a small experiment, granted. 30 visits to 15 stores by actual 7-11 year olds (again, most of us seem to be mentioning younger kids – I remember at least one commenter outright saying the kids weren’t ordering the meals – which I just realized was silly – I know he meant not ordering them completely alone, but my son usally does order for himself & has since 3?). But that FLOORED me. 42.8 percent REFUSED !?!?!
The most egregious being a girl who was tld they only had girl toys left, but when an adult male came in & requested a boy toy, voila…
And I must state, for the record, that it seems that McD corp policy is more in line with the comments of the former McD manager to this post, who stated that s/he taught employees to ask based on product line, not sex. Which seems to me like a pretty minor change for those of us annoyed by the question to request.
But let me repeat, 42.8 percent REFUSED! I just can’t get past that. WTF? & to me that absolutely positively flies in the face of every argument that this is just McD’s generalizing (by which I mean McD’s isn’t trying to enforce gender norms, they’re just culturally aware & repsonding to their audience as a whole knowing there are exceptions) & you can easily get the other toy.
Originally, I literally wrote what may well be a 3 page essay at this point, but knowing I skim the excessively long comments, I’m setting it aside. Hopefully, I’ll post all/part of it on its own merits later ;-}
I just had a mini-epiphany !
I realized that my problem with the setup is in the very fact of acting like it’s a choice between Girl & Boy. Yep, you’re probably saying, ‘duh’, but hear me out …
It seems like the place where those of us who find this annoying/enraging/stupid/just plain wrong (whether it’s mild or seething emotion) & those of you who just don’t see why it’s a problem (whether you acknowledge some ludicrousness in the situation or just absolutely think we’ve gone off the deep end) clash is tied up in the idea that (my previous comment about the shockingly common occurrence of employees refusing to cross the toy gender identity barrier notwithstanding) kids can insist on the other toy & MANY really do like the ‘other gender’s toys’ & play with them regularly.
But our objection (sorry, I should say ‘my’ even if I feel a kinship to many posters) is in the very fact that the kids are being exposed to the notion that it is a choice ! Yes, as a parent, I can encourage my son to be more ‘gender neutral’ & play with a pink teapot & a blue Thomas train. Yes, he can (relatively on his own) develop a liking for MyLittlePony & the Powerpuff Girls. And merely due to the serendipity of cultural moment spend months with DocMcStuffins as his idol & watch enough Sophia to request her amulet for Christmas … But what right do these people have to make his freakin’ Happy Meal ‘Prize” fraught with gender identity issues ? It’s just unnecessary & uncalled for to even expose him to the debate in this way. Especially at such a young age.
Leaving aside all critiques of the inherent parental failure of all of us who enter the McD realm, and the needless explanations to me about how it is me who is exposing him by that failure on my part …
I ask any of you who don’t see the big deal to seriously think about that for a sec … or 10 … What purpose is served by explicitly casting his toy choice in this way? Bad enough if they just made the pink versions, the sedentary versions, expecting them to appeal to girls … But I really object the most to explicitly stating it to 2 year olds & 3 year olds & 4 year olds & … Bad enough that the pink toy aisle is so hideously pastely pinkified, does every box have to only picture girls enjoying the toy ? & vice versa, of course. We’ve largely fixed the chem set version of this annoyance, but not the Thomas the Train or My Little Pony versions.
Sory, I digress. So even when the cashier asks if I want the girl toy or the boy toy, giving me the option to choose as I wish for my son or allowing him to, I object to the very notion of gender labeling the toys ! & I just can’t fathom how anyone (but especially those very reasonable few who have stayed on despite not really agreeing it’s an issue) can’t see the problem I have with that. Make every EZ Bake oven in the world pink & put some smiling boys on the box/in the ads, & I shut up. I’m okay with us just needing to redefine pink ;-} I get annoyed at causing my 4 year old to have to spend even a sec trying to figure out why the pony figurine is s’posed to be for girls & the black & red Spidey for boys? Because most kids are not going to try to figure it out or to question it, they’re just gonna have the notion implanted on their impressionable little brains ! (& I say that knowing I wouldn’t have questioned it or rebelled against it at, say 3 or 4 or 5. & then rebelled against it in a way that ended up feeling just as restrictive. Like I couldn’t like the girl stuff – but still accepting the label on some level)
Everyone who has argued that we’re upset over nothing ’cause they/their child/niece/godson … liked the opposite gender’s loot is actually making our point for us & I just didn’t really get it til now ! That proves that McDs (the toy cos., idiot cashiers, etc) aren’t mere reflectors of who these kids are (on the inside).
I must add … Yep, some girls like pink. But how many frilly red/navy/brown tutus have you ever seen? If I want to dress like a fairy princess/ballerina/storybook heroine (y’all know what I mean) & I go to Wal/K/Tar-Mart (or thrift shops/Family Dollar Generals, etc) what color are the princessy clothes sold in ? People act like there is a range of options out there & kids are choosing this. If there had been navy blue frilly clothes, I probably would’ve proudly worn them. Even a nice burgundy/claret … anything rich or dusky … & I bet more than a few boys would be drawn to them also.
My problem is that even when it’s presented as a choice, we’re actually LIMITING choice because the very act of the categorization divides the world up in a way that it just doesn’t need to be !
I really can accept that the sundresses are in the girls department & the suit jackets in boys. Maybe I should be more radical, but I can live with a certain level of ‘norms’. But I would like to at least see boys offered something kilt-ish. & girls offered a bit more play plaid (by this I mean, clothes that look – forgive me for putting it this way, more plaid grunge ie suitable for play ’cause it looks like farmer grandpa would wear it, than Town & Country plaid).
& to think, only a line or so of that was even in the novella I excised from the previous comment ;-}
Has this woman actually MET any children? The division is there because the demand is there: girls generally like the girl’s line of toys and boys generally like the boy’s line of toys. It’s not like anyone is forcing archetypal stereotypes on anyone; they are presenting desired options which is exactly how it should be. It is my job as the parent (that’s right, parents still get to play a role in our children’s development) to shape the context of those options. And people who have a problem with that are the problem.