I drive up to McDonald's for a Happy Meal after work. I'm hungry, nobody is home and I'm desperate for fries. "Girl or Boy" they ask. "Girl." I answer back. I thought to myself, well I said girl because it was true, I am a girl, but what if I wanted the boy toy? What if I was a little girl who loved Thomas the Tank Engine, would it be so wrong for me to get the boy toy?
This sparked a real engine of thoughts in me, why does McDonald's still have gendered toys? I mean if you think about it, fast food corporations would spend way less if all the toys were the same. Most drive thru food places (Burger King, Wendy's, etc.) only offer one type of toy for both girls and boys.
Fast food chains don't have a right to decide what is a boy toy and what is a girl toy and frankly, neither do parents. If your daughter loves dinosaurs and sharks, who are you to say she can't buy those toys even if they are not made specifically for girls? They don't need to be pink and sparkly, they just need to be made with lead-less paint! Same goes the other way. Why can't your little boy play with an Easy Bake oven?
"While companies like Toys R Us are still segregating the boys from the girls into different sections of their brick and mortar and online stores; making it virtually impossible for a child to feel comfortable shopping outside of what's expected of them, there are companies trying to make a difference." - Huffington PostThe problem starts with gender roles among adults. The woman isn't obligated to tend to the children and cook and clean, and the man isn't obligated to fix the sink and mow the lawn.
When it comes to your children, parents without even realizing it, instate these gender roles and stereotypes early on, so that growing up, you just assume they are true. It's not necessarily the parents' fault, almost everyone grows up like that. Only few people keep their children gender neutral. So why are you not letting your little boy play with pink things? Because that's for girls and you don't want him to what? Be gay? Really what is the big deal?
Generations of people have grown up gender prejudice and it is something that goes unnoticed. Gender roles and stereotypes are not nature but rather nurture. You are taught to believe that certain colors are for boys and certain colors are for girls.
Colors are not related at all to gender, neither are the toys that children play with. A lesbian girl could have grown up her whole life playing with barbies, but is still a lesbian. Keeping your little boy away from barbies isn't a way to keep him from being gay. It doesn't work that way. Your little boy isn't a sissy for wanting to ride the unicorn ride at the mall rather than the firetruck."The answer isn't as black-and-white as throwing out all the stereotypically gendered toys in your house and blaming them for gender inequality in our world. "More important than the toys your kid plays with are the things you do to create a narrative that influences your child's sense of self identity," says Dr. Balter. To create a narrative, Dr. Balter suggests fostering your child's identity outside of playthings. "For girls," he explains, "this means pointing out all the women who are CEOs of large companies, Supreme Court justices, senators, governors." - Huffington Post
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