Teaching Gender Through Toys, Essay Example

Toys have traditionally been stereotyped along the lines of gender. Girls’ dolls and toys focus on domestic activities. Boys’ toys normally consist of action figures, vehicles and weapons. However, there are those toys that that can be regarded as appropriate for both genders. Girl’s toys tend to focus more on appearance and are therefore more attractive. From my observations, I noted that girl’s toys are more nurturing and advocated for development of domestic skills (Courtney, 2007, 102).

Toys for boys tended to be more disposed to violence compared to girls. An element of competitiveness dominated the theme of boys’ toys. Boy’s toys also seemed more exciting, more sustaining of attention, more in need of adult supervision and more risky or dangerous in comparison to girls’ toys.

Another observation included toy movement. Most toys that could move independently seemed to be those of boys e.g. balls and vehicles (Diane & Joseph 2003, 70).  The construction and the ability of toys to move independently encouraged visual tracking for boys there by improving on their spatial skills. Toys generally encourage social play among the children.

The process of children’s gender development is intertwined with toy play. The children’s knowledge and preference for toys based on gender can be used to determine their gender development. Girl’s toys provided girls with the domestic skills and nurturance experience. Moreover, they tend to put emphasis on appearance and attractiveness. This can however pass on the wrong message to children.

The strongly feminine toys that I saw sent a message to the girls that stressed on the importance of appearance, motherhood and shopping as being the central role of females. Toys like the lingerie Barbie and the bratz dolls had a hypersexual inclination. By selling such dolls to young girls, one the merchandiser exposes them to sexuality at a tender age thereby normalizing hyper sexuality as an important aspect of being a female. The continued proliferation of sexism can be partly attributed to these phenomena. This training through toys puts young women and girls under so much pressure to conform to standards of sexuality and beauty. When the girls grow, they find themselves spending huge sums of money on their appearance in terms of cosmetics, fashion, cosmetic surgery, beauty supply products or diets.

Dolls like Barbie reinforce the aspect of flawless beauty in a woman. This when coupled with the soap operas and TV cosmetic industry advertisements which feature “hot and sexy” women may have adverse physical and financial well being of women. The companies exploit women by selling to them cosmetics worth billions of dollars of which they can do without.

Girls grow up with so much consciousness on appearance to an extent that some of them develop eating disorders such as anorexia. Anorexia is a disease common among females and it has resulted into so many deaths around the world ( Katz, 2006, 25). Cosmetic surgery undertaken nearly 100% by females has increased tremendously over the years.

Toys also tend also to differentiate sports and hobbies appropriate for either of the sexes. The toys condition the mind of children to adopt at an early age the expectations or norms of a social group e.g. football, Barbie etc. In the aisles, I came a across a couple with a girl who wanted them to buy for her a toy gun but they refused and instead suggested to her that a doll would be much appropriate as toy guns are for boys (Naomi, 2002, 67).

The foregoing shows that children are supposed to accept their roles based on gender and are not supposed to exercise any choice. You will also notice that gender training commence at an early age as children are awarded for “appropriate behavior”. Girls are supposed to behave, act and talk different from boys. Boys are expected to be aggressive, unemotional and tough on the other hand the girls are expected to be dependent and passive. When such kind of message is passed on to the children through the toys, it undermines the reservoir of truth as boys and girls all share the same traits. They hunger, sleep, laugh, become angry, are compassionate, caring and show empathy.

The foregoing gender training can have men ridiculed when they assume roles traditionally presumed to be for women such as nursing, baby sitting etc. the reverse is also true. Boys are taught to be aggressive and showing compassion would be girlish. Girls on the other hand would be considered to be tomboys if they did not dress smart. This has resulted into gender disparity in allocation of jobs (Durham, 2008, 52). A visit to any organization reveals that most managerial positions are held by Men while subordinate jobs are held by women. Also, you will notice that most business leaders and CEOs are men where as you will find women heading non-profit organizations. Gender-trained split plays a major role in determining the trends of careers. You will notice that law enforcement and engineering are for men, while nursing is considered to be for women.

Today, the stereotype of gender based roles propagated by toys is much of a paradox; in the universities and colleges, men have been outnumbered by women thus in future economic and political power will be in the hands of women. Also, when you go to prisons, you will find that men are by a very wide margin more than women.

Reference

Katz, J., (2006) The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, New York: McGraw-Hill, Sourcebooks, Inc.

Diane R. & Joseph P. V., (2003). Kid Stuff: Marketing Sex and Violence to America’s Children, New York, McGraw-Hill: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Durham M. G., ( 2008) The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and    What We Can Do About It, New York, NY: Overlook Hardcover.

Courtney E. M., (2007) Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body. New York, NY: Free Press.

Naomi W., (2002). The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.