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Nov. 26, 2005 Watching morning children's TV often annoys me, not so much the shows but the commercials between the shows. I limit how much TV my kids watch, and when they do watch cartoons and the like, I prefer PBS. But sometimes, they watch Dora the Explorer and Go Diego, Go! and other Nick and Disney fare, especially when their older step-siblings are here. I've written before about the silly toy dog that has a cold nose just like the real thing, but I suppose that such a toy is better than most, especially for girls. Girls toys seem to be very much about how you look, about the clothes that you wear and other superficial nonsense, while boy toys are about using the imagination and building things. Is there a direct correlation between the roles that men and women choose later on in life? It seems I've read studies about such in the past, but this isn't a scientific article, it's pure rant and opinion, so I won't address that aspect. First, let me say that there are lots of “good” toys – toys which get the Fred Stamp of Approval. What is my stamp of approval worth? Well, I am a consumer of these items, so it's worth a little something anyway. We have the exercise type toys, the ones that have you stomp on colored sections of a pad to music and the like. Kids are getting fatter and those kinds of, “move your chubby butt!” games are a good thing.. Next, we have the art toys – lots of different ways for children to be creative and expressive in very clean ways. The neatness angle is interesting, but seems more like a marketing ploy than anything, requiring special paper or crayons, etc., in order to allow the kids to “paint” in the middle of a large white decorated room with white plush carpeting. I don't care about that – with simple precautions, such as paining on a newspaper covered kitchen table, mess can be minimized. I'm in favor of any toy that lets kids model, paint, color and so on, as well as make music. These commercials typically feature both boys and girls playing together. What I really have issues with are the gender specific toys. Anyone that's watched kids open Christmas toys will likely agree that the girls prefer to play with the boy toys, at least after the initial “oohs” and “ahhs”. The girls also want to run the remote controlled cars, make the train turn that corner as fast as possible before it flies off the track, and shoot the nerf gun right back at their brothers. Yet, why do girls get tea sets, and dolls with diapers and cute stuffed animals? Mind you, this isn't to suggest that girls are materially shafted – they will play with girl toys, they will pretend to have tea parties, they will cuddle dolls and play with stuffed animals. Sometimes, the boys even join them – any parent or person around kids knows this. Yet, we have this silly gender segregation on TV commercials – so much so that my girls will tell me that they don't want such and such for no other reason but because, “it's for boys”. I really don't like the Market pushing and emphasizing these roles unto kids; I guess I'm glad that I can switch the channel or turn the tube off entirely, which I find myself doing more and more. Here is a good example just from this morning – two different commercials, one aimed at boys, one aimed at girls. The boy commercial was for something called “BC Builders”. It featured a rock and wood-looking tower (of course it was plastic) that can be constructed and then bulldozed down via a cave-man driven dino-dozer. The commercial featured the boys repeatedly knocking the tower over with the dinosaur controlled wrecking ball and then putting it back together again. The girl commercial was for yet another talking doll. For the life of me, I couldn't see what was special about this doll. Anyway, at the very end of the commercial, the doll said to the little girl, “I love you more than bunnies”. Surely this exhibits useful life skills – makes you wonder if the stuffed bunnies get jealous... Now, why couldn't the girl commercial have dolls with less “stupid-speak” and show some boys playing along? We know they do, those of us that have and watch kids, don't we? And, more likely, why couldn't we see the girl take a turn wrecking that tower while the boy rebuilt it, and then vice versa? It seems that a realistic mix wouldn't be encouraging gender roles, but rather, allow kids to choose their own roles or allowing their parents, either directly or as role models, influence them. LEGO has tried a few times to market blocks to girls; I don't think any of those sets have really done so well, since I don't see them advertised anymore. They were basically clothes and interior decorating type pieces – they started from the “girl angle” and then tried to "blockify" them. We have LEGOS, and my girls love to play with them. Maybe if LEGO would simply show girls playing with the toys in the commercials they'd increase their demographic appeal? If a LEGO rep is reading this article, feel free to call me and take me on as a paid consultant. Now, some of the useless-knowledge.com Free Market fanatics are reading this and thinking, “The Market responds to what people want”. Maybe so, but that assumes that people know what they want, that parents know what's best for their kids most of the time - I claim that often they do not, and I also claim that the Market sometimes goes in circles, with the blind groping consumer being lead by the blind groping producer. Does this make jobs and sell stuff? Probably, but that says nothing about the societal impact. I was thrilled to read Judy's latest video game mini-review. If more girls played video games (and they are, in ever increasing numbers), and if more boys and girls played video games in place of watching TV, the world would be a better place. Now, don't think I'm giving boy-toys a free pass. The BC Builders set has one obvious flaw – no caveman ever saw a dinosaur. In my personal opinion, a dragon would have been a better choice. I have no problem with imagination, but I do have a problem with giving kids false ideas about reality. Obviously, dragons aren't real, but cavemen were, and dinosaurs were – just not at the same time. Many kids toys, books, video games, and movies suffer from that kind of bad-science, where stars are tiny objects with smiling faces and five points, that come down to chat with kids, for example, but that's another article. ------------ About the author Frederick Smith: I enjoy writing about the positive virtues of humanism - humanists are the good guys. I now have a blog that I will start to increasingly maintain and update. Here is the link: fredsuberview.blogspot.com/ This is my second foray into the UK writing discordia. This time around, I want to be a tad more raw - maybe a bit edgier (does that sound "art-see"?) Maybe I'll address even more issues that most Americans consider taboo... About my personal background and life: I was born, I got some education, worked, ate, and had some kids. It seems I like to write � something that was unknown to me until relatively recently...How's that for detail? ;) Hate mail is welcome unless you are from the Army Of God. Please! It's not that I mind seeing pictures of aborted fetuses in my inbox, but once you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all... Email: dahlek65@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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