Archive for December 2013
Tom boy or girly-girl? How marketing to children reinforces gender stereotypes
Well it’s
the holidays and we are close to the wire, now. We are all finished with our
shopping and seeing all of the toys at the stores and the commercials and
reviews of the toys, I am now painfully aware of the marketing tactics and ways
that toy companies get us to indulge our little monsters.
Recently I
had the opportunity to do a mountain of research on a topic that I absolutely
love, and that topic is gender stereotypes. As I mentioned in a previous post,
I wanted to start a series of posts on the difficulties of raising little
girls, and this is a great place to start. I should mention that I do not just
focus on girls in this post. Gender stereotyping is prevalent in both sexes.
Before we talk about the basis for gender stereotypes, let me make one thing
clear: There is a huge difference between the terms “sex” and “gender”. Sex is
biological; it refers to whether you were born with male or female genitalia.
READ: It is the biological makeup of
an individual's reproductive anatomy. Gender, on the other hand, is a social construct. It is the lifestyle
characteristics one encompasses that are secondary to sex characteristics. They
are culturally learned, not biological.
When a baby
is born, its parents recognize its genitalia as belonging to either male or
female, and once that is determined, they are likely put into clothes that
matched that gender – traditionally pink for girls and blue for boys. But what
makes something ‘tradition’? What’s interesting about that is pink was
universally thought to be for boys up until about the 1940s. In fact,
Smithsonianmag.com tells us “a June
1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department said, ‘The generally accepted rule is pink
for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more
decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is
more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.’ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-Start-Wearing-Pink.html#ixzz2kmszwaWv. There’s some food for thought. Society has dictated what it
means to be a boy or a girl. Gender is influenced by culture.
So, now that baby is getting older, and
starting to notice culture and become socialized into one gender. Mom and dad
are the first real socializers, then the people around them, and soon enough
they get to start seeing things like the television, and going to toy and clothing
stores, and then school where they interact with peers and then you eventually
have a fully socialized child on your hands. Whether they identify with the boy
or girl gender relies heavily on the socialization they experience as an
infant, toddler and young child.
You might argue that socialization and
culture are not the only things that make children prefer one gender over
another. Biology does have something to
do with it! Yes! That is absolutely right. Biology does have a lot to do with
it. There is plenty of scientific research that indicates that sex influences
one’s behavior. Now we are reaching the age-old debate of nature vs. nurture, which
is starting to become less of a debate as scientists are finding that no single
side of that equation has more weight than the other. The latest research has
people’s behavior influenced by biology and environment equally. That means
that there are some biological differences that cause men to be more aggressive
and women to be more nurturing. Yes! I agree with this! Please understand
throughout the rest of this post that I unequivocally recognize and agree that
biology plays just as much role in determining a person’s gender as culture and
environment do.
That being said, the environment a child
grows up should not be dismissed as unimportant because of biological
identification. Boys will be boys? Maybe. What I am saying is that if a
boy is born naturally aggressive and independent, when he sees that aggression
and independence are socially acceptable and rewarded for males, he is more likely to
engage in aggressive behavior than if those traits were treated as equal among
all the other traits he possessed.
Now that I’ve prefaced that with a little
bit of sociocultural perspective, I want to talk specifically about the gender
bias in marketing to children. This is long. I’m sorry. But it’s so important
to me and I really needed to get my feelings out.
Store layouts: In toy stores and
department stores that sell toys, there are a few main areas. The first is the
infant toys, which are gender neutral. They all get essentially the same toys
in very neutral colors because they don’t have a preference for toys aimed for
boys or girls. Hmmm. There’s also the boys section, that is decked out in
black, red and blue hues with things like Legos, and action figures, and
science kits, blocks, cars, trucks, tractors, trains (let’s just say vehicles
because there are so many in this section), Nerf guns, swords, tool sets and
benches…things like that. Then you go to the girls section, which is so
intensely pink that you could spot it a mile away. There you find things like
dolls (Barbie, Bratz, Monster High – the latter two I will be writing an entire
post on later), doll houses, cooking sets, shopping carts, kitchen sets,
dress-up costumes, make up kits, purses, vacuums, tea sets, little babies you
can care for with accessories, arts and crafts, stickers and the like.
Can we talk about Hamley’s in London for a
second? A huge toy stores with several different floors. It’s quite impressive,
actually. They have displays and demonstrations and plenty of employees on hand
to help choose the perfect toy. The boys sections had all kinds of different
blocks and science kits and telescopes and interesting toys that encourage all
kinds of ingenuity. The girls section had rows and rows of dolls, dress-up and a
giant hair and nail bar! A whole wall of sprays to detangle your hair and a
huge display of different nail polish colors and designs. Because girls don’t
need to worry about anything as silly as building…looking pretty is much more
important. Here's an awesome picture of it!
And another!
The toys themselves: Many gender-neutral
toys have been re-created in different colors and styles that allow toy companies
to market a boy and a girl version of the exact same toy. The only difference
is typically the colors and design. Little Tykes Push and Ride…the Leap Pad…both
have versions of the same toy that come in boy and girl designs. But it should
be noted that these companies aren’t exactly trying to put a gender divide
between girls and boys, they market two different styles of the same toy….because
it means parents have to buy two different styles of the same toy! An easy way
to double your profits with very little overhead.
If you look at those as just facts, then
there doesn’t seem to be anything inherently wrong with that. But to me,
setting up the store that way and slapping the “girls” and “boys” labels on aisles
and toys forces children into very narrow gender identities. Girls have to like
pink and taking care of dolls, and boys have to like trucks and building
blocks. Plus what does it say about the personalities and futures for boys and
girls? Boys are encouraged to build, to fight, to be aggressive, to experiment
and take interest in the world around them; to become a superhero or a ninja or
warrior or even a firefighter or police officer.
Girls, on the other hand, seem to be
encouraged to care for children, to look pretty and accessorize, to cook and
clean and do domestic work, and flex their artistic muscles with beads and
glitter and stickers. You don’t really see any science kits in the girls
section.
What are the repercussions of this gender
divide? They are extensive. As the gender divide increases, the consequences of
crossing that line also increase. This is especially true for boys – it’s
acceptable for little girls to cross the line and play with toys for boys, even
encouraged and applauded, but if boys want to cross that line and play with
dolls or have a purse it’s frowned upon at the very least, or even forbidden by
their families. What does that say about the value we place on the jobs and
stereotypical roles and interests of women? Put into perspective: How many women
shamelessly admit that they were a “tomboy” growing up? There are countless
people in my experiences. It’s such a huge percentage that it’s not even out of
the ordinary for me to hear. “I was a tomboy growing up; I didn’t play with
dolls or makeup. I liked sports and getting dirty with the boys!” In fact, it’s
more than shameless, it’s boastful; a source of pride that they weren’t caught
up in all of the frivolous pursuits of “normal” little girls -like it gives
them some extra depth or something. We distance ourselves from those
stereotypes because it is a source of shame; of shallowness. It’s so shameful
to be a girl that even girls don’t want to be identified as girls.
Did you know gender marketing is a very
recent phenomenon? Take a look at this Lego ad aimed at girls in the 80s.
Now take a look at how Lego is trying to
attract little girls to play with their toys.
Seriously? The Mini Figures aren’t even
anatomically similar to the regular Mini Figures. They are curvy and wear
cosmetics! WTF. The first ad focuses on the pride she gets from building and being creative and how beautiful that is. The second focuses on....pretty things? To be fair, this line is doing exceptionally well among young
girls – exceeding sales expectations. So girls do like it! Or maybe parents
just like it. But is it because they actually enjoy building beauty shops and
taking care of animals, or is it because marketing has told them all their life
that it’s what they’re supposed to like?
The same can be said for television and
catalog advertising. There are hardly any crossovers of girls playing with
train tracks or building blocks or boys playing with dolls and stickers.
Children take their cues from their experiences. If they never see a boy caring
for dolls and aren’t encouraged to play with them at home, they will come to
understand that it’s not socially common (if not acceptable) for boys to engage
in that behavior.
How about Halloween costumes? They seem to
only depict the male and female tropes in our society. For girls: princess,
bride, southern belle, pageant queen, nurse. For boys: action heroes, knights, ninjas,
(anything crime-fighting for that matter), and scary things. What do these
costumes emphasize? For boys it’s success, glory, bravery and aggression. For
girls it’s attractiveness, also that they are delicate and need to be
protected. A blog post I recently read said:
“On PartyCity.com, the toddler boys section of costumes has
separate "career" and "classic" themed sub-sections. In the
toddler girls section, the two are combined.” Consider this example of a change
in the same costume for boys and girls:
Since I have two boys and a girl, I worry
about the consequences of this gender stereotyping on both sides. I don’t want
my kids socialized into rigid gender roles by television, or toy stores, or
Halloween costumes. I want them to be comfortable with their own personalities
and bodies regardless of if society considers them more masculine or feminine.
These rigid gender roles can do serious damage to confidence and self-concept.
Of course I could try to limit their access to these mediums – but as a parent
I can only do so much. They won’t be looking at me as their only role model for
very long. Soon other influences will become much more important and I will
have to compete with friends, teachers and of course the media to make sure my
kids understand that they don’t have to fit into a certain gender mold like
sensitivity or competitiveness.
I should point out that things are slowly
starting to change. Hamley’s, that awful-amazing toy store I mentioned earlier,
has recently changed the signage in their stores so that the aisles list the
type of toys, rather than “Boys” and “Girls” labels. Next year’s Toys R Us
Christmas catalogs intends to depict both boys and girls playing with toys
traditionally considered for one gender. And there are countless articles and
blog posts calling this sort of thing to everyone’s attention, which is
extremely important. Yay! But we’ve got a long way to go. And it’s not just
store layouts and Christmas catalogs. It’s television, radio, movies, music,
video games, books and all of the other mediums our society takes its cues from
on how to behave. However, each generation seems to bring with it more
understanding and knowledge, and I can only hope to raise my little monsters to
understand that they have unique personalities and identities that don’t have
to fit into traditional gender roles.
