Gendered marketing in media makes me irrationally angry

[WolfNightV4X1]

This has always been something that made me defiantly angry or uncomfortable. Rows and rows of pink or blue split off for two separate types of children who shouldnt be separated.

As it stands society has gotten better to catering to the tomboy, a girl can play with remote control cars, robots, lego ships, electronics and action figures. Sadly, to this day boys still play with babies, barbie dolls, flowers, dresdup, tea parties, or the like.

The other day I''ve seen a sleeping bag blanket of sorts sold on a shelf, one looks like a shark eating you that you can get inside of, the other is a pink mermaids tail. The shark box feautured a boy, on the side of the box at least it feautured a boy and a girl. The mermaid tail feautured a girl, but on the side of the box it feautured two girls. Why cant mermen in pink be a thing? Why is it okay for girls to be boyish but boys not to be girly? This separation shows that masculinity regardless of who has it is deemed a valuable trait, but femininity is only okay for girls and is innapropriate for males.

Someday in my deepest wishes I want those standards to be destroyed, I want all products unnescessarily gendered to feauture men or women using them, because anyone can use them. I want marketing companies to stop catering to only one gender and look at the bigger picture, I want people to buy racecars for their little girls and baby dolls for their little boys. I want their to stop being a strict dividing line between us and yhere to be a fair and real chance for anyone to be who they want and do what makes them happy.


I know its silly and overly dramatic and passionate to think that, but thats how I feel. When you grow up woth those black and white standards its very stifling and exhasperating and you soon feel enough is enough. Maybe someday...

[Kylo]

I'd rather the kids themselves choose what they want to play with that makes them happy, whatever color it is. I'm just as uncomfortable with idea of making a boy play with a doll as not allowing him to play with one. I'm uncomfortable with some overseer deciding what all kids should and shouldn't play with and destroying standards to just replace them with another set of their own that can't be proven to be the "right way". The only fair way is to let kids be themselves. If a kid wants to play with the opposite gender's toys that is okay. If a kid wants to play with the stereotypical toys for their gender, that is ok.

[Elis]

I don't think it's irrational to be angry about this; it's perfectly justified. A lot of cis people think it doesn't matter that we strictly gender things; not realising the amount of damage it can do mentally to both trans and cis people. Boys will grow up with a fragile masculinity complex and girls will grow up believing they're somehow lesser if they're not completely feminine. It's beyond messed up.

[Raell]

I agree.

It's the boys wanting to play with glittery pink things that seems to trigger the most transphobic reactions.

[Lynne]

Oh boy, don't even get me started... I get annoyed or sometimes angered by this every single day as I see this everywhere I go. The more you think about it, the less sense it makes to create this very hard line between genders.

Clothing for example... what a mess it is. Men from a few hundred years ago wore things that today would be considered women only things, colors were assigned totally differently for males and females than today.
It's like humanity is trying to differentiate itself from other animals, so we create these layers upon layers of rules and then we can say how far we have come, we have invented the fire, the wheel and then discrimination based on clothing. Great progress... So why can't people just treat these things at their place, why do we have to treat so insignificant details like colors and styles as life or death(sometimes literally)?
How does it make sense to make life harder for everybody with these stupid gender roles without any gains to be had?

[Selena]

When I was little the gendering of toys/colors/clothing was actually used to punish me. My parents bought me pink sneakers with velcro and said, "When you can learn how to tie shoes we'll buy you some proper boy shoes. Until then you have to wear them." Of course, after a week or so of me happily wearing them I got smacked and they were thrown away.

Another time they bought me a doll and told me, "If you're going to act like a girl then we're only going to buy you girl toys." Again, I didn't really have a problem with this arrangement.   After a while, they stopped using this to punish me.

I shudder to think the kind of damage this type of treatment could cause if done to a cis gender child. If any kid was allowed to play with/wear whatever they wanted it would be no problem.

[BirlPower]

WolfNight, You are not wrong or mad. I'd like to add my voice to the chorus who agrees with you.

Hugs
B

[TransAm]

I agree as well.

When I was a kid, my mom was really involved in the PTA at my school. She regularly came to my class to read and volunteered to help pass out gifts during the holidays with a couple other parents.
I was in elementary back in the early to mid nineties for reference.
Anyway, anytime a holiday or something rolled around, the gifts were harshly divided by gender. Girls always got makeup kits or something similar and the boys usually got legos/dinosaurs/action figures/etc. In retrospect, I think my mom volunteered so much because she knew me and didn't want me to feel like ****, because every time the gifts would get passed out, I'd get a 'boy's' gift. There were five or six girls in the class that wanted them too and my mom always bought extras for them.
There were two boys that wanted girl's gifts and they, too, got what they wanted. I didn't realize how progressive this was at the time (again, early nineties in southern rural West Virginia), but I'm even more thankful for it now than I was back then.

I never could understand why toys couldn't just be toys. Kids are naturally inquisitive/curious and will gravitate towards whatever holds their interest. Some girls like trucks... some boys like makeup. So the **** what?

[Kylo]

Gendered toys are for when you don't know your kid.

I was always asked what I wanted to be bought by the relatives that knew me, the only ones who ever sent anything gendered and girly were the ones who didn't know me at all and I barely had any contact with.

Maybe it's just me but I'd find it pretty weird for a parent to buy a toy for a kid unless they had some idea what the kid liked to play with. Except of course if they were a parent who had a trans kid and were trying to coax them out of their opposite gender 'habits' by buying them something gendered.

[Sephirah]

The other day I''ve seen a sleeping bag blanket of sorts sold on a shelf, one looks like a shark eating you that you can get inside of, the other is a pink mermaids tail. The shark box feautured a boy, on the side of the box at least it feautured a boy and a girl. The mermaid tail feautured a girl, but on the side of the box it feautured two girls. Why cant mermen in pink be a thing? Why is it okay for girls to be boyish but boys not to be girly? This separation shows that masculinity regardless of who has it is deemed a valuable trait, but femininity is only okay for girls and is innapropriate for males.

If it were up to me, there wouldn't be any children on the boxes of anything. I find them quite creepy. Like they were given 12 metric tons of chocolate and soda and then shoved in front of a camera.

Kids are smart enough to know what they want. Usually smarter than the parents. They haven't yet reached the age where the world tries to shove them in a box of their own. They don't need an explanation of who something is arbitrarily aimed at by having an overly euphoric child staring at them. It's unnecessary. And if a parent needs a picture of a kid next to a truck when the words "toy truck" are there, in order to not think that opening the box will suddenly materialise an 18-wheeled, articulated lorry in their living room, or that the lack of a kid next to a doll means they're suddenly going to get a 5'6" store mannequin when little johnny/jenny opens it... then I have to shake my head.

Just sell toys as toys. The only person who needs to decide who it's for is the one who's going to be playing with it. I don't think I ever even noticed anything other than what it was, when I was a kid. It was just "uhhhh I want THAT!". Followed several seconds later by "No."

I think Kylo is pretty close to the mark, and it's aimed at people who don't know either the kid in question, or kids in general. And ask the question "What do little boys/girls play with?" Whereby they get stuff that no one wants, because kids aren't stereotypes and that's how it always turns out. But no one seems to learn. Maybe one day.