Envision yourself entering a toy department and noticing numerous diverse aisles. In one aisle, you encounter toys packaged in complementary and color triads colors that include building sets (such as “LEGO”, “LEGO Super Heroes”, and “Angry Birds”) and a wide selection of action figures—Spider Man, Transformers, The Dark Knight, Power Rangers, etc. In the next aisle, adjacent to the aisle with complementary and color triads colors, you find toys packaged in shades of pink and purple. These toys range from “Hello Kitty” dolls to “Barbie Dream” house play sets. Inside a toy department, such as Toys R Us, it is extremely difficult to retrieve a toy that is not marketed explicitly or subtly by gender. If toys were marketed only according to ethnic and racial stereotypes, many individuals would be infuriated. However, we come across toy departments that are highly, as well as strictly segregated—not by race, but by gender. In order to fully comprehend the how gender stereotypes perpetuate children’s toys, one must understand gender socialization. According to Santrock, the term gender refers to the, “characteristics of people as males and females” (p.163). An individual is certainly not brought into the world with pre-existing knowledge of the world. However, what is certain is the belief that the individual has regarding him- or herself and life stems from socialization—the development of gender through social mechanisms. For instance, when a baby is brought into this world, his or her first encounter to gender socialization arises when the nurse places a blue or pink cap on the baby’s head. This act symbolizes the gender of the baby, whether it is a boy (blue cap) or a girl (pink cap). At the age of four, the child becomes acquai... ... middle of paper ... ...vel and Sex-Stereotyped Toy Choice in Toddler Boys and Girls. Journal Of Genetic Psychology, 146(4), 527. Pike, J. J., & Jennings, N. A. (2005). The Effects of Commercials on Children’s Perceptions of Gender Appropriate Toy Use. Sex Roles, 52(1/2), 83-91. doi:10.1007/s11199-005-1195-6 Prosser, R. (2008). Inventory of Childhood. Australian Feminist Studies, 23(57), 417-422. doi:10.1080/08164640802233328 Rajecki, D. W., Dame, J., Creek, K., Barrickman, P. J., Reid, C. A., & Appleby, D. C. (1993). Gender Casting in Television Toy Advertisements: Distributions, Message Content Analysis, and Evaluations. Journal Of Consumer Psychology (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), 2(3), 307. Santrock, J. W. (2013). Adolescence (15th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Signorella, M. (2012). Gender and Development in Sex Roles. Sex Roles, 67(7/8), 373-374. doi:10.1007/s11199-012-0199-2
Gender Stereotypes Among Children's Toys When you walk into the toy section of any store, you do not need a sign to indicate which section is on the girls’ side and which section is on the boys’ side. Aside from all the pink, purple, and other pastel colors that fill the shelves on the girls’ side, the glitter sticks out a lot as well. The boys’ toys, however, are mostly dark colors – blue, black, red, gray, or dark green. The colors typically used on either side are very stereotypical in themselves.
Based on my observation, Walmart is one of the toy retailers labeled and categorized toys by gender. They placed “Girls” and “Boys” signs over their toy aisles. Initially, I studied the toys under
One of the most common strategies is to market their toys to a specific gender. This shows the separate aisles that are designed for each gender. So, this separation of gender could lead to the idea that “Toyland is boy and girl land” (Auster, Claire). These ideas of “boy and girl land” play upon the stereotypes of each specific gender and impose these conventional stereotypes on children. When these girl specific aisles lack in the sales, these toy companies attempt to “‘pin it up’ to make it more popular” (Auster, Claire).
The Target store located at Dallas Highway in Marietta, Georgia, was chosen for the fieldwork assignment. This particular store was selected because of recent renovations to the toy area. The new arrangement of the toy department appears slightly different than traditional organizations of toys in the past. The location of the toys is in direct relation and physical flow from the baby equipment, supplies, and apparel. Toys transition from birth in the infant area initially in terms of age demographics, type of activity, and brand of toy to more obvious gender divisions beginning in the preschool toys. In the toy section for school age children, gender separation is clearly established. Gender divisions become more obvious in this age group according to colors, themes, and character depiction. The girl toys feature pink, purple, and pastel colors. The highlighted décor in the store’s displays and packaging for girls involves embellishments such as pictures of girls, flowers, glitter, and jewels. The boy section portrays color schemes that are primarily in blue, red, yellow, gray, and black. Packaging images are of male children. The sections including educational toys, games, sporting equipment, outdoor play, sound and music, building, puzzles, and arts appear to be more gender neutral although some gender specific items can be identified by color or themes such as princess/fairytale or Ninja Turtle. The configuration of the toys clearly states that color, themes, and character representation are irrelevant to infants and toddlers, while parent’s attitudes about color and gender may be important aspects of unintentional socialization in the maturation of children. Marketing strategies appeal to children, but adult’s perception of ...
The society that we live in today has more parents who are open-minded and understand that different toys benefit different aspects of a child’s learning. The world we live in is not perfect though, a parent might be a little hesitant to give a boy a doll to play with. Changing the color of the box or making the doll a boy would not affect this parents decision on letting their child play with the doll. If a parent does not want their child to play with a certain toy based on traditional gender roles, then that parent is closed minded and the changing of how toys are marketed will not affect their decision. Children will find a way to get that specific toy anyway, whether it be from a sibling or a
Society cements certain roles for children based on gender, and these roles, recognized during infancy with the assistance of consumerism, rarely allow for openness of definition. A study conducted by Witt (1997) observed that parents often expect certain behaviors based on gender as soon as twenty-four hours after the birth of a child. The gender socialization of infants appears most noticeably by the age of eighteen months, when children display sex-stereotyped toy preferences (Caldera, Huston, & O’Brian 1989). This socialization proves extremely influential on later notions and conceptions of gender. Children understand gender in very simple ways, one way being the notion of gender permanence—if one is born a girl or a boy, they will stay that way for life (Kohlberg 1966). “According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable” (Orenstein 2006). The Walt Disney Corporation creates childhood for children worldwide. “Because Disney are such a large media corporation and their products are so ubiquitous and wide spread globally, Disney’s stories, the stories that Disney tell, will be the stories that will form and help form a child’s imaginary world, all over the world, and that’s an incredible amount of power, enormous amount of power” (Sun). Because of the portrayal of women in Disney films, specifically the Disney Princess films, associations of homemaker, innocence, and dependence are emphasized as feminine qualities for young children. Thus, children begin to consider such qualities normal and proceed to form conceptions of gender identity based off of the movies that portray the very specific and limiting views of women (...
Toys were designed to assist children to learn and adapt to society. Some toys have educational purposes and some toys have domestic purposes. Many companies in retail settings now categorize toys by age, type, and gender. The toy store I chose for this assignment was Toys R Us. The reason I chose this specific store was because I felt that it would give me better knowledge during my examination simply for the reason that there are only toys and no biased involved. Several things came as a shock to me since I never really payed any attention to the gender roles, stereotypes and etc. During my findings in the store, I noticed that there are many separations through age, gender, and color.
Often when a couple becomes pregnant and finds out the sex of the infant, stereotypes begin to form. If the child is female, their room will often be painted pink with cutesy borders. The crib will have pink blankets with ruffles on them. The baby girl will be presented with soft toys and cute stuffed animals, as well as perhaps a baby doll or two. At the baby shower, the mother will typically be presented with pink and purple clothing, the colors of choice for a female child. When the baby finally comes along, she will typically be treated as a gentle princess. When it comes to girls, adults are often more careful, as if the baby girl will break.
In the article The gender Marketing of toys: An Analysis of Color and Type of Toy on the Disney Store Website, Auster and Mansbach conducted research to examine the gender marketing of toys on the internet. They looked at what characteristics of “boys and girls” toys share, such as color of toy, type of toy, and witch toys were labeled for girls and boys. The pre - research of this study suggested that children are making gender distinctions of themselves and their group based on the types of toys that are bought for them. Bright and darker colors are meant as a distinction for “boy” toys, while pastel colors are meant for “girl” toys. The previous research also suggested that toys for boys and girls express traditional gender roles and that gender neutral toys are more likely to
The store that the research was conducted at was the Wal-Mart Supercenter located on 151 SW 184th Ave, Pembroke Pines, FL. Date visited was on Thursday, March 19, 2014. It was done at approximately 6:45 pm and ended at 8:12pm; so it was approximately two hours long. The research method used to conduct it was by going down each aisle and counting how many different types of toys that is seen that represents the following: weapons, Baby Dolls, Barbie Cooking Accessories, Buildings for Living or Shopping (Houses/RVs/Bakeries), Cash Registers, Clothing Accessories (Shirts, Shoes, Etc.), Hair accessories, Royalty, Remote Control Vehicles or acing Vehicles, Animals portrayed as “scary, mean, or aggressive”, Military and Animals portrayed as “comforting, pretty, or loving.” Then within these categories, a differentiation between girls and boys was accounted for.
The Purpose of this essay is to discuss how toys impact the gender construction. Toys that can be describe as being toy which are generally suitable for one gender over the other such as wheeled or GI Joe doll for males and dolls or kitchen toys for females. The term gender refers in typical toys where it chooses the appropriate sex. It is very important to know the gender; but the parents are the one who chose the toys for their kids to know if they are masculine or feminine. Based on Social Learning theory, it determines that the child develops both gender identity and gender role through a learning process that involving modeling, imitation and reinforcement. The theory tested on the behavior of gender role where sometimes behavior is punished
Common sense seems to dictate that commercials just advertise products. But in reality, advertising is a multi-headed beast that targets specific genders, races, ages, etc. In “Men’s Men & Women’s Women”, author Steve Craig focuses on one head of the beast: gender. Craig suggests that, “Advertisers . . . portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity.” In other words, advertisers manipulate consumers’ fantasies to sell their product. In this essay, I will be analyzing four different commercials that focuses on appealing to specific genders.
I will not impose “gender specific” toys on them or tell them that it is not acceptable for a boy to play with a baby doll or tell my future daughter that it is not allowed for her to pretend sword fight. My children will be able to decide what they like and what they do not like and I will not allow anyone to decide that for them. This assignment has definitely opened my eyes to the market that is out there stereotyping children without much notice. Taking time to actually look into what is being done with toys and society with children has broadened my understanding and awareness of the impending problem that children are being faced with. I hope that one day we will see an end to gender stereotyping so that my future children will not be forced to feel out of place if they do not identify with a specific feeling or emotion that a boy should have or a girl should have. It sickens me and breaks my heart that things so minuscule such as toys can have such a negative effect on lives, especially on such a young children. This ideology of gender segregation should not be supported or further produced because it is harmful to the children that are directly or indirectly being affected by
Even before the children are born, parents begin choosing clothing and decorations by color based on the sex of the baby. The stereotype of pink, pastels, yellow and white for girls and bright or dark colors like green, blue and red for boys has long been a part of our culture. How many times have you heard kids argue over toys because the girls don’t want the icky boy color or the boys don’t want the gross girl color? The issue of color may go deeper than just fighting for toys. Studies have been done showing that school classrooms, especially for younger grades, are typically decorated in “boy” colors and reflect an environment that is most comfortable for boys (Bruning 23). Parents and teachers may be able to help reverse this thinking by buying toys in gender neutral colors and by using the same colors for boys and girls.
Toys for girls and boys differ greatly. An obvious characteristic would be the colours. It was noted that “girl” toys tend to be in pastel shades such as pink and purple whereas “boy” toys tend to be coloured more intensely, especially blue and black (Chiu et al., 2006). In addition, gender-typed toys differs in their shape as well whereby “boy” toys is often in an angular shape, while “girl” toys tend to be rounded (Iijima et al., 2001). As such, it has become a trend whereby children were given toys that highlighted their genders. Rheingold and Cook (1975) observed that boys had more vehicles, spatial toys, action figurines and sport equipment, whereas girls received more dolls, doll