Gender Specific Toys

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The Ugly Truth About Gender-Specific Toy Marketing In today’s world, there is a very common idea that there are two different types of toys; toys that are made for boys and toys that are made for girls. This can be seen very easily in almost any store’s toy section. There are very many noticeable differences between the section marketed towards boys and the section marketed towards girls, such as the packaging, the aesthetic, the coloring, and the types of toys. It is these types of things that coerce kids to buy a certain type of toy. This type of gender-specific marketing ultimately restrains the type of toys children come into contact with and in time causes negative effects. Big name stores, like Target, have even realized the negatives …show more content…

We should follow in their footsteps. We should remove gender-specific toy marketing and its negative effects such as pressuring children into certain jobs, hindering their learning, and sometimes even leading to them be bullied. One of the main reasons we should remove gender-specific marketing from children’s toys is that it pressures them into certain career choices. As Grinberg quotes from psychology professor Deborah Tolman many of children’s decisions about what they are interested in are developed through their play. Therefore, by marketing them to one gender or the other we are, “[leaving] out a whole range of possibilities,” (Grinberg). Because toys are a big factor in a child deciding what he or she likes they also have a big effect on what career they pursue in the future. Since toys can lead to a child being interested in a certain job, companies take advantage of that and try and persuade them to a certain field they find fit for that gender. For example, boys are pushed towards more professional jobs while girls are pushed towards jobs relating more to domestic tendencies. As Cross says, “Toys designed for boys idealized technology, constant innovation, and the values of competition and teamwork” (Cross 51). A prominent example Cross mentions is

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