Boys Girls and Toys

The marketing of toys in today's society is highly gendered and enforces stereotypical gender roles. If you ever walk into Toys R Us, you will see the differences in types of toys and packaging for young boys and girls. When I was younger, the toys I always played with were Hot Wheels, Legos, Lincoln logs, footballs, etc. Those are generally the stereotypical toys for boys at a young age. Cars, engineering, sports, are all the common themes when it comes to young boy development. The toys young girls are commonly playing with are Barbies, baby dolls, easy bake ovens,  play houses, etc. The common themes for these toys are motherhood, cooking, housekeeping, and dressing up/ makeup. These common themes for both boys toys and girls toys are stressing the gender roles for them at early ages. Men should be engineers, athletes, mechanics/car-enthusiasts, astronauts while women should be mothers, trophy wives, and always looking lady-like. The packaging of these toys in the stores further continues with the gender enforcement. All girls toys are wrapped in pink and purple packaging, covered in rainbows and flowers and colorful print. Boys toys are usually wrapped in blue and black packaging with flames, superheroes, helicopters, etc. The commercials for these toys stress which gender should be playing with them. For Hot Wheels, Legos, and action figure commercials the viewers usually only see young boys playing with the products, and likewise for the girls toys. Many toy companies direct their advertising to one gender: if a boy were to see a girl playing with a Hot Wheel in the Hot wheels commercial he may find it less intriguing. The toy industry is one of the biggest culprits of gender roles enforcement.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz7M222fgT8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lreImESlrG0