Children I the Toy Dept 20th Century Domestic Art Shopping
Toys Are More Divided by Gender Now Than They Were l Years Ago
Even at times when discrimination was much more mutual, catalogs contained more than neutral appeals than advertisements today.
When it comes to buying gifts for children, everything is color-coded: Rigid boundaries segregate brawny blue action figures from pretty pink princesses, and most assume that this is how it's ever been. Just in fact, the princess role that's ubiquitous in girls' toys today was exceedingly rare prior to the 1990s—and the marketing of toys is more gendered now than even l years ago, when gender bigotry and sexism were the norm.
In my research on toy advertisements, I constitute that even when gendered marketing was most pronounced in the 20th century, roughly half of toys were still beingness advertised in a gender-neutral manner. This is a stark difference from what we see today, as businesses categorize toys in a mode that more narrowly forces kids into boxes. For example, a recent report by sociologists Carol Auster and Claire Mansbach constitute that all toys sold on the Disney Shop'south website were explicitly categorized every bit beingness "for boys" or "for girls"—there was no "for boys and girls" pick, even though a handful of toys could be found on both lists.
That is not to say that toys of the past weren't securely infused with gender stereotypes. Toys for girls from the 1920s to the 1960s focused heavily on domesticity and nurturing. For example, a 1925 Sears advertizement for a toy broom-and-mop set proclaimed: "Mothers! Hither is a real practical toy for little girls. Every little girl likes to play house, to sweep, and to do female parent'south work for her":
Such toys were conspicuously designed to ready young girls to a life of homemaking, and domestic tasks were portrayed as innately enjoyable for women. Ads like this were still common, though less prevalent, into the 1960s—a budding housewife would have felt correct at habitation with the toys to "delight the little homemaker" in the 1965 Sears Wishbook:
While girls' toys focused on domesticity, toys for boys from the '20s through the '60s emphasized grooming for working in the industrial economy. For case, a 1925 Sears ad for an Erector Ready stated, "Every boy likes to tinker around and try to build things. With an Erector Set he can satisfy this inclination and proceeds mental development without credible attempt. … He volition learn the fundamentals of engineering":
However, gender-coded toy advertisements similar these declined markedly in the early 1970s. By then, there were many more women in the labor strength and, afterwards the Babe Boom, union and fertility rates had dropped. In the wake of those demographic shifts and at the tiptop of feminism's second-wave, playing upon gender stereotypes to sell toys had become a risky strategy. In the Sears catalog ads from 1975, less than 2 percent of toys were explicitly marketed to either boys or girls. More than importantly, at that place were many ads in the '70s that actively challenged gender stereotypes—boys were shown playing with domestic toys and girls were shown building and enacting stereotypically masculine roles such as doctor, carpenter, and scientist:
Although gender inequality in the adult world continued to diminish between the 1970s and 1990s, the de-gendering tendency in toys was curt-lived. In 1984, the deregulation of children'due south television programming suddenly freed toy companies to create program-length advertisements for their products, and gender became an increasingly important differentiator of these shows and the toys advertised alongside them. During the 1980s, gender-neutral advertizing receded, and by 1995, gendered toys made upward roughly one-half of the Sears catalog's offerings—the same proportion as during the interwar years.
However, tardily-century marketing relied less on explicit sexism and more than on implicit gender cues, such every bit colour, and new fantasy-based gender roles similar the beautiful princess or the musculus-spring action hero. These roles were still built upon regressive gender stereotypes—they portrayed a powerful, skill-oriented masculinity and a passive, relational femininity—that were obscured with brilliant new packaging. In essence, the "little homemaker" of the 1950s had become the "little princess" we run into today.
It doesn't have to exist this way. While gender is what'south traditionally used to sort target markets, the toy industry (which is largely run past men) could categorize its customers in a number of other ways—in terms of age and interest, for example. (This could arguably broaden the consumer base.) However, the reliance on gender categorization comes from the peak: I found no evidence that the trends of the by 40 years are the issue of consumer need. That said, the late-20th-century increase in the percent of Americans who believe in gender differences suggests that the public wasn't exactly rejecting gendered toys, either.
While the second-wave feminist movement challenged the tenets of gender deviation, the social policies to create a level playing field were never realized and a cultural backlash towards feminism began to gain momentum in the 1980s. In this context, the model outlined in Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus—which unsaid that women gravitated toward certain roles not considering of oppression merely because of some innate preference—took hold. This new tale of gender difference, which emphasizes freedom and pick, has been woven securely into the fabric of contemporary childhood. The reformulated story does not fundamentally challenge gender stereotypes; it only repackages them to make them more palatable in a "post-feminist" era. Girls can be anything—every bit long every bit information technology'south passive and beauty-focused.
Many who comprehend the new status quo in toys claim that gender-neutrality would be synonymous with taking abroad pick, in essence forcing children to become androgynous automatons who can only play with dull tan objects. However, every bit the vivid palette and various themes constitute among toys from the '70s demonstrates, decoupling them from gender actually widens the range of options bachelor. It opens upward the possibility that children can explore and develop their various interests and skills, unconstrained by the dictates of gender stereotypes. And ultimately, isn't that what we want for them?
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/toys-are-more-divided-by-gender-now-than-they-were-50-years-ago/383556/
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