toys

Summer often means one thing for academics — time to catch up on the zillion things they’ve been trying to finish all year, most often their own research and writing.  I wrote the post (below) in March about the “new Barbie body” — three, in fact — whose introduction was considered radical for each’s deviation in shape from traditional Barbie. This was huge news back in January, with press coverage spanning most major newspapers and magazines, plus enthusiastic blogging.  Months later, while I haven’t been able to access a report on sales figures, it seems the response is still largely positive.

More timely, however, is the recent introduction of “President and Vice-President Barbie” — only sold in a pair although consumers can choose from a small range of ethnicities — although not body types.  Their branding shows an image of a “First All Female Ticket” button with Barbie’s trademark high-ponytail silhouette visible. With days to go before the Democratic National Convention begins, the timing is ripe, and the duo(s) seem to be flying off of Mattel’s website.  The invention of the two is presented in partnership with the organization She Should Run.

Releasing these dolls within a fraught political climate almost seems like an editorial choice on Mattel’s part.  Part of their “You Can Be Anything” series, the “You can do it!” boosterism that Mattel counts on is at its peak with this set as they know that Barbie as “career girl” is one of her strongest selling points.  (Interesting to note, Barbie (of varying ethnicities) also ran for President in 2012, minus a running mate.)

It’s hard to argue with this line (of thinking), but good to remember that it’s but one line (of products) Mattel sells among many that still largely reinforce feminine stereotypes through play, and more insidiously, claiming power through this fulfillment.  The free downloads (available on Mattel’s home site) that accompany the candidates include a laudable list of words that girls can circle to describe their own leadership abilities. What’s missing is how these descriptors are often in direct conflict with other, oppositional, qualities promoted to young girls and how they clash when the two combine (footnote: see vitriol surrounding Hilary Clinton).  Girls who are following the campaign, at any level, will likely learn this soon enough.

In more timely news, straight ahead is the release of the July 30th Barbie film, Starlight Adventure, a pink-tinged sci-fi movie whose teaser reveals a range of Barbie figures of traditional body type.  The snippet of song available, “I can be anything….” is an echo of what Mattel is serving up to young girls.  It is hard to dispute the inherent optimism of this message — yet, (particularly as this political campaign unfolds), it’s hard to not think about what happens when idealistic platitudes meet with actual reality.

On the new Barbie body types:

It’s been a few weeks since Barbie, a maverick of (at least clothes-changing) reinvention, has done it again. Or, another way to frame her latest transformation is that the design and marketing teams at Mattel, (perhaps in response to declining sales), are finally ready to act on the message that the world of dolls is diversifying. Mattel has tried (and failed in my opinion) to offer a more radical doll with the Monster High line, but the iconic Barbie, stands (or balances) forever in her own category. Any change for her has been one of increments, but this time Mattel has taken a leap.

Generations of women have played with Barbie and there has been no shortage of wonderfully inventive feminist “make-overs” and interventions with the doll. Yet, Barbie’s impossible proportions have remained the same throughout the years, although — more signs of progress — almost a year ago a “flat-footed” Barbie with articulated ankles was released. A quick cruise through the Target aisle reveals Barbies available in a variety of skin colors and hair lengths, although the traditional blonde-haired, pale-skinned icon still dominates the shelves.

Praise has always been (sometimes begrudgingly) given to Barbie’s “career girl” persona and as I cruised the aisles with my 4-year-old we admired the snappy uniforms Pilot Barbie and Chef Barbie donned. Yet, despite the “vet set” (complete with pink and purple-decked office equipment), the emphasis on Barbie as fashion doll who engages in stereotypically feminine activity is still abundantly clear. I tried to move my little person more swiftly past the boxes for Barbie’s walk-in closet (packed with accessories) and a “dinner date” set complete with café table and chairs where she looked très intime with Ken.

Mattel’s big reveal was a trio of Barbies with different body types (petite, curvy, and tall, with one doll sporting bright blue hair). In the world of feminist activism around dolls, parenting, and the fight for more gender equity with kids’ toys and clothing, reaction has been cautiously optimistic. One cynical, yet commonly heard, response is that the dolls’ different body shapes means their clothing isn’t interchangeable, garnering more sales for Mattel. Another level of response, much discussed in comments and blogs, is whether girls will digest these changes and how — and, frankly, if the “curvy” Barbie didn’t go far enough, with wide hips that still don’t truly mirror the body shape of the average American woman. Comment threads have questioned whether giving a “curvy” Barbie might be perceived as an insult — reflecting the thought, again, that a less-than-thin body is still less than desirable.

Mattel strategically brought onboard a small handful of activists to consult and it’s unclear how much input was taken seriously, or might have even served as a strategy to leverage their efforts as collaborative and thereby inoculate themselves from later attacks. I am cautious about seeing companies promote what I’ve called “fauxpowerment”: a move the plays off of the idea of “empowering girls” but, in reality, serves their own interests.

Companies walk a fine line when using “body confidence” to espouse “feel good” boosts — at best it can be a step forward towards redefinition, at worst, it’s exploitation of the most undermining sort. This magazine pictorial (“Women Proving That Their Own Skin is This Season’s Hottest Accessory”) even references the new Barbies as a way of proving that there now is more body shape and color representation — but with the helping hand of a makeup product. Yet, general consensus seems to be that Mattel’s motives are well-intended — and given that Barbie is solidly in midlife an evolving body shape (and midlife rebranding) seems like a timely development.

Just as Disney has made strides towards reforming the Princess zeitgeist (although I’m sure would never dream of eliminating it), I think Mattel is ceding to some external pressure and sincerely trying to have Barbie evolve, although they are probably motivated more by the chance to pitch new merchandise as progressive to increase sales rather than any kind of deep corporate altruism.

The relationship between girls and Barbie, and women and Barbie isn’t one that shows any sign of ending, even decades past the years she was an active presence within a girl’s life — which is exactly why her influence and continuing development is so important.

Note: The video above is from 2009.  Barbie was created in 1959. Now 57, she’s ready to run again for political office.

Girl w/ Pen is excited to present this guest post from Laurel Wider, a psychotherapist with a speciality in gender, relationships and identity.  She’s also a mom and Founder of Wonder Crew, a new line of toys that brings connection and kindness into boys’ play.   

Play is how children learn, which means toys have the power to create change. As I began to pay more attention to toys marketed to boys, it occurred to me that so many of them emphasized muscles and aggression and NONE offered a play experience that encouraged connection or even friendship.  Thrilled by the surge of toys that encourage  STEM and positive body images for girls, I want to help expand the way boys see themselves and the world around them.

I’m a mom, psychotherapist and now founder of Wonder Crew, a line of dolls that bring connection and feelings into boys’ play.  In my therapy practice, I’ve worked with several boys and men who have painfully grappled with impossible stereotypes of masculinity. Boys are raised to prioritize toughness and self-reliance – in my work with clients I’ve seen this lead to isolation, depression and sometimes aggression.

And then about a year ago, my son came home from preschool with the idea that “boys aren’t supposed to cry.”  I was floored that my own son had gotten a hold of this message. These stereotypes impact and harm everyone.  This is how I ended up a toy inventor.

Change is generally something that happens gradually. With this in mind, I thought long and hard about how to create a “hybrid” toy, one that still resembled familiar play scenarios for boys, but also offered the opportunity to connect and nurture.  So I came up with action figure meets favorite stuffed animal.  This morphed into Wonder Crew:  a line of Crewmates (aka dolls) that come with a matching piece of adventure gear (dress-up) plus mini open-ended comic book.  The formula:  Child + Crewmate = Wonder Crew.

Right now we have one Crewmate, his name is Will and he comes in three adventures with a fourth in the pipeline:  Superhero, Rockstar, Builder and Chef.  These adventures were based on interviews with over 150 parents, educators and kids that spoke to me about play that they’ve observed/ kids’ favorite play scenarios.

At first I thought that these adventures were too stereotypical, but I’ve come to realize that it’s important to show that nurturing fits in with all kinds of play, even the kind that’s stereotypically masculine.  And really the big picture idea is that anyone can be a connected, empathetic, nurturing person.

Wonder Crew is all about friendship and adventure and clearly this is not just a boy thing!  I plan to incorporate a girl Crewmate, while keeping with the same adventures. This would have been my preferred doll growing up.

While inspired by boys, Wonder Crew will be an interest-based brand, not gender based.  And the plan is for Crewmates to represent all kids (race, gender, ability).

Wonder Crew’s Kickstarter launched last week. We’re already over 40% funded, but we’ve got a ways to go. Please check it out and help spread the word!  It’s our goal to not only fund first production, but also to show public interest.  A large toy company told me that dolls for boys will never work; help Wonder Crew enlighten them!

* This post originally ran in the Ms. Magazine blog.  And I can’t help but post a link to father-of-two-girls President Barack Obama who made news recently for sorting toys outside of the expected gender box — literally!

If you’re still thinking about last-minute shopping, it’s not too late to stop and consider the No Gender December campaign from Australian organization Play Unlimited. While their tagline, “Stereotypes Have No Place Under My Christmas Tree,” presumes everyone is celebrating Christmas, their message is one that’s gone global as a quick look at their pledge page reveals, with more signatures still pouring in.

It’s heartening to see wider messaging about the limitations of gender stereotyping in children’s toys, as a flurry of recent articles reveals. More heartening would be harder evidence that toy companies are listening and are open to broader understandings of marketing to kids, not driven by a bifurcated blue-or-pink bottom dollar. Some stores, notably Harrod’s in London have stopped divvying up their aisles, and there is reason to hope that other retailers will follow. Sociologist Elizabeth Sweet’s Atlantic article, “Toys Are More Divided by Gender Now Than They Were 50 Years Ago,” does a great job of revealing the history of marketing by toy companies and how entrenched gender stereotypes have become. Her comment about the subversive repackaging of toys geared to girls which “emphasizes freedom and choice,” is a great one. She comments, “The reformulated story does not fundamentally challenge gender stereotypes; it merely repackages them to make them more palatable in a ‘post-feminist’ era. Girls can be anything—as long as it’s passive and beauty-focused.”

This juncture is one that has been a sticking point for many who deeply desire change in toys marketed to girls but are left stymied by how to do it. Some of the brouhaha around GoldieBlox’s campaign turned on the point that serving up “sparkle science-type” projects to girls in a gateway-like attempt to lure them past masculine associations with STEM fields does nothing but backfire, nevermind is ultimately undermining. This seems to be the pivot point for those who support diversifying the colors, (and stereotypes that accompany them), in the toy aisles, with supporters of change often facing different directions in terms of approach, even as they stand on common ground.

More recently, a new set of princesses came onto the scene who are also stealthily undermining stereotypes. The Guardian Princesses, who made a splash with their debut last year, are back with newly released titles just this past week. The series is the brainchild of UC Riverside Professor of Media and Cultural Studies Setsu Shigematsu, who found herself at a loss when her daughter began to succumb to the ever-present influence of princess culture and denying access to it only seemed to make things worse. Not unlike Peggy Orenstein, author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, and her suggestion to “Fight Fun with Fun” through alternatives to princess culture, Shigematsu wrote a different princess story and, after reading it to her daughter’s friends, a new legacy was born.

The Guardian Princesses are presented in a range of body styles and are of diverse ethnicities and there’s no fighting the long dresses, necklaces and flowing hair that’s considered part of the princess look. The approach of the Guardian Princess Alliance is firmly in the “ease in and then make a change” camp, something they are likely to be critiqued for by those who see capitulation in any form as not radical enough and even pandering. But, as their peppy video (below) reveals, despite their poufy dresses, the princesses are unhindered in their mobility and the rhetoric used about their mission is hardly passive.

The newest series released features Princess Ten Ten, who is the most gender-fluid in appearance of the lot (or “gender independent” as they term it) and who is bullied and faces rejection within her family.  In a wise move, all of the Guardian Princess books are compliant with Common Core standards, meaning they can be adopted for classroom use, and there is a distinctive environmental focus to their stories. One risk with this new series might be making the stories too didactic or pitting the princesses against the evils of corporate greed every time, but, overall, the shift in what these princesses do and what is valued is an exhilarating breath of fresh air. How well they sell, and how long the Guardian Princess Alliance can keep up with demand and generate new work, are perhaps the issues at hand. The desire by visionary small business ownersto put what are still alternative toys, books and gender messaging out to the public seems an uphill battle, one mitigated by energy, perseverance and available funds when up against so many cultural barriers, which is all the more reason to celebrate those that do.

Here’s hoping that the messages espoused by the No Gender December campaign extend beyond the shopping frenzy and, optimistically, become part of retailers, parents, teachers and even kids’ expectations of toys in the new year.

If you care about smart toys or if you don’t live under a media rock, then by now you’ve heard about GoldieBlox, the girls engineering toy. Maybe you read about it here at Girl w/Pen. Maybe you saw the viral video about the toy that parodied the Beastie Boys song, “Girls.” In the video, three girls set off a Rube Goldberg machine and aim to take over the world. The only problem was that the Beastie Boys said thank you by suing GoldieBlox. Then the toy got critiqued left and right—too pink, too princessy, too wrong for “stealing” a Beastie Boys song. Well now, no matter how you felt about the toy, you likely saw their new ad while inhaling nachos during the Super Bowl. GoldieBlox won Intuit’s small business Super Bowl commercial competition which means they essentially won 4 million dollars, the amount equivalent to make and then screen a commercial during the Super Bowl.

And that means that GoldieBlox really just became a household name.

This commercial puts GoldieBlox, a small start-up toy company that wants to, as they say, “disrupt the pink aisle,” at your local toy store, back on top. And to make matters even better, days ago GoldieBlox’s “Spinning Machine” won the People’s Choice and Educational Toy award of the year at the 14^th annual Toy Industry Association (TIA) Awards. Debbie Sterling, GoldieBlox CEO, invented one of the first engineering toys for girls. She shares her challenges in her TEDX talk: her path as a female minority in a Stanford engineering program, a woman inventor in the big business androcentric toy industry, and as a female entrepreneur in booming Silicon Valley. Sterling’s vision as an entrepreneur, and the ideological work of the toy, are the reasons we wanted her to help us open a new gender center, the Cassandra Voss Center, on our campus. So this Fall, we became the “Midwest launch” of GoldieBlox.

What did that mean? Debbie Sterling and VP, Lindsey Shepard, spoke on our campus and taught us how to engage hundreds of kids with GoldieBlox when we created a toy zone in our Center. St. Norbert College was also among the first colleges to include the toy in their curriculum. As Assistant Professor of Education, Chris Meidl, said when he introduced the toy in his class on “Play,” “No matter any other criticisms about the toy itself, the clear message delivered is that girls can build too. And that is a message worth being heard, for girls and boys, for women and most importantly for men.”

So I’m loyal-it’s true. I know the founders personally and heard them speak passionately about their dream of the toy and for girls globally. The toy, though, has come under a lot of critique. When Slate’s holiday gift guide tagline read “Forget GoldieBlox. Buy a Birdfeeder Instead,” I wanted to throw a birdfeeder at my computer screen. The holiday season is, of course, the biggest commercial moment in the toy company year. Slate just kept going with, “First Everyone Loved GoldieBlox. Now Everyone Hates GoldieBlox.” Hate is a strong word and I guess Slate figured that out since at this writing, they removed the above title and have given GoldieBlox a second look under the article, “GoldieBlox: Great for Girls? Terrible for Girls? Or Just Selling Toys?” Well good for you Slate for modifying your backlash after the fact. Sigh. Then when Jezebel recently wrote, “GoldieBlox Means Well But Doesn’t Live Up to the Hype,” I had to weigh in.

I’ve been in Women’s and Gender Studies since I was 19 years old. On the one hand, I welcome and get the onslaught of feminist critique of GoldieBlox that is now coming to a blog near you. On the other hand, I am no ideological purist and I wonder the degree to which critics grasp what it takes to break gender barriers in all these fields—STEM, toy industry, start-up/Silicon Valley culture—and make a toy that has mass appeal. I repeat—mass appeal.

My supportive response really comes from watching the toy work on the ground. I saw hundreds of girls play with GoldieBlox for an entire day. I watched as girl after girl mastered a “basic belt drive,” the first engineering challenge of the game and saw how they interacted with the “bill of materials” that is designed to be especially welcoming to girls—girls who rarely play with construction toys. Debbie made the wheels look like thread spools, the axles resemble crayons, and the belt mimic a thick hair ribbon. A hair ribbon is stereotypically feminine, but it’s likely a girl has seen one, unlike other construction toy parts that can appear off limits in gender-segregated toy aisles. Debbie conducted research for her start-up toy and discovered that girls would frequently turn her prototypes into non-competitive games. In other words, girls needed all the adorable animal characters to spin on the spinning machine or ride the float. Everyone needed to win. So Debbie redesigned the game.

Now as a gender critic, I know that girls are socialized into these sensibilities rather than born into them, but that fact does not make their gender socialization any less real. When my three year old picked up the toy, she gravitated first to the character animals just as GoldieBlox VP Lindsey Shepard had predicted. “The character animals are the way for girls to feel invited into engineering,” said Lindsey who urged us to reach out a hand with, say, Katinka the dolphin, and welcome a girl into play. The GoldieBlox mission is to make engineering as appealing a job for a girl as the pink-collar work that so many girls are still ushered into. Debbie’s basic gender critique in her Kickstarter video asserts a claim in Gender Studies about inequity and representation—engineering is still 89% male, women make up half the population, women and girls need to be building for a better, more inclusive future. Few toys offer such a gender critique which is why GoldieBlox had an initial feminist appeal.

Critics say about the toy: it has pink on it. And the second game is called “GoldieBlox and the Parade Float” where girls partake in dreaded “princess culture” and help build a parade float. It’s all true. The toy has pink on it, but is mostly yellow. Debbie talked about how using some pink was intentional. She aimed for girls to “want to pick the toy up,” in the first place. Debbie said recently to the New York Times, “It’s OK to be a princess. We just think girls can build their own castles too.” The deeper story of the princess float—and I loathe princess culture…I avoid saying the word out loud in my house—is that Goldie’s best friend, Ruby, who is African-American, is actually the winner of the pageant. This fact prizes afro-centric beauty in a racist culture that makes beauty synonymous with whiteness. Now it is certainly more troubling that Ruby is the best friend of Goldie and not Goldie herself. Goldie of the Blox is a white protagonist, a central critique that is rarely mentioned in the feminist response. Though I wonder if Goldie is “Golda,” an homage to Debbie’s Jewish foremothers. The Jewish cultural allowance for smart girls is something Debbie mentions in her TEDX talk. On the ground, watching girls play with the toy, they actually play with the animals in the set which are not necessarily racialized. The question remains: can a toy ever be designed (add books, movies, etc.) with a girl of color at the center? Girls and women are barely represented authentically in mass culture at all, let alone women of color. We know something will have shifted with a girl-of-color is at the center of a story.

So the answers to the GoldieBlox critiques are a bit more complicated. I appreciate critic Deborah Siegel’s more balanced provocatively titled piece, “Is GoldieBlox Trojan Princess, or Trojan Feminism?” I think it’s both. Which brings me back to my point about ideological purity. Why do we keep asking this binary question of “is it or isn’t it” feminist? Let’s step back and take the long view. The truth is I want GoldieBlox to have the same appeal as Bob the Builder or Lego dudes because girls still get nada in girl toy world. Like I teach my students—you can hold conflicting ideas simultaneously and still make a commitment. GoldieBlox is listening. Let’s commit to help them navigate the hyper-stereotyped toy world many of us are resisting by giving them some advice as The Brave Girls Alliance is doing with Lego when asking them to make smart girl Minifigs. I appreciate that GoldieBlox is trying to meet girls where they are. We can find the common ground between these worlds intellectually and maybe we can even find it around play. And even if we can’t, GoldieBlox is about to change play nationally regardless.

Recent Girl w/Pen posts—Stop the War on Pink—Let’s Take a Look at Toys for Boys by Tristan Bridges and CJ Pascoe, Who’s Afraid of the War on Pink from Girl w/Pen founder Deborah Siegel, and Girls, Boys, Feminism, Toys, a dialogue between Deborah and feminist author Rebecca Hains—all focus on how  ‘gender coding’ toys via color and sex specific illustrations harms kids of both sexes.  The discussion underlines how long feminist change can take. It also illustrates the popular influence of those who claim to be pro-child, but thread old, unfounded gender stereotypes throughout their public pronouncements and publications, promoting the notion that from birth girls and boys learn, play and relate in vastly different ways.

This makes it difficult to avoid letting discussions related to gender fall into a binary frame. As so many of us have pointed out for more years than I care to recall, these issues are not either/or, zero sum ones.  Much of the content and comments on the posts mentioned above have reiterated these points.  Yet hanging around in the public mind are ideas reflecting beliefs such as ‘helping girls equals hurting boys’ or ‘progress for boys is a set back for girls’ or ‘working on behalf of girls means ignoring boys’. Nonsense.  A gender equitable environment is one where assumptions of differences based primarily on one’s sex and/or gender affiliation are not part of the picture.  No serious feminist has ever argued otherwise.

In their post Deborah and Rebecca refer to Christina Hoff Sommers’ 2001 book, The War Against Boys . Sommers’ claimed that efforts on behalf of girls were a direct cause of much that was not working for boys in our nations schools.  I was one of the feminists who responded that actually, what was good for girls was also good for boys and vice versa.  Those of us, women and men, who shared this perspective, offered numerous examples: new methods of teaching science, better sex education, more physical activities for both boys and girls, a de-emphasis on traditional, option-limiting gender roles.

Of course, the hitch here is and always has been what is considered “good’.  If you want to continue the status quo, then you want to do all sorts of things that involve emphasizing gender differences— different toys, different teaching methods, different schools, different opportunities in sports and yes, even different signature colors.  This is a deeply conservative agenda.  It is an agenda that says,’ well, the roles of women and men have changed enough, we certainly don’t want anymore.’

It seems that the more  progress we make  toward less rigid gender roles, the more extreme the gender coding of toys becomes. Back in my December, 2012 post, Pink is for Girls, Black is for Boys, I noted that 2012 marked the fortieth anniversary of the best selling children’s record, Free To Be You and Me. Yet the Free To Be message—  everyone in our society needed a wider, less gender-specific range of choices and these choices should begin in childhood—was missing in the toy stores I visited.  The toys were far more color coded than four decades ago. Back then bikes, trucks, airplanes and even dolls sported a wide range of bright colors—red, green, yellow as well as shades of blue and rose.  The pink/lavender vs. black/ dark navy dichotomy is a division that, among other things, probably helps sales. Teach children and parents the color-code and you double your market.  What little brother will want to settle for his big sister’s pink tricycle?

But what may be good for sales is very bad for kids and ultimately for all of us. Rigid gender roles inhibit equality, limit individual flexibility, and rob us of our fullest selves.  Thank goodness for the Let Toys Be Toys Project and other similar efforts.

And lets not forget that whether the news media noticed or not, working for changes in gendered assumptions about male roles has been part of the feminist agenda for decades.  Change for women without change for men isn’t the change we hoped for fifty years ago and it isn’t the change feminist men and women, whether in the fields of women’s studies, girls’ studies, gender studies or masculinity studies are working for now.

In fact one of the great things about Girl w/Pen bloggers is that we span all these fields and more and we do so across traditional academic disciplines as well as generational lines.  When I directed the Wellesley Centers for Women, the sign on my desk read, “None of us is as smart as all of us.”   Girl w/Pen feels like my old office these days!

Why is it strange to see a visual of girlie-girls grooming puppies while hearing the sounds of boyie-boys* describing a Star Wars battle? Check out The HTML5 Gendered LEGO Advertising Remixer to try it out for yourself and your kids.

 In the words of my almost-8-year-old daughter trying to explain (to her feminist sociologist mom) why this website cracks her up:

“This is funny!” (“Why?”) “Because it has the gun sounds and the girl characters.” (“Why do you think LEGO makes their toys like this?”) “Because they think that there are boy-toys and girl-toys.” (“Are there?”) “No, but they think they are.  And, look at the colors.” (“The colors are different?”) “People think orange is a boy color and pink is a girl color. But, I like orange, and Dad likes pink.” 

Yep, Dad likes pink.  And, Mom likes interactive ways to show, rather than tell, why anti-sexist parents must continue to fight the good fight…whether with a light saber or a blow dryer.

*I recognize “boyie-boy” is not as common an expression as “girlie-girl,” but my daughter used that term last year when describing the gendered differences she noticed among her friends:

Some of my girl friends are girlie-girls, and they like pink and purple and sparkles and dresses and unicorns. And, some boys at my school are boyie-boys, and they only like orange and blue and red and bugs and LEGOs and dinosaurs.

My daughter self-identifies as a boyie-girl (a girl who likes girlie and boyie things), and she and I both appreciate the girlie-boys in our lives — guys who are as happy wearing a lavendar shirt while they cook dinner as they are drinking a beer while watching the big game  :-]