{"id":5608,"date":"2012-12-20T12:05:15","date_gmt":"2012-12-20T17:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=5608"},"modified":"2012-12-20T12:05:15","modified_gmt":"2012-12-20T17:05:15","slug":"second-look-pink-is-for-girls-black-is-for-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2012\/12\/20\/second-look-pink-is-for-girls-black-is-for-boys\/","title":{"rendered":"SECOND LOOK: Pink is for Girls, Black is for Boys"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a new petition <\/a>making the rounds; one I signed quickly, although it left me profoundly discouraged. The editorial board of <\/em>New Moon Girls<\/em><\/a> , a magazine for young girls, is asking Target to stop color coding its toy aisles. Colored coded toy aisles?\u00a0 In\u00a0 2012?\u00a0 In the year in which we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the ground breaking record Free to Be You and Me<\/a>?\u00a0 After more than four decades of work on non sexist\u00a0 school books and studies on the importance of encouraging girls and boys to explore skills and careers outside traditional gender stereotypical ones?\u00a0 After all this we have color coded toy aisles?<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t get my head around it.\u00a0 What had I missed in the past decade as the items topping my daughter\u2019s Christmas list moved from toys to clothes and computers?\u00a0 I needed to see for myself.\u00a0 In a nearby mall there\u2019s a Target where I\u2019ve shopped from time to time, but never in the toy aisles. This time I wandered only in the toy section.\u00a0 Indeed, glancing down the rows of toys, some rows were distinctly pink, others dark, at first glance mostly black. But what produced the colors was not, as I had begun to imagine, actual pink shelving or pink signage, it was pink packaging. And it was\u00a0 black, navy blue and deep purple packaging that produced the dark aisles. There were no signs saying \u2018girls\u2019 or \u2018boys\u2019, the colors spoke for themselves.\u00a0 It\u2019s a message no child or parent can miss.<\/p>\n

But what struck me as much as the grouping by color was the extremely<\/em> rigid way the toy manufacturers had color coded the toys and their packages.\u00a0 I hunted with very little success for red trucks, for dolls dressed in yellow or green outfits, for little cooking sets with bright colors rather than pastel pots and pans. Even in the one row near the store entrance that had several boxes of dolls on the same shelf with boxes of various toy machines–snow mobiles, rocket ships and airplanes—the stereotypical two colors proclaimed:\u00a0 \u201cGIRL!\u201d\u00a0 \u201cBOY!\u201d\u00a0 All the dolls were dressed in pink except for a few in very light blue with silver sparkles.\u00a0 All the vehicles were black or grey with an occasional purple stripe or bit of flaming orange.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the aisles with books and games were far less color coded, at least at the Target store I visited. Book covers and game boxes did not, with the glaring exception of some very <\/em>pink games, display the same degree of color coding found in the toy aisles. It appears more acceptable for girls and boys to, at least some of the time, read the same books or participate in the same games, than it is to play with any but the most gender stereotypical toys.<\/p>\n

Yes, Target should try harder to mix up its toy aisles. We should all sign the petition.\u00a0 But\u00a0 we also need to pressure toy manufacturers.\u00a0 First order of business, more colors for everyone. A rigid two color code for toys, pink for girls, dark and black for boys undoubtedly simplifies manufacturing and store inventories.\u00a0 It\u2019s good for business.\u00a0 It is not good for children.<\/p>\n

What about more brightly colored cars and airplanes, or boy dolls as well as girl dolls? What about addressing the lack of girls playing with cars on the front of those packages or the absence of boys on the cooking sets?\u00a0 What about more diversity in terms of racial background? Almost of the faces on the boxes I saw were white.\u00a0 We all want affordable toys for our children, but surely there are ways to provide a wider range of choices for parents and children than those available in the toy aisles at Target.<\/p>\n

If any of us thought the battle for less gender stereotyped toys had been won, we were wrong. We\u2019re a long way from fulfilling the 40 year old promise of the Marlo Thomas song, Free to be You and Me<\/em>.\u00a0 Our work must include renewed attention to the gendered messages that greet children and their parents every time they wander through a toy store.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s a new petition making the rounds; one I signed quickly, although it left me profoundly discouraged. The editorial board of New Moon Girls , a magazine for young girls, is asking Target to stop color coding its toy aisles. Colored coded toy aisles?\u00a0 In\u00a0 2012?\u00a0 In the year in which we celebrate the fortieth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1924,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-second-look"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1924"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}