Search results for toy

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Today I have for you a round-up of ads that reinforce gendered expectations about parenting/housework — that women are predominantly responsible for them, and that moms and dads do them differently. Jennifer Thomas sent in this image from Target’s Fall 2010 coupon booklet:

She points out a couple of things. First, apparently moms buy things only for their daughters and dads buy things only for their sons. But even more interesting is what’s inside the baskets. Jennifer sums it up well:

Aside from a lamp and a soft doll, Mom’s basket…contains only domestic and “nurturing” items: detergent for baby’s delicate little clothing, diapers, infant medicine, and what looks like various cleaning sprays.  Based on the contents of her basket, Mom’s role here is to care for and clean up after the child.  Now take a look at Dad’s basket! I do see two bottles stuck in there [and maybe a blanket?], but more prominently displayed are chips, ice cream, and toys like a guitar and plastic golf clubs. If I had my choice based solely on this picture, I’d much rather be a dad than a mom!

Casey F. sent in an ad for the website Food on the Table, a shopping app, that clearly depicts moms as a family’s shopper:

And Eve P. and Kyle H. let us know about Amazon’s new Amazon Mom program:

Kyle was invited to join because he’d been busy ordering lots of stuff for his new child. Interestingly, despite its name, Amazon stresses that the program is for all parents and caregivers. Here’s a partial screenshot of the info page:

Part of the text:

Amazon Mom is open to anyone who is responsible for caring for a baby or young child–“Amazon Primary Caregiver” just didn’t have the same ring to it. Kidding aside, we chose this name because we noticed moms in social communities (like our Amazon discussion boards) looking to connect and share information about products and problems with other moms. We wanted a name that would let these groups know that this program was created with their unique needs in mind.

I suppose they’re right, “Amazon Primary Caregiver” is a mouthful. But what I find interesting is the way we accept the conflation of “parent” or “caregiver” with “mom” in a way that we don’t do with “dad.”

Finally, Kate H. sent in this Clorox ad, which reinforces the idea that women clean while men (are often incompetent fools who) need cleaned up after:

Leigh K., however, found an exception. A recent IKEA catalog included a number of images of men caring for both male and female children. This first one somewhat reinforces the “men can’t parent unsupervised!” trope, what with the kid on the left drawing on the door. Reader Elena says that’s probably meant to be a door painted with the chalkboard paint so it’s totally ok, and I do recall seeing a couple of other pages with kids using chalk, so nevermind my point there:

These two dads seem capable of parenting without any clear signs of disaster:

Leigh suggests that the images of involved, competent fatherhood might be the result of IKEA being a Swedish company. It’s possible that there’s an intentional ideological effort here to present men as caretakers (there is also at least one image of boys and girls playing with toys usually associated with the other gender). But also, IKEA markets itself as a somewhat youthful, hip brand, and showing non-traditional gender roles may fit well with that marketing strategy regardless of whatever larger social commitments to gender equality anyone at the company may or may not have. Whatever the reason behind it, the catalog — from a very large, profitable business (that apparently pays very little in taxes) — indicates that at least some companies think you can choose not to reinforce gendered parenting stereotypes and still manage to sell stuff.

Rachel C. sent in a video that shows changes in unemployment rates by U.S. county between January 2007 and May 2010, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Here’s a youtube version, but there’s a larger, less distorted version here:

Note that while the other colors all represent a range of 0.9% (say, from 2.0 to 2.9%), purple is a wider interval, from 7.0 to 9.9%, so there’s going to be more variation in unemployment rates in counties colored purple than those that are in the yellow or red range (but presumably less than gray, since that’s anything over 10.0%). Not sure why that particular interval division was used.

Depressing graphic, no?

Last week I posted photos of the Justin Bieber/Kim Kardashian photoshoot for Elle. I compared it to my earlier post on the sexualization of Jaden Smith. In both I argued that we accept the sexualization of boys at younger ages than girls, seeing it as adorable and proof that they are sufficiently heterosexual and masculine rather than that they are in danger of sexual exploitation.

Yesterday Rob W. sent in a photo that I think illustrates this point well:

Who is the adult woman wearing this shirt? That’s Karissa Shannon, who is dating Hugh Hefner.

Imagine, if you can, if this were an adult man associated in some way with a famous producer of pornography widely known for dating groups of much younger women, and that adult man’s shirt had this same message but about two teen/pre-teen girls (or, for that matter, imagine a famous gay man wearing this exact shirt).  And then imagine the concern and horror that would ensue, the apologies through the man’s agent, and so on.

A short google search did turn up a post (re-posted in several other places) calling the shirt inappropriate, but given that Shannon is referred to as “sloppy seconds” in it, I’m not sure how to take it (since “sloppy seconds” reaffirms a sexual double-standard itself). A lot of other sites, on the other hand, found it adorable and/or funny, and asked readers to weigh in on Team Justin vs. Team Jaden.

Amanda M. and Lisa C. both submitted a recent Toy Story 3-themed commercial for Visa, pointing out how nice it is to see the Buzz Lightyear character advertised to girls.

I won’t disagree that it’s nice that girls are being included in the marketing for Toy Story 3 (especially as the movie appears to be as boy-centric as most), but I don’t see it as revolutionary. In fact, because we largely value masculine characteristics and pursuits, the idea that girls would be interested in boy things (like space travel) is generally regarded as cute, neat, or even awesome (this is why I like to order bourbon neat on a first date — impresses the men every time). The problem is that the reverse is not true. Because we devalue feminine characteristics and pursuits, we rarely respond to boys’ experimentation with girly things in the same way. In that case, it’s worrisome, strange, or even grotesque. We call the valuing of masculinity over femininity “androcentrism.”

So I would argue that this particular advertisement actually fits nicely with the source of gender inequality today: a devaluation of feminine things at the same time that women are required to perform some degree of femininity (the girl in the commercial is still girly, wearing baby blue, a skirt, and hugging Buzz delightedly before she blasts him off). Of course, this means that men’s life options are narrower than women’s because they have to avoid the stigma of femininity (and that must suck, truly), but at least the things men are restricted to doing and being are valued (both abstractly and with money).

More posts on androcentrism: “woman” as an insult, good god don’t let men wear make up or long hair, don’t forget to hug like a dude, saving men from their (feminine) selves, men must eschew femininity, dinosaurs can’t be for girls, and sissy men are so uncool.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Women spend their young and young adult lives dreaming of their wedding day, or so the stereotype goes.  Where might girls get the idea that weddings are a particularly important day in a woman’s life?

SociologicalMe sent in a wedding day toy for girls found at a Pathmark grocery store in Delaware:

And Mary, who blogs at Disney Princess Recovery, collected these examples of Disney Princess-themed wedding books for little girls:

So maybe it isn’t part of having two XX chromosomes.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Stacey Burns wrote in to tell us about her successful effort to fight an ad campaign that objectified women and trivialized sex work.  She explains:

USI Wireless, an Internet provider that has a ten-year contract to provide wireless to the city of Minneapolis, recently launched a new ad campaign promoting its service. The ad features the image of a young woman who we are clearly meant to read as a sex worker, accompanied by the text “FAST, CHEAP, and SATISFACTION GUARANTEED.”

A photo of the billboard was placed on Facebook, which she saw on a friend’s page, and then re-posted with a critique.  She contacted the company, whose representatives were “polite but dismissive, telling [her] that they test-marketed the ad and it did well in focus groups.”  The photo of the billboard went viral and she took it to the City Council, who “responded to public outcry and succeeded in getting the ad pulled from the 12 locations it was posted” (story here).

Burns’ story is a nice example of how collective action, facilitated by the internet, can make a difference.

For more examples of this kind of resistance, read about fights against the Obama sock monkey, a Target ad, Mr. Wasabi, Frito Bandito, Motrin’s idea of motherhood, and the rebellyon.

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Ryan was browsing the Walmart website for a toy for his soon-to-be one-year-old child and happened upon this play cop car:

Both boys and girls can aspire to be cops, of course, but the specifications on the product insist that it is for boys:

See also our post in which the exact same toy is marketed to boys as a doctor’s kit and to girls as a nurse’s kit.

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Many of you have probably by now seen this video of a group of young girls dancing to Beyonce’s Single Ladies on the World of Dance tour.  Huong L., Jeff S., and Dmitriy T.M. sent it in and asked us to comment on it.  First, the video… which is stunning:

I think I’ve watched this a half dozen times and I’m mesmerized.

But to the analysis…

After the Single Ladies video came out there was a rash of parents uploading videos of their kids dancing along to the video.  We featured a particularly impressive example of a preschool-aged girl dancing to the video and offered it as an example of how kids are active agents in their own socialization.  You might also apply this idea to this video, sent in by Heather B. (which I am not going to comment on because I can’t figure out the context).

Certainly children do make choices about what to mimick.  In a culture that highly sexualizes young girls, we shouldn’t be that surprised when they make choices that we find incongruent with (our beliefs about) childhood.  The World of Dance routine, however, is not simply an example of children being active in their own socialization and responding to the powerful messages of self-objectification aimed at girls of all ages.  In this case, many, many adults were instrumental in producing the product: their dance teacher(s), the choreographer, their parents, and the producers of the tour, to name the obvious.  These girls are performing a highly sexualized routine because many adults chose to sexualize them.

For more examples of the sexualization of young girls, see our posts on sexually suggestive teen brands, adultifying children of color, “trucker girl” baby booties, “future trophy wife” kids’ tee, House of Dereón’s girls’ collection, “is modesty making a comeback?“, more sexualized clothes and toys, sexist kids’ tees, a trifecta of sexualizing girls, a zebra-striped string bikini for infants, a nipple tassle t-shirt, even more icky kids’ t-shirts, “are you tighter than a 5th grader?” t-shirt, the totally gross “I’m tight like spandex” girls’ t-shirt, and a Halloween costume post.

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.