Ahhhh, I see. I guess I’m just pro-destruction. They didn’t really tear down the aisle in a non-destructive sense either, though. They just kind of stood there and blocked it.
It started with Kickstarter, per http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/can-a-kids-toy-bring-more-women-into-engineering/262373/ . This isn’t a Corporate Management Concept … friend of mine ordered it at that stage. The mom used (according to a Forbes article on it … http://www.forbes.com/sites/siliconangle/2012/10/15/women-engineers/2/ ) Facebook and social media and what have you for the branding and marketing… but her initial goal really was to get something for her kiddo. Whether her model of psychology is correct or not … whatever 
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[citation needed]
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Although I agree with Job, this video still made me cry. (Of course, EVERYTHING makes me cry right now.)
I’m increasingly impressed with my parents’ ability to raise me in such a way that I never once remember thinking about what was “for girls” and what was “for boys” (or, for that matter, what I was supposed to be like since I was a girl) until my peers started explicitly explaining that stuff to me in junior high.
And, for the record, I played with a wide mixture of things – GI Joe, Legos, Barbies, and She-Ra. Plus plain old wooden blocks and my Dad’s used typewriters. And plenty of imagination games that tended toward the epic fantasy genre. And that gender-neutral sort of play got me labeled as a “tomboy”. Which is, in retrospect, a message in and of itself.
I will never feel alone again. Awesome this is a social concern and supported.
I think I knew that certain toys were “for girls” and others were “for boys”, but in general I was encouraged to do math/science, I had a mother who could fix things, and I had a dad who explained what he was doing while he worked on cars in the garage … so I guess I never learned that I should be limited to only “girl” toys.
You really do have to fight it though (just to keep it in some sort of reasonable check, there is certainly no avoiding it). We have way more pink plastic crap than we’d like as parents. We don’t ban it (at least not all of it) or stop them playing with Barbie’s at other kids houses. And then they come home and ask us for Barbies and we explain why we’re against it, why we think it’s bad for them. Luckily the 6-year old is sharp as a tack and quite capable of mounting an intellectual argument. Even if we don’t win every argument, she’s thinking about it and that’s good.
My mother was a scientist and not in the least bit girly. Didn’t stop her from trying to turn me into a boy.
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That is the thing that really got under my skin with this ad / product:
It is pretending to be empowering little girls, but instead just enforcing the same old stereotypes “pastels and pinks are for girls” … girls need “special girl toys”.
As a parent of a 3.5 year old girl this really annoys me.
On the other hand, this toys from trash thing looks awesome http://bigspringenvironmental.com/20-toys-to-make-from-trash/ and I don’t see anything there that is boy / girl only.
Yep, I’m right there with you.
How would you encourage girls to play with engineering/science toys? Also, if the favorite color of a girl (or boy) is pink, why shouldn’t there be engineering/science toys in that color?
I think the point of these products is to make clear that “Girls can play with engineering/science toys!!” Yes, there are engineering/science toys out there and probably none of them say “Boys only!!” However, I would not be surprised if the pictures/ads mostly showed boys playing with them and all the colors are what small children have probably learned to associate with “boy colors”.
It seems like you really want the “pastels/pinks = girls” problem fixed and would prefer not to deal with toys that play into that assumption. I agree, but we have this other problem that a lot of girls learn that they should play with dolls while boys should play with engineering/science toys … maybe this problem is more important than gendered colors?
As for the “special girl toys”, my only hope is that girls will play with the “girly” engineering/science toys, see that they are (hopefully) the same as the “boy” engineering/science toys (minus the color), and reject the idea that girls need “special girl toys”. Also, if I am understanding what types of toys you are talking about, it seems like most of those “special girl toys” play into the stereotypes of girls outside of favorite color (they involve cooking, caring for children, etc.) rather than simply using different colors for the same toys.
[quote=“fireshadow, post:54, topic:2284”]
It seems like you really want the “pastels/pinks = girls” problem fixed and would prefer not to deal with toys that play into that assumption. I agree, but we have this other problem that a lot of girls learn that they should play with dolls while boys should play with engineering/science toys … maybe this problem is more important than gendered colors?
[/quote]That argument is somewhat undermined by the “tear down the pink aisle!” message in the ad. If anything this is more along the lines of “add this toy to the pink aisle!”
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