I think making things pink and tampon-looking to sell them to girls is the opposite of progressive. Is the neon green of other nerf stuff somehow a mens colour? It’s girl-marketed because they’re marketing them to girls.
Some children will choose http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81x6sRmCF8L.SL1500.jpg while others will choose this bow. Girls or boys aside, some little people want nerf machine guns and some want flimsy slow bows.That being said I shoot a real bow, nobody considers a bow gendered when they shoot it. The gender has been artificially attached by the person who wrote this article in order to create internet derpdom.
Cory, conflicted? really?
Don’t think so hard or get hung up somebody or some company’s “motives”
Who cares? Let the kids (and parents) choose what they want. Let kids have fun and let THEM decide what they like or not.
It’s okay, Mark gave Cory all the shitty stories to comment on after he realized that people hates all the stuff he cared about and thought it wasn’t important. Children’s toys shouldn’t come with sex operation kits. TEACH your kids to like things they are interested in regardless of color or function. There are no boobs or penises attached to nerf toys which make them all ungendered except for where they are placed in the toy store.
There isn’t anything inherently gendered about nerf guns, but the fact of the matter is that most retailers are going to keep putting them in the aisle clearly marked boys. If telling girls that they, too, can be action heroes comes at the cost of adding some pink paint, that seems a fair price to pay (though obviously it’d be unnecesary in an ideal world).
It’s not the same as, say, gendered pens, which are trying to create gender destination in what was previously a non-gendered product.
Pink bows, green bows, whatever. Personally, I think of bows and arrows as more feminine than masculine to begin with. Some good examples of which would include Katniss. Emma. Susan Pevensie. Legolas. Etc.
Plus, bows and arrows are so lame. No self-respecting fighter in D&D ever goes for the bow and arrow, or a crossbow. Swords are where it’s at, in a dungeon campaign. Hack and slash! “Now Groo does what Groo does best!” Can you imagine Groo with a bow? Hell no! Pirates? No way Jose! Conan? No! No! A thousand times No!
And crossbows. Don’t get me started. Every time I see the crossbow dude in Walking Dead having to go retreive his crossbow bolts after each shot. Grr. It just burns me up. Law of diminishing returns. One day he’s gonna wind up just having to clop the zombies over the head with his fancy damned crossbow.
More swords! Less arrows! More hacking and less thwipping, damnit. Teenaged girls need some Nerf Battle Axes and long swords, I would imagine. It would make the world a better place!
If the world doesnt get more bows gendered toward women how will they ever shoot their load?
What is gods name is she wearing? Looks like her closet threw up.
It certainly beats their previous attempt, the Nerf Bra.
While most segments of modern Western culture don’t really associate archery with male or female usage, there are in fact “gendered” views of archery in other parts of the world where archery wasn’t rendered obsolete until more recently.
For example, in Japan archery is seen as a distinctly masculine skill, alongside swordsmanship in the form of modern kendo. Although there are female practitioners of both arts, the practices themselves are considered masculine. This is something of a holdover from the age of samurai, with the final practical decline of sword and bow usage on the battlefield only really occuring in the 1800s.
Contrast this with the European adoption of early firearms such as the arquebus and musket into their infantry formations as early as the 1400s, with the Tercio Formation of massed pikemen and musketmen being cemented as the standard battlefield tactic in Western Europe straight through to the start of the 17th century. Bow warfare has been obsolete in the west for centuries longer than it has elsewhere, and its resultant lack of significance allowed it lose its prior gender associations over that time.
Making a pink and/or purple version of a Nerf toy: cool.
Calling it the “Rebelle Heartbreaker”: so, so not cool.
I think someone needs to consult this-
http://www.kristenmyers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/toy_flow_chart-01.png
I thought the same thing at first. But who am I of all people to speak about fashion?
From what I understand, chestiness can interfere with archery.
Hence the Amazons? I don’t think that actually applies in real life, or at least not since the invention of the bra.
While I think the Rebelle range is cool, it’s also missing a small but powerful derringer-type pistol, like the Triad (which I think has now been re-released). Small enough to hide up your sleeve…
Crossbows, to give them their due (and indulge my fondness for bad puns), are weapons of class destruction. Not to be taken lightly.
Back in the day, Mr. Tin-Pot Chivalric Overlord, trained up from a vassal, kitted up in the closest thing to a medieval main battle tank that his poor horse could support, was a terrifying warrior for the squalid peasantry whose lot it was to be run down like dogs by their betters.
Crossbow? Put a bolt through Mr. High-and-Mighty’s armor, Mr. High-and-Mighty, and sometimes back out the other side. A weapon so effective that the Church actually freaked out and decided that Jesus couldn’t possibly endorse people fragging their betters so efficiently.
Criticize its aesthetics if you will; but the crossbow was basically the RPG-7 of Ye Olde Medieval Tymes.
So f’n typical.
Let’s all go hard charging into every scenario, hackin’/slashin’ our way to victory. You haven’t got the slightest clue as to why your “oh so steely” blade (btw, compensate much?) found the mark with such ease and so little resistance.
Here’s how it works in the real world:
While you were grunting, frothing and generally waving your “sword” around, the rogue had already crept up into the chamber and stealthily picked off the guards lingering around the outer perimeter with their BOW. As this was happening, the wizard hit you in the face with a +4 strength spell . This was all happening before your ass even noticed the impending encounter. But yeah, it’s all about your sword. Fer christssake.
It takes a party, dude. A PARTY. Gah!
Pink? Funny, I see a purple and grey bow with some pink accents. Hmm what other toy had pink accents? Could it be THE ORIGINAL NERF BOW AND ARROW FROM 1990?
I get it. You’re probably newer to the whole nerf game, came up in the era of safety orange everything. But check out that rad color scheme! It was my favorite toy for years, and it proved more durable than other nerf we had.
I’m not even particularly attached to pink. Purple was my favorite color growing up. It was also my brother’s favorite color. If my mom bought two copies of a toy, and there was only one purple one, there’d be a fight.
It’s funny how “colors that aren’t normatively male” just automatically means “pink” in some people’s eyes, or even the smallest pink accent invalidates a toy’s potential to be seen as gender neutral. We must eradicate all of that color some people like from the known universe! Even if, in the 80s, you could use it on everything without people yelling about it being regressively gendered!
I like jewel tones: dark purples, blues, turquoises, that kind of thing - pink isn’t anywhere near my favorite color, but there are some people who like it. People are being awfully negative about a toy line that’s basically: Nerf - what if we used an accent color other than safety orange again?
In my ideal world, toys of all colors and styles would be in the same aisle, and you’d see as many marketing images of girls with blue and yellow toys as you’d see of boys with purple and teal toys, but this is the world we live in, and these are the hands we’re given. I’m just tired of people saying “Marketing that contains exclusively boys is gender neutral! Marketing that contains exclusively girls is gendered!”
Alright, i’m going to say something that might be VERY unpopular and totally against all this progressive thinking. Ready?
Some - even many - girls LIKE pink things, neon green sparkly things, unicorns, and dolls. It is IN them, it is in their code.
Only speaking from experience. Anecdote. Subject size of one (well, one daughter and two sons). YMMV. And all that.
That is the insidious nature of culturally defined identifiers and stereotypes, it can be impossible to tell the difference between nature and nurture in preferences or attitudes. Not to say that sure, some boys like blue and some girls like pink “naturally”.
However, you do realize people said exactly the opposite thing in the late 1800’s when pink was for boys and blue was for girls right?
