Gender Roles
Recently, and for a class I don't really enjoy, I created a paper about the effects of toys on gender. My paper really wasn' t that great but some of the things I realized about toys were frightening. While most toys in their general states aren' t that harmful, society establishes gender in children through the toys they allow a boy or girl to play with. There are some toys, like Barbie, that are horrible from any aspect. I mean why would anybody let their child play with a doll whose head pops off in order to fit the clothing on? And talk about the clothing, where is it anyway? There are some toys that could be beneficial to children of both sexes, but are they acceptable for both? Why, of course not. We wouldn't want little Jane to think that playing with Legos is acceptable. Even the ones that they make for girls aren't something girls would want to play with. According to Karen "they weren't cool, I hated that my mom bought them for me." (Or something to that nature) She like any "normal" child wanted to play with the regular ones. The fact that our society says that it's bad for a girl to play with toys like Legos is extremely sad and shows how out of wack our whole country is. Dolls also express to our girls that makeup and scanky clothing is the way to go, which is another thing that needs fixed. Why do we want to show every inch of skin to the general public? Don't we want to leave anything to the imagination? These childhood toys really screw with our minds. The action figures we give little boys aren't any better for them. They promote boys to be tough and ruthless in their pursuit of happiness. They also impel them to steal and plunder which impedes their sense of right and wrong. This is exemplified through todays adults who's consciences have been so degraded that they don't feel it is wrong to cheat and steal, such as in the case of the Enron fiasco. The toys that we let our children play with today really are the tools that set up the gender roles of tomorrow. So why do we let society our continue in this nasty direction?
I guess you might have guessed it was from a women's studies class.
I guess you might have guessed it was from a women's studies class.
posted by Becca at 4:40 PM
2 Comments:
That's pretty good for your second post Becca - it's not quite long enough for "Craziness" though - and not enough confusion or deep emotional trauma.
By the way, I think that legos have grown worse over the years as well. They used to contain a simple set of blocks that you could use to build just about anything - they came in a package which featured a specific design and included instructions for a few other designs that you could build with the same pieces. But of course you weren't limited to this - I'd build all the designs that came with the set and then tear them apart to let my imagination take shape.
Todays lego sets include toys that do not allow - or at least do not encourage much imagination in design. Look at the "Bionicles" and all the specialty pieces that come with many sets today. Then you have cheap sets that come with about 6 pieces - what a limit to the imagination - I had thousands of pieces in my collection and it was never enough. You can't do anything very creative with 6 pieces.
And they're also rediculously expensive.
Why is Becca's post on your blog?
Post a Comment
<< Home