I was able to leave the kids home with their father while I ran out to get gifts. Now, I normally shop for toys for kids under 4 (which can generally be anything, boys will play with girl stuff and vice-versa). However, my son is almost 6 and is most definitely above the "preschool" level of toys.
I wander into Walmart and am faced with 6 aisles of toys for girls. There is make up, Barbies, babies of all kinds , dress up clothes, easy bake ovens, those trashy "I wanna be a hooker" Bratz things, Little Pet Shop, beading crafts, knitting crafts, nail art crafts, there is drawing stuff, painting stuff, and glitter making stuff. All packaged in various shads of pink and teal and all with an overly-happy young girl, smiling till her cheeks hurt on the front. Picking up my 4 girl gifts was nothing, I had such variety, I was able to choose a gift that didn't go against my beliefs about what little girls should and shouldn't play with.
Then...it was on to the "boy" section. What a depressing thing this was. There was literally 1 2/3 of an aisle. I guess you could call it 2 full aisles, but one aisle was literally 1/3 sports balls. I understand that boys do play sports, but considering that they put pink soccer balls and footballs with Barbie in there too, I'm not calling it a "boy" section.
The boy's aisle consisted of one full length of matchbox cars and their accessories (ie, race tracks). This aisle was opposite the trampy Barbies. On the other side of the car isle was Transformers (possibly 1 body width worth), then Starwars figures (again, 1 body-width), then some GI Joes (same amount as the first two). The rest of the aisle was for Bakugon. I have no idea how these things work, but my guy is interested in these things and Transformers. Opposite to that was the boys "dress up" section. Meaning, it held things like a Transformer Head that you could put over your own, swords and guns. Yay.
I think it's pathetic how we push these sexist things on girls. We are basically teaching our girls that they have to look pretty, be skinny and be "homey" (motherly with babies, cooking, etc). Why are we teaching them to dress up like "ladies of the night??" Why are we teaching them to set such low limits??
And boys -- no wonder there's an issue with vandalism and violence. These poor boys are bored to death with next to nothing to play with...unless....I know, let's give them fake weapons so that they can grow up beating the snot out of each other....great practice for when they're older.
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