Unit 5 Toys Aisle WTL - Notes PDF

Preview

Summary

Notes...

Description

Toys Aisle WTL For this assignment, I chose Walmart as my toy aisle project. I mainly focused on toys but glanced at clothes. The toy section was divided by ages. Even so, the toys from each gender shared similarities. To make the analysis even, I chose a toy from each gender from the same age. I focused on ages 5-7 for both genders. For girl toys, I chose dollhouses and dolls to share a resemblance of the action figures I was choosing for the boys. I immediately noticed the color schemes. Feminine colors for the girls, pinks, purples, violets, and aqua. Red, blue, green, black for the boys. Masculine figurines. The action figures are for fighting each other. Some had long swords and weaponry. The girl's dolls and houses were for accessorizing. Neat, organized, clean. The boys screamed chaos, strong, fighting, muscular. The girl's toys aligned to the typical women like fashion and feminism. The boy toys aligned with being strong and superhero-like. The girl toys left the impression that their future roles were feminine. Home decorating. The boy toys were masculine and that the future jobs were keeping others safe, military, police force, and being strong. The toy packaging is highly gendered, with boys’ toys and resources concentrated on technology and action, and girls on care and stereotypically feminine interests like housekeeping and beauty. The different colors used for each package are meant to attract a specific gender that children are already accustomed to because parents use those colors to dress their kids according to gender. I saw some dinosaur toys that seemed gender neutral. They had a combination of colors equal and were similar to caring for a pet’s vibe. Pets seem to be gender neutral and dinosaurs seemed to be the only toy without too much of any feminine or masculinity. Toys seem to be marketed to add perceptions of our roles in

society. Toys are engineered to direct us on which path we should travel. Toys, by biological design, exclude all other possible genders leaving room for only males and females. The toy aisle seems to reaffirm our genders by saying if you're a boy then you shop in the boy’s aisle, not the girl aisle because it isn't "normal". "The images children see can reinforce stereotypes and limit their horizons, but they can also open up possibilities and lead kids to believe that they have more choices." (Klass, 2018)

References Klass, Perri. “Breaking Gender Stereotypes in the Toy Box.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/well/family/genderstereotypes-children-toys.html....