A Visit to Toys’ R Us

A impose to Toys R US How Toys ar Affecting G terminationer Roles in suppuration Children Ji-Young Kim 2012-05-21 Todays victimize store is the Mecca for children. Although umteen traditional toy stores energize died out due to the advent of electronic toys, big stores afford care Toys R US have survived by flexibly by gripping its new adversaries. Now, they sell a precise wide arrange of toys, from Jewish-Orthodox toys analogous dolls and bodily function figures to toys that followed technologys evolution, like electronic phonograph recording readers and of course, video games.However, enchant humanity supplyt toys have evolved, it became clear from my observation that the buyers attitudes just about what toys are appropriate for each sex has not changed much. Also, although many previous manlike themed toys have become sex-neutral, withal many more(prenominal) gender- slashed toys carry messages of what boys and girls are expected to grow up. Still, I coul d see signs of betterment over both, and conceptualise that as long as in that respect is room for improvement, gender bias amongst children pass on gradually disappear.As I coursed through the aisles, I sight that the store divided itself into several parts boys, girls, electronic games, and gender neutral. I found it amusing that the partition for the girls toys was in the very back of the store. I presume that this would result in girls getting a taste of the boys toys, but not vice versa. It would be profitable for the toy store to place the girls section in the front, because ignored products are oftentimes placed in the more or less valued spots (e. g. shelves that meets eyelevel), but I guessed that the toy store assumed that it would hear complaints from the parents if they decided to place toys that way.The front of the store, excluding the girls section, was divided into half by gender-neutral toys and toys for boys. Interestingly, the section for boys and gende r-neutral sections were not marked boys but totally the types of the toys (e. g. action figures), but the section for girls was clearly marked as girls. first what I see was the gender-neutral area contained main(prenominal)ly storybooks, board games, Lego, sports and musical instruments. I noticed that many toys that were traditionally considered masculine, like drums and skateboards, were now in the gender-neutral area.However, round toys we consider traditionally gender-neutral like sports equipments, had no pink colored items (lacrosse sticks), time some other equipments, like tennis rackets, which were placed right abutting to the lacrosse sticks, came out in both pink and blue. I assumed that there was no market for pink lacrosse sticks, or it wasnt significant liberal to fit into a toy store. Board games almost perpetually showed agism and reinforced sex stereotypes on their cover when portrayal men or women. It is also worth noting that toys that are completely fr ee of gender bias are based on themes completely unrelated to social activities (e. . rubber eraser dinosaur models). One interesting board game for small children, named Battle of the Sexes by Imagination, was about testing the opponent sex about the interests of the players sex (e. g. The number of football players in a team). Outwardly, this seems like an tenuous game which allows you to get to know what the opposite sex is like, but is in fact reinforcing ideas about the norms of the opposite sex into children. The gender-neutral section also include the well-known Lego series.Although I call this a gender-neutral toy, it is only so because it has a small amount of pink-colored limits containing pieces that are broadly speaking women. Despite the Lego series manifestly gender-neutral concept of create frustrates, most of the toys are themed around mostly masculine activities. Many, if not most, depict warfare, a theme based on violence, which is mostly considered mascul ine. Adventure themed Lego toys have no women characters involved it always depicted men who are digging up a desolate landscape and combat mummies with, of course, pistols and swords.Maybe, as shown in a video Different but fit, boys forget have a better initial ability to hit Lego blocks creatively due to their superior space recognition skills, but they allow be able to further reinforce their abilities by playing with the blocks frequently, and in the end resulting in reinforcing the idea that this ability is male-oriented. However, as recent studies show, women have scantily as much potential to do as well as men do on those areas. Sadly, parents who have daughters may be base of these facts and may be intent on getting their daughters dolls rather than block toys.Still, the fact that there are Lego toys aimed for girls can mean things have ameliorate such as Lego Friends, for only a decade ago it was compensate hard to find women figures in Lego products. It may be t hat some parents are shifting their paradigms and starting to get children what they wish for. The electronics inlet was filled with toys that include characters stand for the peak of masculinity. For instance, the famous Super Mario series from Nintendo that has lasted for more than 30 years as a bestseller series, almost always depicts Mario, the main ace of the series, rescuing Princess Peach, the traditional helpless princess from danger.Mario has mustaches and grows in size and power when he consumes mushrooms, symbolizing the masculine features of a man, while Princess Peach wears pink frilly dresses, is always helpless and carries an umbrella, not to mention wearing makeup and jewelry. I believe that the video game company is unwilling to discard this facet of the game, because it has sell well for more than 30 years by creating games that live up to gender stereotypes.In rare cases the main character was a heroine, the female is each wearing a robotic outfit that covers the entire body and has a munition in the place of her hand (Metroid, Nintendo) or dressed up in formal dresses (The Island Princess, Nintendo). It was clear that the former was meant for boys and the latter for girls. Most video games for boys were about destroying or somehow vanquishing the opponent, reinforcing the idea of control and power, and ultimately in aggressive behavior.The section with toys for boys was filled with items that emphasize masculinity, especially action figures. Figures of men (especially superheroes and professional wrestlers with bulging muscles and tattoos) show boys from an early age how an ideal man should look like. These toys will very likely lead to respect of power from a very early age, and will affect their speech personal manner and ultimately reinforce differences in gender roles. Other than action figures, other notable toys were racecars and other automobiles, especially fighter planes.These toys would most probably give boys the idea of w hat would be cool or what a cool line looks like. These jobs have a thing in common they are all risk-taking, and therefore toys are teaching boys to be risk-takers from an early point of their lives, as described in the video Different but Equal, although we have outlived the stone age. On the other hand, the girls toy section was the polar opposite the integral area was an oversized dollhouse covered from start to end with pink. Merchandises included basic make-up, small frilly dresses for children and of course, dolls.All dolls were very slim and tall, and mostly had makeup on their faces, showing contrast to the tattooed and muscular action figures. These dolls will help keep future women in line by building an image of an ideal woman within a girls head, from a very early age. One interesting feature was that while there were Caucasian and African American dolls, there were none depicting Asiatics, perhaps because Asians have a longing for whiter skin, and prefer Caucasian o ver Asian dolls. It explicitly shows the place of Asians in American society a race that aspires to become Caucasians, both in and outwardly.That clearly affects Asian girls, or Asian mothers, as there seems to be no market for Asian dolls, and thus reinforces the traditional female sex behaviors white girls are often encouraged to follow (Lips, 203). On the day of May 19th, 2012, I got a chance to interview Berj, one of the managers of the store. He had short black hair, coloured shiny eyes, and was wearing a uniform of white pants and a shirt with the ToysRUS logo stitched into it. Every time before he started to speak, he cleaned his throat with a weird sound. Our short ten-minute interview began in a small managers room at the corner of the store.The interview with Berj revealed that the directions for the positioning of the toys came from higher up, specifically from a manual distributed from the main company. This showed that the positioning of toys were carefully planned to make the most profit possible, and was considered a major factor in profit-making. Such systematic planning showed that the company was much more willing to cope and follow the current set system of sexual assignment, rather than challenge it. I could not taint them much companies are profit-driven, and it is only natural and easier to follow the ules rather than challenge them. In the toy store I could see a whole generation repeating the footsteps of its former. Parents will buy for their children what they think is right and appropriate, and will enforce those regulations on them if necessary. And so, children who grow up accustomed to those restrictions and bonds will by nature repeat the former generation. Most, if not all boys will play with action figures depicting machismo men, and most girls will always prefer dolls over toys. It was like seeing a never-ending cycle in Buddhist terms, samsara. as luck would have it though, I could see signs of hope.By the works of count less feminists beforehand, we can see childrens movies like Mulan, where the heroine actually takes his fathers place in war, or skateboards created for girls. Although these examples arent completely free of gender bias in that Mulan is still a slim and beautiful girl and those skateboards come in pink, I believe that girls (and boys) who grow up experiencing these new changes will become adults who wint enforce their views as strongly as their parents did, and maybe someday Americans will be able to overcome this typical bias as we can never imagine.It wont be anytime soon, but someday they will. Reference The Human Sexes (Part One) Different and Equal. The Human Sexes (Part One) Different But Equal. Web. 20 May 2012. . Hillary Lips, Gender role socialization Lessons in femininity. Pp. 197-216 in Jo Freeman (ed. ),Women A Feminist Perspective. Mountain View, CA Mayfield, 1989.