Instructions:
Read the article “Should the World of Toys be Gender-Free?” in your CoursePack
This article is meant to be provocative, and presents one of the most basic battles in the world of gender studies. On
one hand, there is a desire (among some people) to achive some sort of post-gender world, in which gender is not seen as
a limitation or a definition, but merely a description. On the other hand, whether we like it or not, gender does seem
to exist, and it has power over the way we think and act. This article is a “thought piece” that briefly explores some
of the ways that these two forces come into collision…in the toy store.
Please post a response to this article. It is fine if you want to take a side in this discussion, or if you prefer not
to. In either case, though, say something more than just whether you agree or disagree. Try to explain why the issue is
complicated, and what kinds of power this article reveals that gender has (and what kinds it does not have). Think in
terms of 250 words. You will not be able to read any of your classmates’ posts until after you have made your initial
comment.
Articles:
Should the World of Toys Be Gender-Free?
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
By PEGGY BERNSTEIN DEC. 29, 2011 Berkeley, Calif.
NOW that the wrapping paper and the infernal clamshell packaging have been relegated to the curb and the paying off of
holiday bills has begun, the toy industry is gearing up — for Christmas 2012. And its early offerings have ignited a new
debate over nature, nurture, toys and sex.
Hamleys, which is London’s 251-year-old version of F.A.O. Schwarz, recently dismantled its pink “girls” and blue “boys”
sections in favor of a gender-neutral store with red-and-white signage. Rather than floors dedicated to Barbie dolls and
action figures, merchandise is now organized by types (Soft Toys) and interests (Outdoor).
That free-to-be gesture was offset by Lego, whose Friends collection, aimed at girls, will hit stores this month with the
goal of becoming a holiday must-have by the fall. Set in fictive Heartlake City (and supported by a $40 million marketing
campaign), the line features new, pastel-colored, blocks that allow a budding Kardashian, among other things, to build
herself a cafe or a beauty salon. Its tasty-sounding “ladyfig” characters are also taller and curvier than the typical
Legoland denizen.
So who has it right? Should gender be systematically expunged from playthings? Or is Lego merely being realistic,
earnestly meeting girls halfway in an attempt to stoke their interest in engineering?
Among the “10 characteristics for Lego” described in 1963 by a son of the
founder was that it was “for girls and for boys,” as Bloomberg Businessweek reported. But the new Friends collection,
Lego says, was based on months of anthropological research revealing that — gasp! — the sexes play differently.
While as toddlers they interact similarly with the company’s Duplo blocks, by preschool girls prefer playthings that are
pretty, exude “harmony” and allow them to tell a story. They may enjoy building, but they favor role play. So it’s
bye-bye Bionicles, hello princesses. In order to be gender-fair, today’s executives insist, they have to be
gender-specific.
As any developmental psychologist will tell you, those observations are, to a degree, correct. Toy choice among young
children is the Big Kahuna of sex differences, one of the largest across the life span. It transcends not only culture
but species: in two separate studies of primates, in 2002 and 2008, researchers found that males gravitated toward
stereotypically masculine toys (like cars and balls) while females went ape for dolls. Both sexes, incidentally,
appreciated stuffed animals and books.
Human boys and girls not only tend to play differently from one another — with girls typically clustering in pairs or
trios, chatting together more than boys and playing more cooperatively — but, when given a choice, usually prefer hanging
with their own kind.
Score one for Lego, right? Not so fast. Preschoolers may be the self¬appointed chiefs of the gender police, eager to
enforce and embrace the most rigid views. Yet, according Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist and the author of “Pink Brain, Blue
Brain,” that’s also the age when their brains are most malleable, most open to influence on the abilities and roles that
traditionally go with their sex.
Every experience, every interaction, every activity — when they laugh, cry, learn, play — strengthens some neural
circuits at the expense of others, and the younger the child the greater the effect. Consider: boys from more egalitarian
homes are more nurturing toward babies. Meanwhile, in a study of more than 5,000 3-year-olds, girls with older brothers
had stronger spatial skills than both girls and boys with older sisters.
At issue, then, is not nature or nurture but how nurture becomes nature:
the environment in which children play and grow can encourage a range of aptitudes or foreclose them. So blithely
indulging — let alone exploiting — stereotypically gendered play patterns may have a more negative long-term impact on
kids’ potential than parents imagine. And promoting, without forcing, cross-sex friendships as well as a breadth of play
styles may be more beneficial. There is even evidence that children who have opposite-sex friendships during their early
years have healthier romantic relationships as teenagers.
Traditionally, toys were intended to communicate parental values and expectations, to train children for their future
adult roles. Today’s boys and girls will eventually be one another’s professional peers, employers, employees, romantic
partners, co-parents. How can they develop skills for such collaborations from toys that increasingly emphasize,
reinforce, or even create, gender differences? What do girls learn about who they should be from Lego kits with beauty
parlors or the flood of “girl friendly” science kits that run the gamut from “beauty spa lab” to “perfume factory”?
The rebellion against such gender apartheid may have begun. Consider the latest cute-kid video to go viral on YouTube:
“Riley on Marketing” shows a little girl in front of a wall of pink packaging, asking, “Why do all the girls have to buy
pink stuff and all the boys have to buy different-color stuff?” It has been viewed more than 2.4 million times.
Perhaps, then, Hamleys is on to something, though it will doubtless meet with resistance — even rejection — from both its
pint-size customers and multinational vendors. As for me, I’m trying to track down a poster of a 1981 ad for a Lego
“universal” building set to give to my daughter. In it, a freckle¬ faced girl with copper-colored braids, baggy jeans, a
T-shirt and sneakers proudly holds out a jumbly, multi-hued Lego creation. Beneath it, a tag line reads, “What it is is
beautiful.”
Peggy Orenstein is the author, most recently, of “Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New
Girlie-Girl Culture.”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on December 30, 2011, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline:
Should the World of Toys Be Gender-Free?.
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