One that always annoyed me is when it is around the holidays, when stores advertise gifts for men. They always assume a guy is into toilet humor, beer humor, assuming they’re a lumberjack who needs to survive out in the wilderness, are into bbq-ing all of the time so gotta have those available all year around for some reason.
Even when I used to have identified myself as a guy, I never once fit into any of those traits. Just because guys grow beards, doesn’t always mean they’re chopping wood somewhere and always wearing plaid.
I would extend that to pretty much all gendered advertisement. Especially for kids, the way toys are advertised in such a gendered way does quite a bit of harm to those who don’t neatly fit into the stereotypes.
The toys situation annoys me so much more now that I am a parent. Also it does not matter how hard you try to avoid certain things, we keep getting gifted clothes that would turn our daughter into a free walking advert for Disney princesses and our son into a truck and heavy machinery enthusiast.
Which, there wouldn’t necessarily be anything wrong with if they were into that to begin with, but that’s really not the case. The push is unreal.
Can we all appreciate for a moment that while gendered toy aisles we’re dominating the scene, Nintendo opted to target boys.
Also I’m very, very curious what the gaming scene would look like through the ages if they’d started with girls. Are fighting/racing games actually more fun or have they just become imprinted onto our psyche?
Oh for a quick shot of Rick’s portal gun to find out.
Do you all remember the public freak out when Target said they were de-gendering their toy isles