Quote:
Originally Posted by fleetiebelle
But "pink is for girls" is a marketing ploy. There's nothing about pink that resonates with women on a subconscious level. Your daughter likes pink because that's what she's been told she should like, and she wants to be like her friends and like what she sees in the stores and on TV. Take away the pink, and girls can decide what they like without questioning if the squirt gun or the dinosaurs are for them.
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not necessarily. i grew up with three brothers. there was a lot of "boy" toys around our house and i played with their trucks and GI joes and plastic guns and other things. i wasn't even all that girly when i was little, but definitely feminine. being around three boys all the time, plus i had three stepbrothers as well and one stepsister who was way older so she wasn't really around much. still i was clearly drawn mostly to my own "girly" toys. dolls, doll houses, kitchen playsets, etc. and i liked it that way. i never, not once, felt like there was something wrong with barbie having a pink corvette. i loved it! my brothers also played with my stuff too. but again, i was very much more drawn to play with my girly toys than their toys. and there are also cars and jeeps in other colors, like boring green
, that GI joe had and barbie could ride in those too. but really, i preferred my pink corvette.
we also had toys and games that were gender neutral. i don't remember lincoln logs ever being targeted only to boys. i remember a girl and a boy pictured playing on that round box. same with legos. apparently they have legos, tinker toys and lincoln logs with pink and targeted to girls now and i gotta say, if i were a little girl right now, i would want me a set of pink legos and lincoln logs! along with the regular legos and logs as well. we all played with them all. so i'm not sure who thinks legos and lincoln logs are only marketed to boys. it is just a fact that a lot of girls like pink. not all girls obviously. we all played with tinker toys too. (i just looked up legos and lincoln logs images. back in the day, they both had a girl and a boy on each of the boxes for legos and lincoln logs. now it seems there are less little kids on the boxes and just more of pictures of the sets with no kids at all.)
someone also mentioned video games being for boys? i never thought that! video games have always been for anyone and everyone. of course they do have some games targeted to boys and some targeted to girls. so what? are they going to stop doing that too? everything is going to need to be gender neutral? no more pink stuff! no more blue stuff! no more boy stuff! no more girl stuff!
the truth is that a lot of boys like trucks and action figures (they are NOT dolls!!!
) remote control cars, etc. and blue. and there are a lot of girls who prefer barbies, baby dolls, strollers, pink stuff. not just because that is what they have been "programmed" to like but because they do actually like that stuff. i know i did! boys can still like dolls and girls can like tonka trucks. the fact remains, males and females ARE different and generally like different things and there is nothing wrong with that.
i have a son. i also have two nieces. i used to babysit my nieces a lot when they were little and i had a bunch of toys for them in a box to play with when they were at my house. i had everything from dolls, legos, cars, balls and games. when my son came along i would bring out those toys in that box now and then and he never went for the dolls. never. i had all the toys in the box and just let him dig in. he always went for the cars, legos and pick up stix...never a barbie or other doll. i also had for him plastic food and plates and utensils. he played with that stuff a lot. i mean A LOT. point is, all kids should be able to play with what kind of toy they want to play with. but the truth is, there are gender differences whether people want to admit it or not. of course, not every single girl likes pink and dolls and not every single boy likes blue and hot wheels. but come on...stereotypes exist for a reason. of course stereotypes tend to go overboard and exaggerate. i don't think all girl toys should be pink and "girlie" or that all boy toys should be blue and "manly". but please i hope they are not going to get rid of pink and blue toys just because it offends some people for being a stereotype. there is room for it all.
myself? i am not looking forward to a world where everything is just all meshed together and there will be no more pink for girls or blue for boys. no more dolls for girls and trucks for boys. let's just take away all the frill for the girls and all the manly stuff for the boys. seems it's going to be very boring. i do feel it is going to be that way in the future. i can honestly say that i never cared that the car i was playing with came from the "boys" section of the toy store or that my brothers cared that the barbie they were ripping the arm off of came from the "girls" aisle. and that is how they played with them...they didn't play the same way as i did. i did more "playing house" they did more "demolition and destruction", generally, not always. but guess what? we were happy that way! obviously not all boys are rough and tough and not all girls are little princesses. but growing up around a lot of kids when i was young, (lots of kids on our street) there definitely was "boy" play and "girl" play and "everyone play". boy toys, girls toys and everyone toys. why can't it continue to be that way? boys can still play with the girls stuff and vice versa, etc etc etc.
i think shopping for a little girl in the pink girlie aisle is fun and in the hot wheels aisle for boys. and any girls that i have been with seem very happy to be where they are among all the "girl stuff". my son doesn't like to go in the girl toy aisle. he'll go, but he's not very excited about it. and what is wrong with that? nothing, i say! it's ok if the girl that i am shopping for wants a few hot wheels for her birthday instead of a barbie. i'll just mosey on over to that aisle and pick out a few cool cars for her. it sure would be nice to be able to find them easily but now we don't want to offend anyone by insinuating that boys like cars and blue. pretty soon the barbies (and other "girl" toys) will do away with the pink boxes and packaging because god forbid we have pink stuff for girls.
yeah, it can be a little discouraging that the little doll house that johnny wants only comes in pink. but i'd like to say think about all the kids who don't even have one toy, let alone all the many many toys that johnny has and receives every year for his birthday and christmas and easter and halloween and presidents day.
let's complain about that pink house again after seeing what jose has over there in some small village in mexico. and...and...there are starving children in china, dam it!!! eat your peas!
(oops. the mom in me coming out)
speaking of barbies, i'd be willing to bet if you put a bunch of barbies out in pink boxes and frilly, flowery, sparkly clothes and accessories and you put out barbies in green boxes and the clothes more neutral (for lack of a better word) and less girlie, i'd put money down on that experiment that 18 out of 20 little girls would go for the pink stuff. but let's change it all because one or two of those girls who didn't like the pink.
i just think all of this PC stuff is going way too far. i'm not even talking about the target situation really. just everything in general. i don't really care that target is taking down the pink and blue walls and any "girl" or "boy" signs. i think it's silly actually, are there kids and parents that were actually offended by it? to the point where they were stressing out about it? whatever...
but do we have to change
everything to be "gender neutral"? seems that is the direction we are headed.
it just seems like, well, what's next...
(off topic but sorta fits in with all the talk about the two genders, and i know there are threads about this specific thing and lots of posts, but i saw something the other day that had a check box for male, for female, or other. that just cracked me up. we are now even trying to deny that there are only males and females on this planet...and yes i am aware there are many people who do believe there is not just only male and female. i'm not trying to start something with that here. and i will delete this part if needed. please don't delete my whole post moderator!!! i spent way too long typing it and editing.
)
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There were some things that boys or girls were more likely to gravitate towards then, just like now. And there were some kids then who fit a little bit outside the typical market for kids toys then, just like now. 
It's silly and people take minor issues like this way too seriously sometimes. 
