Little Miss Housewife

from: Melissa

Have you ever played "house" when you were a kid? The roles of "œhouse" were really simple: If you were a girl, your role would have been the "œmom" and pretending to do housework chores. However if a boy happened to play this game, his role would be the "œdad" and pretend to do boyish things, such as cutting the grass, etc. My picture makes the statement about how girls and boys are brought up in society. I have included the pink oven, ironing board, and stove to show that girls are brought up thinking that these tasks are "girly" and for women, or only their mothers. The makers of this toy have purposely made it appeal to girls, by making it the "œfeminine" color pink, so that boys will instantly shy away from these toys. This gives boys the idea that they shouldn't play with these types of toys because they will see the correlation between the girly color pink, and that the toys represent cooking and ironing, (not masculine chores). I decided to put the stove and the ironing board in the main focus of the picture because they are both pink, which automatically appeals to girls. Also because they were the most feminine chores around the house, such as ironing and cooking. I included the oven in the far right of the picture because it was pink also, and it also gave the idea of girly chores. I purposely cut off most of the image of the table in the picture because I feel like it did not represent gender socialization, and I wanted my main focus to be on the pink girly objects. This picture was taken at Pottery Barn Kids in Annapolis Mall.