It would be too blunt to say that this photo is just showing various toys and collectibles for both boys and girls. Even at an early age, boys and girls are segregated with their toys, and even on just the colors that are represented around them. Girls are expected to like pink while boys follow blue. In this photo, it shows toy horses, pink scarves, and Pound Puppy © toys featuring a salon with a “dog show” on the other side of the toy (not pictured) for the girls. For the boys, there is a collection of football cards, a hockey puck, a signed baseball, and a wrestling magazine. At first glance one might think these were just the toys of two different people, and that would be true. However, in the long run, they are the toys shared between a brother and sister only three years apart. The collection of toys represents society’s different views on what children should play with, but rarely do you ever see all of this in one sitting. By darkening the edges of the photo, I’ve created a way to keep the viewers’ eyes within the picture plane as to not miss any part of the subject, and by emphasizing the pink aspect over the entire photo, it blurs the edges between masculine and feminine toys. Who’s to say a girl can’t like wrestling, or a boy can’t like to play with horses? Though society and media create these walls, an equalized family can tear them down. In the favor of girl culture, I decided to mask the whole image with the pink. This girl, growing up, liked watching football and wrestling with her brother and cousin (who was a boy), however she still liked to play with her toy horses, often in the ways of caring for the animals. So in the end, she was well rounded, taught the feminine roles of caring for something, like the women’s sphere would dictate, but she was also exposed to masculine games, and I turned out just fine because of it.
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