My photograph depicts the boy and girl’s sections of a typical toy store. This relates to one of the readings called “The ‘Two Cultures’ of Childhood.” I wanted to portray the contrasting images and elements that are prevalent in toys of mainstream child’s play. The photo on the left shows a Spiderman mask along with a hulk action figure, and the photo on the right shows a princess costume and some dolls, among other things. You can guess which side pertains to which gender. Boys and girls are expected to play with different things and this helps shape children into their respective gender normative roles. Girls are given dolls, which they are taught to nurture, and “play nice with,” along with other domestic related toys, such as an easy bake oven. It’s almost a type of conditioning of young girls to learn how to be caretakers (cooking, taking care of the children and husband). The pink princess dress in the picture reinforces the “glass slipper effect.” Princesses are always depicted as beautiful, delicate damsels in distress. It’s rare that a princess ever takes her fate into her own hands and saves herself. Romantic fairy tales often influence women even as they get older. Rather than provide for themselves and take matters into their own hands, they wait on their knight in shining armor to come rescue them. In contrast, boys are encouraged to play rough and are given action figures and have super heroes as role models. These action figures, with their mean expressions and bulging muscles, teach little boys that in order to be a man you have to be strong, tough and protective, that you have to be someone’s knight in shining armor.
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Society is constantly segregating people into groups and establishing specific norms for said groups. As long as the culture permits it and the industries that encourage these stereotypes are able to make a profit nothing will change. I like how even the walls the toys are hung on have gendered colors to it to completely reject any abilities for gender crossovers. The blue being for boys and pink being for girl’s shows the limitations of both groups when they have to adhere to an expected image, like boys can’t wear pink or girls should always be delicate like the color pink. Because boys receive more negative reinforcement when playing with “girl” toys than girls are for playing with “boy” toys then the boys are missing out on lessons from those toys. Easy bake ovens and kitchen sets prepare you for learning about real cooking, and part of the reason boys may appear to be less qualified than women in childcare is because their toys don’t teach them about being nurturing like the dolls given to little girls do.
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