For this assignment, I decided to focus on toy and activity preferences and the development of gender relations. The main focus on the photograph is the ‘boy toy’, iron man. I wanted the iron man toy to take up space so the viewer could sense that it is an important part of the photograph. In the background, you can see a little girl playing with a “girl toy”, a Barbie doll. When preparing to take this picture, I handed the iron man toy to the little girl. She looked at it and then looked back at me and said “I don’t want this, it’s a boy toy.” She then proceeded to throw it on the other side of the bed and pick up her Barbie doll. She also wanted to dress like her Barbie, so she put on her princess dress. I then began to wonder, who told you that playing with a ‘boy toy’ is not as good as playing with ‘a girl toy’?
In this photo, I think I captured how young girls and boys are conditioned to think some toys are superior to others and how different toys are meant for boys and girls. If someone wouldn't have told this little girl that the iron man toy was a ‘boy toy’, then I bet she wouldn't have noticed and would have continued to play with it. Instead, I found that toy in the bottom of her closet. I felt that the photo I captured could be considered an ordinary picture, but it definitely has a strong hidden meaning.
5 comments:
I find it interesting that you captured the little girl playing with the toy on a messy bed. Not only did the comforter send the same message that you had stated (that the little girl was very fond of gender codes) but it also represented the chaotic mess that children find themselves in when trying to discover themselves through their own preferences and the preferences that people force upon them. It also symbolized the anger that she felt towards being guided towards "boy interests" when she is strongly set in her "girlish" ways. The iron man toy appears washed up and tossed out compared to the barbie doll that she is protecting from the confusing storm of girly- passions presented by the different pink and purple patterns and gender specific toys found in the blanket.
The camera angle also intrigues me. It looks down at the iron man toy and up to the little girl. That further demonstrates your point that society looks down on items that could deter a young child from their gender identity and rewards them for following what is expected of them by placing them on a pedestal.
One final observation is that you have the open door blocked by the little girl. That signifies to me that there is a barrier to open-mindness from the child.
I think the girl noticed that iron man was a boy toy because she would of associated the color red with boy. I noticed that the door is closed meaning she is not willing to play with boy toys because shes afraid. She knows that the color red is associated with a different gender, some children think if I play with that toy, will I be in trouble.The lighting may represents the child's lack of open-mindness, her back is turned away from the toy and camera suggesting gender segregation.
The placement of the dolls are significant in itself. The child is holding the doll up like you would a child, like it’s something that needs protecting. It’s seen as precious and it’s held while the Iron Man doll that is cast to the side like an afterthought. It’s literally tossed a side. Even in the color scheme, the “Boy Toy” doesn’t fit. It sticks out like a sore thumb. The use of color is that in which in the little girl’s world, if it doesn’t look like anything else in the room then she doesn’t want to play with it. She lives in the purple centric world and a red and gold toy doesn’t belong in it. The placement of the toys also adds to it. The “Boy Toy” is too masculine and that’s why it doesn’t belong in her line of sight. It is the toy furthest away from her which usually means it’s the one that she least wants to play with. It’s put at a place where it’s out of her reach. So to her, the idea of masculinity is put the furthest away from her. The idea of femininity is what she wants closest to her.
This is a very powerful picture to me. You can tell the iron man toy was just tossed aside by the little girl by its placement on the bed. You can also infer that the little girl is very affected by gender norms by what she is wearing, the toys she is playing with and the type of bed spread she has.
I find this photograph very interesting for a number of reasons. It is very clear, even without reading the explanation, that the Iron Man toy has been tossed aside by the young girl; it even looks extremely out of place. It's not as if this photograph is taken in a play room, it's on a young girls bed, where the Iron Man toy clearly does not fit in.
I do think the staging is interesting though, because we still see masculinity at the foreground here. The young girl and her doll remain in the background. This says quite a lot about how society views males versus females.
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