From: Brynn
Parents of boys give them plastic tool
sets, cars, or action figures. In contrast to parents of girls, who give them
baby dolls, barbies, and kitchen sets. Although they are just toys and are
meant to be played with to have fun, toy companies are doing much more than
that. Toy companies advertise what seems acceptable for that gender to play
with, because they are teaching children what that gender is supposed to be
like, in terms of social acceptance. In other words, children see having
certain toys, as the correct thing to do. “Children quickly develop strong
gender schemas, cognitive associations of different attributes, behaviors,
objects, or social practices with male and female” (Bem, 1981, 1989).
For example, when a girl is given a baby
doll, she is taught how to be maternal and domestic. These attributes are
believed to be instilled in girls, to be carried into their adult life. Because
that is what is socially acceptable. Also, this trains girls that although the
baby is plastic, it enforces them to be sweet and gentle with it. “Consistent
with the general theme that boys are rougher and girls are sweeter, boys’ toys
are hard and sharp, whereas girls’ toys are soft and smooth” (Bem, 1981;Martin,
1999).
For my photo, I chose to show how girls
are conditioned to be maternal at a young age. In the photo, the white in the
baby’s outfit symbolizes the girl’s innocence. She believes that she is just
playing with the baby doll, however she does not know that she has developed a
gender schema. Another element I included, was gaze. The girl is looking
directly at the baby and ignoring the other toys around her. Because, she feels
that she needs to take care of the baby. This shows how she is being
conditioned to be maternal, because she is giving the baby her full attention,
just like a mother would to an infant. Lastly, I chose to have the girl and the
baby take up most of the frame, compared to the toys on the floor who are
almost cut out of it. Because, the baby doll teaching the girl to be motherly is
a dominant theme amongst little girls, and the toy market.
Works cited
Rudman, Laurie A., et al. "The Two
Cultures of Childhood." The Social Psychology of
Gender: How Power and Intimacy Shape
Gender Relations. The Guilford Press, 2015, 59-63.
1 comment:
Hi Brynn, I like how you used gaze to show the little girl only paying attention to her baby doll. Mainly because I connected this gaze with motherhood, how we are taught to stay home with our kids and how in the earlier year's women were supposed to take care of the children and watch them. Another thing I liked was how you put other toys around the girl and her baby doll to connected to a point that we learn how to care for a child that isn’t even real and is made from plastic. Another good connection made was that every toy comes from a company. These companies make these toys specific to target either the girl or boy genders and to adjust them into the ‘gender norms.’
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