The economic cost of gendered toys

[DanaC]

God above, they only played with dolls for five minutes. That's fucking terrifying.


[eta] Bruce, that picture is awesome!

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by DanaC

God above, they only played with dolls for five minutes. That's fucking terrifying.

I think it also indicates that the process can probably be reversed as quickly, though. At least a few of the randomly-assigned potato head girls must have been big Barbie fans at home, after all. It would take a lot of systematic Barbie exposure to do lasting damage, I think.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

It would take a lot of systematic Barbie exposure to do lasting damage, I think.

True enough.

That said: from the Barbie.com website's list of interesting facts - they're listing achievements, but I've cherry picked the really worrying bits

1 Barbie doll is sold every three seconds somewhere in the world

90 percent of girls ages 3-10 who own at least one Barbie doll ( I don't know if this is supposed to be worldwide, but have seen this cited before where it specified America

125 million+ Barbie DVD’s have been purchased since 2001

On average, a Barbie movie is watched 10 times

Girls ages 3-6 own an average of 12 Barbie dolls

Barbie is the No. 1 doll property in the US and the No. 1 worldwide property in the traditional toy industry

http://www.barbiemedia.com/barbie_fa...e-numbers.html

[Clodfobble]

90 percent of girls ages 3-10 who own at least one Barbie doll

I definitely believe this one. Minifobette has zero-point-zero interest in Barbie and she still has probably 4 or 5 of them floating around somewhere... it's the default birthday present for a school acquaintance when you don't know the little girl well enough to pick something she'd like. *shrug* I could get rid of them, but I'd have to bother digging them out first.

[Griff]

Pete is vocally anti-Barbie as are her girls so we ducked that.

[footfootfoot]

Indoctrinate them young

[orthodoc]

Maybe growing up in a culture with actual princesses is a reality check, as Sundae says. It's easy to romanticize/relegate to fantasy something that you never see in real life.

My anecdotal contribution relates to my own kids. I homeschooled the four of them until my oldest was in 6th grade. I bought Lego sets and science kits/toys for all of them and let them each explore the things that really interested them. We did plenty of math and English, but history, geography, science, and everything else was a huge mash of everything that interested us. My daughter gleefully made volcanoes and built Lego kits and refused to wear dresses - until she went to school. At which point she decided she liked pink, which she never had before, and became frilly. And although she's bright and talented, to this day she's convinced she cannot learn science or math. Thank you, public schools and peer pressure.

I guess I was weird enough that peer pressure didn't 'take'. Actually, I was unpopular enough, shy and geeky enough, that there really was none. I always did well in math and science and hung out with the male geeks. My home environment was one of benign neglect with respect to academics. I wasn't expected to do anything in particular but neither was I pressured into specific choices. So in the end it was probably a benefit, although I didn't see it that way at the time.