5 Ridiculously Sexist Ways Toy Companies Are Targeting Kids
Marketing products to children isn't particularly hard. Just throw a bunch of skateboards and neon backwards caps into your commercial and kids will want the shit out of whatever you're selling. But for some reason, plenty of companies out there still think that little girls want nothing to do with things like LEGOs or NERF guns unless they're covered in purple glitter and teach them how to get a boyfriend.
#5. Barbie I Can Be a Computer Engineer Book Is About Asking Men to Program Computers for You
Barbie has spent the past several years trying to overcome the stigma of portraying harmfully unrealistic standards for little girls, as most Barbie dolls (even the ones in assertive roles, like Doctor Barbie or Pantsuit Barbie) are little more than skeletal breast mannequins wearing different costumes. One Barbie storybook, 2010's
I Can Be a Computer Engineer, showed particular progressive promise, however, as it ostensibly depicts Barbie working in a field that is often presented as aggressively off-limits to girls.
"We were going to include a talking toy, but she would only say, "Have you tried turning it on and off?"
Look at that shit. Barbie is so into computers she's wearing them on her goddamned shirt. She's sharing the body-destroying diet of giant sodas and sodium-laced take-out food enjoyed by most programmers, and there's even binary code on the monitor in the background. This might actually succeed in showing little girls that there is plenty of room for them to work in a male-dominated field like software engineering.
Let's see how long it takes
for them to fuck it up completely.
"Like pink and ... pink."
So far, so good. Sounds like a pretty simple game, but we weren't expecting Barbie to design the next
Civilization
on her first go.
Barbie's last name is Jobs, apparently.
Uh ... OK. Maybe Barbie's the project leader and they're just trying to make the point that even the simplest games are typically made by teams of people. We're positive this book isn't just about Barbie drawing a bunch of dog pictures and then telling two other people to turn it into a game. That's not what a computer engineer does.
"Then I did the ears of everyone else in this house a favor."
Neither is getting a virus on your flash drive and immediately spreading it to your sister's computer. Skipper looks like she barely understands that computers aren't powered by magic. But that's still fine, we guess. Anyone can get a virus, even people who spend all day working with computers. Maybe this is where the "I can be a computer engineer" part of the book's title comes into play.
Well, not unless the title is referring to Barbie's male friends, because Barbie takes the laptop to Brian and Steven and makes them do all the work.
We don't think unplugging the monitor is going to help, Brian.
It should be noted that these are the same two guys Barbie was planning to have design her video game. Brian and Steven fix everything Barbie destroyed, and the authors of this book somehow thought that this was a positive story encouraging girls to break into computer programming. It should've been called
I Can Make Other People Do All My Work for Me,
or Silly Girl Ruins Everything: A Harrowing Story of Being Rescued From Destructive Idiocy by Male Heroes.
#4. LEGO Stops Being Sexist for a "Limited Edition," Continues Being Sexist Afterward
Odds are LEGOs were part of your childhood in some way, whether you used them to build fanciful landscapes that immediately began collecting dust on your dresser or sucked them up in your parents' vacuum after they'd long since ceased to delight you. If you're the type of insane person who thought LEGO caters only to little boys, prepare to be dazzled, because LEGO proudly offers several playsets designed to nurture the creativity of little girls,
such as this exciting shopping mall
complete with what appears to be a tennis commercial and some kind of dipshit Subaru:
As if anyone would want to shop at a mall with a DJ.
If that isn't enough to challenge them, how about this juice bar? Because 7-year-old girls would much rather play with a Kale-ribbean Breeze Organic Liquid Diet stand than the
Millennium Falcon
or a fucking pirate ship:
"You too can live the thrill of dipshits asking, 'How local is locally grown?'!"
When consumers pointed out that they'd like their daughters to aspire to more than just hanging out at the mall all day while refusing to eat solid foods, LEGO responded by putting out a "limited edition" research institute set featuring sisters doing it for themselves in the fields of paleontology, chemistry, and astronomy.
The magnifying glass and the dinosaur are not to scale.
So you see, LEGO is an inspiring example of a company listening to their customers and deciding to make a progressive change in their product line- oh, never mind. Remember how we said this was a limited edition set? Yeah, that means you can't buy it anymore. Much like their
Ghostbusters
and Back to the Future
sets, women working in the sciences was an elaborate one-time fantasy.
Despite the set's positive reception and the fact that it completely sold out in just a few days, LEGO heroically decided their good deed was done and went right back to selling girls shopping malls and juice stands, leaving the female scientists of the LEGO Research Institute as a charming collector's item, a relic of a time when women could have careers outside of shopping.
#3. Boys: Be a Superhero; Girls: Marry a Superhero
If there's one thing the worldwide box office grosses of
The Avengers,
Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and
Guardians of the Galaxy
have taught us, it's that everyone loves superheroes. Wearing an elaborate costume and zooming around a major metropolis and/or the galaxy punching villainy in its nefarious jawbone is something that appeals to people of any age or gender.
Wisely looking to capitalize on the nearly universal appeal of heroes like Batman and Superman, Walmart and Target decided to sell T-shirts proudly reminding young girls that if they work hard and believe in themselves,
they could someday grow up to be Batman's wife. On the scale of motivational clothing, this ranks somewhere between a blouse that says "Future Alimony Payment" and a pair of sandals with a bottle opener in the heel.
We're not entirely sure what training to be Batman's wife would involve outside of being hyper-aware of any bookcase in the house that might actually be a secret door and to never open any mail with a question mark as the return address.
To be fair, the wearing of that shirt requires a conscious decision to advertise as many uncomfortable truths about yourself as you can in five words. But infants wearing these onesies from Target have absolutely no say in choosing the poop-catching garment their parents stuff them into:
So, if you're a little boy, you could possibly grow up to be a photosynthetic alien, but if you're a little girl, the absolute ceiling is leaving a toothbrush at Superman's apartment. Also,
announcing your child's dating preferences
before she's even old enough to ride a roller coaster seems more than a little creepy.
Are there really no superheroes for little girls to look up to?
Guardians of the Galaxy
features the tough-talking assassin Gamora, an intergalactic ass-whooping machine. Surely Disney had the foresight to put her on a T-shirt or something to reach out to their female audience through the sea of white-male-sameness that is superhero movies.
If this children's birthday party pack
is any indication, the answer is a resounding "nope." Gamora is conspicuously removed from every single item except for the napkins, which is almost more insulting than not being included at all. Disney apparently believes that 1) girls do not have superhero birthday parties, and 2) the sight of a female character would instantly ruin any little boy's birthday, unless he is using that female to wipe sweaty ice cream goop from his terrible face.
But at least we can
always count on Spider-Man:
"We've made sure there is literally no part of this franchise that won't leave you disappointed in us."
Those are Happy Meal toys for Spider-Man's latest feature-length action-figure commercial, which for some inexplicable reason are gender-specific. Yes, if you ask for a "standard" or "boy's" Happy Meal, you get a cool car, toy, or Spidey mask. If you're one of the unfortunate bastards who has to endure a "girl's" Happy Meal, you get a bunch of pink office supplies or a headband.
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