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Becca Rimkus

Professor Zopf

Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in a Diverse World

March 15, 2019

The Influence of Gendered Toy Departments

Gender has become something so important and vital in today’s society. Nearly

everything is gendered. Humans have a need to place everything into a category and this

category is often times the category of gender. While there are other genders out there and those

who are genderless, most people categorize everyone and everything into masculine and

feminine with no in-between or exception. This gendering then gets forced onto the youth of

society so they continue on what their parents and grandparents know. Even big companies force

this gendering. This is very evident whenever you walk into a store. There is always a boys

section and a girls section from clothes, to toys, to even hygiene products. This gendering is

noticed by kids very early on in their lives and they fall into the trap that society is putting out

there. On the macro level, companies and adults are gendering products for kids, like toys, which

in turn force kids to identify as masculine or feminine based on their sex assigned at birth

because they do not want to feel like they are weird or an outcast. These companies force this

gendering by the type of marketing they use, the colors they use, and the products that are

available for purchase.

Toy companies have not always placed such a heavy emphasis on the gendering of toys

during their marketing, but this is no longer the case. As Elizabeth Sweet notes in her 2015 Ted

Talk, toys were less gendered in the early 20th century. She states that toy were just marketing to

children whether they were dolls or something else (Sweet). At some point along the way gender

began to be placed heavily on toys. It has gotten to the point to where it is so hard to find non
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gendered toys for children. Companies start their gendered marketing at home with things like

commercials. Toys marketed for boys will feature more aggressive behaviors and toys marketing

for girls will feature more domestic behaviors (Reich et al. 2). These commercials then tell

children how they should act, who they should be, and what toys they should play with according

to their gender. This can be incredibly harmful for kids who do not fall into typical gender

norms. They are left wondering who they are supposed to be. There may also be some form of

dissonance within them, as they think “I’m a girl so I should play with Barbies, but I don’t want

to play with Barbies, I want to play with trucks. Will friends think I’m weird if I play with

trucks?” This marketing at home then feeds into the marketing at stores with the images that are

used on displays. When I was conducting my research at Walmart, I came across a huge Barbie

display celebrating Barbie’s 60th anniversary. The display said “Inspiring Girls since 1959” and

had only girls pictured on the display. I immediately thought of boys who might be interested in

playing with Barbies. How discouraging would it be to see that? As Darlena Cunha says in her

Time article “We need to pressure advertisers to lose the labeling in their commercials. We need

to tell ourselves that ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ interests do not exist” (Cunha). Taking away labels is a

huge step in the right direction, but there is still much more that needs to be done.

Toy box colors play a huge role in the gendering of toys. Typically toys for girls will be

boxed and produced in colors like pink and purple, whereas boy toys will be boxed and produced

in colors like blue and green. In the toy aisles and Walmart there was a clear split between which

toys were for boys and which toys were for girls based on the color of the boxes. In the first aisle

of the toy section of Walmart, there is a clear split in pink and blue colored boxes and toys. This

does not stop here. At Walmart there is a big Lego aisle. The whole aisle is dedicated to Lego.

When entering the aisle, there is an overwhelming sea of blue boxes. Moving further down the

aisle, the boxes change color into purple, and contain more feminine products. Lego is a huge
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company and has always had a larger male market, so I am glad to see that their products are

starting to branch out into the female market, but I wish there was not this divide. Why can’t they

do gender neutral colors, so girls don’t feel like they have to purchase the princess Legos and

boys don’t feel like they have to have the truck Legos? These boxes should not be gendered and

separated the way they are. The gendering of colors also helps reinforce the idea that gender is a

social construct. A social construct is “an arbitrary but influential shared interpretation of reality”

(Wade and Ferree 29). The gendering of colors and toys is something made up by society. Wade

and Ferree continue to talk about the social construction of gender by listing everything that is

gendered in society, from animals to drinks and many other things (30). This social construction

is harmful to kids in their development. The gendered colors do not just affect kids toys. In the

outdoor section of the store, there was a display of fishing polls. One set of polls was blue and

the other was pink. It is a fishing poll, why does it need to have that color distinction? This social

construction of gender follows people throughout their lives.

The types of products that are in these colored boxes help reinforce the gender binary as

well. When you look at the Legos, the ones on the blue boxes are trucks and cars and the ones in

the purple boxes are houses and princesses. These products tell kids what they should be and

how they act. Reich et al. did research on Legos in 2017 to see what messages they portray to

kids. They came up with several themes that are in the products. The “girl” Legos have themes

of friendship, helping, domesticity, and beauty whereas the boy Legos have themes of heroism,

urgency, work, and expertise (Reich et al. 6). These themes help reinforce the gender structure

that Barbra Risman talks about in her “Gender as a Social Structure” paper. On the Macro level,

society and toy companies are telling children what and who to be. They reinforce the social

construct. The macro level then feeds into the interactional level and has children fall into

stereotypes about their gender and tells them how to act with one another. This then goes to the
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individual. The child will act a certain way and may put out an identity that is not truly theirs.

This is a vicious cycle that can serious hurt children in their development.

Companies and adults gender products for children, especially toys. They do this through

their marketing, the colors used on the products, and the products themselves. They use

masculine and feminine colors to market toys for boys and girls. The messages these toys spread

also reinforce the binary. Marketing of toys starts and home and then moves into the store and

pushes kids to buy certain products. The colors of the boxes and products cue kids and adults

into which products they should buy based on their gender. The products themselves places

messages and themes into kids heads on who they should be and how they should act, affecting

their identity. One day, I hope the gendering of products stops, and kids are allowed to be just

kids. I do not know when this day will come, but I know we as a society are slowly moving in

the right direction.

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Works Cited

Cunha, Darlena. “Target's Decision to Remove Gender-Based Signs Is Just the Start.” Time,

Time, 10 Aug. 2015, time.com/3990442/target-gender-based-signs/.

Reich, Stephanie M., et al. “Constructing Difference: Lego® Set Narratives Promote Stereotypic

Gender Roles and Play.” Sex Roles, vol. 79, no. 5-6, 2017, pp. 285–298.,

doi:10.1007/s11199-017-0868-2.

Risman, Barbara J. “Gender as a Social Structure.” Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018,

doi:10.1093/oso/9780199324385.003.0002.

Sweet, Elizabeth. “Beyond the Blue and Pink Toy Divide | Elizabeth Sweet |

TEDxUCDavisSalon.” YouTube, uploaded by Tedx Talks, 16 November 2015,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdHJGH97vyo

Wade, Lisa, and Myra Marx Ferree. Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. W.W. Norton &

Company, Inc., 2019.