By Steve Sailer
12/10/2014
Itâs commonly assumed in 2014 that America was incredibly racist and sexist until like a couple of weeks ago, so when people actually sit down and look at the past, they are constantly surprised.
As the world gets richer (or at least as cheap plastic crud from China get cheaper), boys and girls are more able to badger their parents into letting them play out their (very traditional) gender identities via their toys.
In The Atlantic, a post-doctoral scholar at UC Davis looks through Sears Christmas catalogs and discovers the shocking truth.
Toys Are More Divided by Gender Now Than They Were 50 Years AgoEven at times when discrimination was much more common, catalogs contained more neutral appeals than advertisements today.
ELIZABETH SWEET DEC 9 2014,
When it comes to buying gifts for children, everything is color-coded: Rigid boundaries segregate brawny blue action figures from pretty pink princesses, and most assume that this is how itâs always been. But in fact, the princess role thatâs ubiquitous in girlsâ toys today was exceedingly rare prior to the 1990s â and the marketing of toys is more gendered now than even 50 years ago, when gender discrimination and sexism were the norm.
In my research on toy advertisements, I found that even when gendered marketing was most pronounced in the 20th century, roughly half of toys were still being advertised in a gender-neutral manner. This is a stark difference from what we see today, as businesses categorize toys in a way that more narrowly forces kids into boxes. For example, a recent study by sociologists Carol Auster and Claire Mansbach found that all toys sold on the Disney Storeâs website were explicitly categorized as being âfor boysâ or âfor girlsâ â there was no âfor boys and girlsâ option, even though a handful of toys could be found on both lists.
That is not to say that toys of the past werenât deeply infused with gender stereotypes. Toys for girls from the 1920s to the 1960s focused heavily on domesticity and nurturing. For example, a 1925 Sears ad for a toy broom-and-mop set proclaimed: âMothers! Here is a real practical toy for little girls. Every little girl likes to play house, to sweep, and to do motherâs work for herâ
You know, there was more work to be done back then.
Such toys were clearly designed to prepare young girls to a life of homemaking, and domestic tasks were portrayed as innately enjoyable for women. Ads like this were still common, though less prevalent, into the 1960s âŚWhile girlsâ toys focused on domesticity, toys for boys from the â20s through the â60s emphasized preparation for working in the industrial economy.
For example, a 1925 Sears ad for an Erector Set stated, âEvery boy likes to tinker around and try to build things. With an Erector Set he can satisfy this inclination and gain mental development without apparent effort. ⌠He will learn the fundamentals of engineeringâ:
Like I said, times were tougher.
However, gender-coded toy advertisements like these declined markedly in the early 1970s. By then, there were many more women in the labor force and, after the Baby Boom, marriage and fertility rates had dropped. In the wake of those demographic shifts and at the height of feminismâs second-wave, playing upon gender stereotypes to sell toys had become a risky strategy. In the Sears catalog ads from 1975, less than 2 percent of toys were explicitly marketed to either boys or girls. More importantly, there were many ads in the â70s that actively challenged gender stereotypes â boys were shown playing with domestic toys and girls were shown building and enacting stereotypically masculine roles such as doctor, carpenter, and scientist:
The Feminist Struggle of the 1970s wasnât really much of a struggle. Feminism triumphed rapidly as an ideology ⌠except among little kids, who couldnât sit still through the consciousness-raising.
Although gender inequality in the adult world continued to diminish between the 1970s and 1990s, the de-gendering trend in toys was short-lived. In 1984, the deregulation of childrenâs television programming suddenly freed toy companies to create program-length advertisements for their products, and gender became an increasingly important differentiator of these shows and the toys advertised alongside them. During the 1980s, gender-neutral advertising receded, and by 1995, gendered toys made up roughly half of the Sears catalogâs offerings â the same proportion as during the interwar years.However, late-century marketing relied less on explicit sexism and more on implicit gender cues, such as color, and new fantasy-based gender roles like the beautiful princess or the muscle-bound action hero. These roles were still built upon regressive gender stereotypes â they portrayed a powerful, skill-oriented masculinity and a passive, relational femininity â that were obscured with bright new packaging. In essence, the âlittle homemakerâ of the 1950s had become the âlittle princessâ we see today.
It doesnât have to be this way. While gender is whatâs traditionally used to sort target markets, the toy industry (which is largely run by men)
What will men not stoop to? Some men even try to make children happy on Christmas morning.
could categorize its customers in a number of other ways â in terms of age and interest, for example. (This could arguably broaden the consumer base.) However, the reliance on gender categorization comes from the top: I found no evidence that the trends of the past 40 years are the result of consumer demand.
Iâve been exposed to a fair amount of consumer demand from children over the years and, trust me, they have strong opinions on boy toys and girl toys.
⌠While the second-wave feminist movement challenged the tenets of gender difference, the social policies to create a level playing field were never realized and a cultural backlash towards feminism began to gain momentum in the 1980s. In this context, the model outlined in Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus â which implied that women gravitated toward certain roles not because of oppression but because of some innate preference â took hold. This new tale of gender difference, which emphasizes freedom and choice, has been woven deeply into the fabric of contemporary childhood.
You know, Dr. Sweet, you might want to check with your nieces and nephews, if you have any, on who is doing the weaving.