Toy Bender

The Playskool (i.e. Hasbro) Rose Petal Cottage is a set for little girls that contains a lot of things like a kitchen, washer/dryer, and a baby basket. The girl in the commercial looks like she is having fun with all her great play toys, but is she really? What may seem like an innocent playtime activity is this girl being subjected to the brainwashing of a sexist society that wants to keep women barefoot and pregnant… or something.

My question when watching this commercial is that while it may certainly seem sexist, would they even make these kinds of playsets if girls didn’t actually like playing house? Is it really society’s horrible influence on a little girl that makes her want to play act doing the laundry and making dinner? I’d almost lean on the side of “no” and that they just like doing that stuff. There 1950s housewife image hasn’t been crammed into girl’s heads like it used to be. I can’t think of many females in fiction that perpetrate these gender roles, much less imagine parents raising their girls to be subservient in this century.

This brings up another matter. Do boys want to play with action figures and car toys because of society or because the simply like them more than “girl” themed toys? I know that when I was a kid I did enjoy a bit of playing house, but if my parents had asked straight out, “Would you like a pretend kitchen or a crap load of Star Wars figures and vehicles?” I would have picked the Star Wars loot without a second thought. In in fact I did this in a manner of speaking with every wish list I sent to Satan for Christmas. And no, that’s not a typo, we worshiped Satan in my household.

Now keep in mind that I haven’t done any research into this. I haven’t written any papers on the subject and I didn’t take any Feminist Studies classes in college (well except for one, but that was so I could pick up on all the hot chicks), so I’m really not qualified to come up with a scientific opinion on the subject. I’m using the argument that most idiots use when coming up with an ill informed opinion, “…I’m just saying.”

What do you think?