Girls Versus Boys: Toys and Gender Role Socialization

“What? A boy playing with Barbie dolls? That’s messed up man. Only girls play with dolls. Everyone knows that!” This is an answer from Cavin, seven years old, when asked what he thought about boys playing with Barbie dolls. Listening to these words can make one realize that even from a young age, children have been strongly impacted by gender through society. According to sociologist James M. Henslin, gender is “the behaviors and attitudes that a society considers proper for its males and females; masculinity or femininity” (280). Throughout time gender has been a way of thinking about what is appropriate of different sex, a term which Henslin defines as “biological characteristics that distinguish females and males, consisting of primary and secondary sex characteristics” (280). Since many years ago society has solidly built characteristics of gender and kept encouraging traditional gender roles to new generations. Toys, a common object which many children play with in the beginning of their lives, is actually an agent of gender socialization that many people take for granted. Through observations at a local toy store, such as Toys R Us, one can recognize how toys reinforce gender roles.
To fully understand toys as a reinforcement of gender roles, one can observe the display of toys in Toys R Us. When walking in a toy store, one can see the obvious categories the toys are separated by which is by sex. Entering Toys R Us, one can see the categories of the aisles on the left side are in blue. Some of the categories in this section were action figures, cars and trucks. From an overall view, the colors showcased from these aisles are in dark colors such as dark blue, black, dark grey, dark green, dark orange, etc. In this part of t...

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...der stratification—unequalness of power, property, and prestige between men and women (Henslin 280)—still encounters within our society, and men are usually superior to women; women are uprising feminism. Henslin defines feminism as “the philosophy that men and women should be politically, economically, and socially equal; organized activities on behalf of this principle” (292). An example of a toy I saw showing feminism is a pink bow and arrow in the archery section of the toy store. Although the black bows and arrows dominated this aisle, there was one bow and arrow for girls showing that females have their right to be equaled with men. One last game I saw in Toys R Us that was interesting to me was a video game called Grand Theft Auto, which is a video game intended for boys. The point of this game is to join gangs and do their “dirty work”. In some parts of this