Pet Peeve of Mine

That I completely forgot about since I stopped working in a childcare setting.

Gender specific toys. Especially ones that shouldn’t be gender specific. Toys are toys. Colours are colours. One doesn’t make a boy and one doesn’t make a girl. It really annoys me.

I was reminded of this the other day when we decided we wanted to buy E a broom, dustpan set because he loves to sweep. He loves using our broom and dustpan and one day soon he’s going to knock something over and break it because our broom is so big for his little stature.

The only set we could find was pink and in the girl’s section. Nothing in the boys. Heck, there was a pink lawn mower but nothing in the boys section.

I have no problem with E having pink toys. He’ll probably have a pink broom set here shortly. The problem lies in that it’s blantantly marketed for girls and girls alone. Lawn mowers are seen as something marketable to both (but really why not just leave it red or black or green like the “boy” ones?! Lawn mowers come in those colours. I’ve never seen a pink or blue lawn mower in use before.) So why is a broom any different?  Boys and men clean. They sweep. They mop. I hear that there are red dirt devil brooms out there but our wally world seems to only carry the “girls” version that carry no gender connotation.  I think it’s so dumb that toys are categorized boy or girl.

Toys are toys people. Kids will play with what they want to play with despite colour and one toy shouldn’t be marketed to one gender over the other. Dumb.