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On Sunday mornings, I like to look lazily through the day's paper. This past week as I picked it up in the driveway I was amazed at its bulk. Because of all the Christmas sales fliers, it weighed nearly twice as much as the usual Sunday rag.
Looking through these handouts one is quick to determine that the world is still divided by gender. One of the major home centers had a list on their circular of things you could buy for dad or grandpa — drills, saws, hammers, ladders and all kinds of cool tools. For the little lady, the list was significantly smaller. How about a cordless phone or a doormat? A doormat? Nice message there, huh? Perhaps a cordless phone
wouldn't be such a bad gift, but maybe mom would like a new cordless drill with a dual battery pack instead. Or maybe a shiny, new, barrel-grip jigsaw. It seems the stores could only increase sales by not jumping to gender conclusions.
This being my first Christmas season as the mom of a little girl, I was curious to see what the market held for her. Most of the toy store sales fliers also practiced gender separation. The pages for girls were clearly marked with bold splashes of pink and pastel while the boys were all shades of camouflage and blue. I thumbed through, curious to see what they'd be pushing on my child.
I've got to admit there are some pretty cool toys out there. This year there are electronic and computer games
galore, but personally, I'm more partial to the low-tech items such as stuffed animals, blocks and trucks. These seem to leave a bit more to the imagination, not to mention to my pocketbook. Besides that, I've seen small kids in a video-induced haze and it isn't pretty. I've even heard of video games inducing seizures.
But scarier than that are two toys I saw targeted at girls. The first is from the TV show "Clueless." It's a day-planner
like device called "Dear Diary." With it, a girl can punch in her schedule, organize her shopping list and have her fortune told, all very important "girl" things. The other is an electronic board game called "Mall Madness," which has a picture on the box of a girl with a credit card in her hand. The girl says "Mall Madness" is "The shopping spree game that TALKS!!!" Well, whatever it has to say, I
hope my daughter isn't listening.
Bernadette Noll lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband Kenny and her daughter Lucy. Her e-mail is [email protected].
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