Blurring gender lines in the toy aisle
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By Stacy Glasgow
For my niece’s birthday this year, she requested Spiderman paraphernalia. With shopping list in hand, I headed to the toy store, ever mindful of achieving Aunt of the Year status. Perusing the aisles, it occurred to me that not so many years ago I might have had to go to the ‘boy’ section of the store to find superhero products. Nowadays, toy stores and other retailers are starting to abandon the push to sell products to specific genders.
Industry leaders such as Amazon recently removed the ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ filters from their toy department’s search page. Now, you’ll find dolls in the ‘Dolls’ section and action figures in the ‘Action Figures’ section, instead of each being housed within sections labelled by those toys’ presumptive target genders. Amazon’s move follows in the footsteps of Toys R Us in the UK, which in 2013 partnered with a parent group in a pledge to phase out gender-specific marketing within their stores.
The imminent obsoleteness of pink and blue t...
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