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Well, I for one am at complete ease. All my life, this has been bothering my and it has finally be resolved! Goodness, what a load off my chest. As a child, I always felt excluded from enjoying a cheap piece of chocolate and a small toy that would fall apart in five minutes. That was really the highlight of my life. But now I am at ease, because it has been resolved.
So for those of you who don't know (because apparently it's banned in some countries) I'll start off explaining a Kinder Surprise. It's a hollow chocolate egg. Inside is a smaller egg made of plastic. Inside that is a disassembled toy you get to put together. Taa-daa! It costs about $1.00 and can be found in any variety store or drug store in Canada. It tastes like cheap chocolate mixed with plastic. And honestly, I liked it because of the toy. Hence the surprise. You never knew what toy you would be getting. So..surprise!
The other day I was up at an early hour with my dogs and at that hour, there's nothing good on TV. So it was either Pokemon or Candace Olson. I chose the latter. I can now redesign a room with a tight budget, so there you go. So that show is on the W network which is full of designer shows, real housewives of some city and whatnot. So maybe I was just asking for this. But I saw a Kinder Surprise commercial.
This one was different. It was specifically for girls. So the toy was a tiara, or bracelet, or ring. Something for girls. Now as a child, I didn't really care what I got. It's a cheap present with a toy. Making the toy is the fun part anyway. I never thought to question which gender the toy was designed for.
At first I thought maybe that was me being gender-neutral as a child, but after working in kindergarten classrooms, I've found that at a certain age, kids don't care about gender. They understand sex (not intercourse, whether one is male or female) and they understand girls and boys have different body parts. But that's about it. Yes, girls typically play in the house centre while boys play with blocks, but it's also not uncommon to have the kids switch it up. They're not self-conscious about what they play with. If it's fun, it's fun. And some boys like to dress up and some girls like to play with blocks. And to a kid, that's fine.
And the more I mulled this over, the more it began to bother me. Kids don't care about gender, but that toy is making it very obvious. It wasn't a feminine toy or less masculine, it specifically said for girls during the commercial. Girls only. Boys keep out.
So now children will be more aware of gender. How girls are supposed to play with pink things, and boys with blue things. Girls can play with dollies, boys with cars. Already a gender binary is set.
What goes to puzzle me even further is the toys themselves. I've seen a few videos of what kind of toys there are. As expected, there's Barbie bracelets, little cutesy animals. But one toy is a Spirograph. Which to me at least, is very gender-neutral. I mean you can make cool shapes with your pencil. So what's even the point of specifically marketing that for girls?
Not only that, but it's enforcing rules. Gender rules. That if you are female, you MUST ONLY PURCHACE THIS KIND. With a binary now set on the toys, it's more obvious for children to pick up on it and be influenced by what they get.
And this only gets worse and worse as it goes along. I haven't seen a Kinder Surprise for boys. So does this imply if it's not specifically for a girl, it's for boys by default? So girls get their special thing, but boys just get the regular kind? Does this mean a girl would potentially refuse the regular eggs in favour of one “for girls”? Does this mean I've grown up playing with the wrong toys? For shame! How embarrassing.
One thing I understand is that I am potentially taking this out of proportion. They're just little chocolate eggs with a toy in them. Harmless, right? But it gets to plant the idea of gender and who goes where. It's more of a demand as to where people will fit instead of it being a choice. I understand children to not fully understand personal identification, but I see it more as..they don't care. They don't understand because it doesn't bother them. There is nothing to be understood. If the toy is fun the play with, play with it, is the most common reaction I've seen. It's not until later in life when gender is discovered when things start to be gendered.
So is this only starting a natural process at an earlier stage? Is it setting children up for gender failure? Is it teaching children how to discriminate based off of sex? Maybe, probably, I don't know. Maybe the kids don't care about that even. But what I do know is that it bothers me. As a kid who never really fit in any gender norm, I would have hated to be expected to have a certain chocolate egg. It would have brought up questions: why do the boys get this one, while I get that one? All I can see is children being forced into a gender box, whether they fit or not. Or they have to choose between only two options. As stated earlier, children don't care much about gender, so maybe it should stay that way.
So for those of you who don't know (because apparently it's banned in some countries) I'll start off explaining a Kinder Surprise. It's a hollow chocolate egg. Inside is a smaller egg made of plastic. Inside that is a disassembled toy you get to put together. Taa-daa! It costs about $1.00 and can be found in any variety store or drug store in Canada. It tastes like cheap chocolate mixed with plastic. And honestly, I liked it because of the toy. Hence the surprise. You never knew what toy you would be getting. So..surprise!
The other day I was up at an early hour with my dogs and at that hour, there's nothing good on TV. So it was either Pokemon or Candace Olson. I chose the latter. I can now redesign a room with a tight budget, so there you go. So that show is on the W network which is full of designer shows, real housewives of some city and whatnot. So maybe I was just asking for this. But I saw a Kinder Surprise commercial.
This one was different. It was specifically for girls. So the toy was a tiara, or bracelet, or ring. Something for girls. Now as a child, I didn't really care what I got. It's a cheap present with a toy. Making the toy is the fun part anyway. I never thought to question which gender the toy was designed for.
At first I thought maybe that was me being gender-neutral as a child, but after working in kindergarten classrooms, I've found that at a certain age, kids don't care about gender. They understand sex (not intercourse, whether one is male or female) and they understand girls and boys have different body parts. But that's about it. Yes, girls typically play in the house centre while boys play with blocks, but it's also not uncommon to have the kids switch it up. They're not self-conscious about what they play with. If it's fun, it's fun. And some boys like to dress up and some girls like to play with blocks. And to a kid, that's fine.
And the more I mulled this over, the more it began to bother me. Kids don't care about gender, but that toy is making it very obvious. It wasn't a feminine toy or less masculine, it specifically said for girls during the commercial. Girls only. Boys keep out.
So now children will be more aware of gender. How girls are supposed to play with pink things, and boys with blue things. Girls can play with dollies, boys with cars. Already a gender binary is set.
What goes to puzzle me even further is the toys themselves. I've seen a few videos of what kind of toys there are. As expected, there's Barbie bracelets, little cutesy animals. But one toy is a Spirograph. Which to me at least, is very gender-neutral. I mean you can make cool shapes with your pencil. So what's even the point of specifically marketing that for girls?
Not only that, but it's enforcing rules. Gender rules. That if you are female, you MUST ONLY PURCHACE THIS KIND. With a binary now set on the toys, it's more obvious for children to pick up on it and be influenced by what they get.
And this only gets worse and worse as it goes along. I haven't seen a Kinder Surprise for boys. So does this imply if it's not specifically for a girl, it's for boys by default? So girls get their special thing, but boys just get the regular kind? Does this mean a girl would potentially refuse the regular eggs in favour of one “for girls”? Does this mean I've grown up playing with the wrong toys? For shame! How embarrassing.
One thing I understand is that I am potentially taking this out of proportion. They're just little chocolate eggs with a toy in them. Harmless, right? But it gets to plant the idea of gender and who goes where. It's more of a demand as to where people will fit instead of it being a choice. I understand children to not fully understand personal identification, but I see it more as..they don't care. They don't understand because it doesn't bother them. There is nothing to be understood. If the toy is fun the play with, play with it, is the most common reaction I've seen. It's not until later in life when gender is discovered when things start to be gendered.
So is this only starting a natural process at an earlier stage? Is it setting children up for gender failure? Is it teaching children how to discriminate based off of sex? Maybe, probably, I don't know. Maybe the kids don't care about that even. But what I do know is that it bothers me. As a kid who never really fit in any gender norm, I would have hated to be expected to have a certain chocolate egg. It would have brought up questions: why do the boys get this one, while I get that one? All I can see is children being forced into a gender box, whether they fit or not. Or they have to choose between only two options. As stated earlier, children don't care much about gender, so maybe it should stay that way.
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