Various news outlets have recently reported that Target will no longer separate toys and bedding into boys' and girls' sections.
This move will surely re-ignite an ongoing national debate about gender role conformity and intractable moral positions, so let's pull ahead of the firestorm and get one thing straight: the arrangement of bedding and toys in a department store is not a moral issue and it is irrelevant to the upbringing of your child.
Here's why I don't really care if Target rearranges their aisles or not, and neither should you:
To put it quite simply, if my boys want to look at the toy trucks we will look at the toy trucks. But if they want to look at princesses and dolls (which they actually did on a trip to Target just last week) then we will look at the princesses and dolls together. And it doesn't matter which aisle we find them in as long as we can find them.
To be as blunt as possible, who cares if they are in the same or different aisles? In fact, forget the reorganization. Perhaps they should just remove any "boys" and "girls" signs from the aisles and call it done.
But let's be real here: there is a large and outspoken segment of our society that will almost certainly be offended if not outraged by this decision. To those people I ask only the following :
Whose sense of gender identity is being threatened by a boy thinking a Disney princess is cool? It is obviously not the child's or he wouldn't like the toy to begin with (hint: check mirror for answer).
And who is really the one with a judgment problem? If a boy isn't afraid to play with dolls, or a girl isn't afraid to play with action figures, why are their parents afraid to let them? Is a child wrong for failing to conform to current societal norms or is the parent wrong for judging them for it?
The problem isn't that some kids "like the wrong things", or that our young ones should be guided away from enjoying things commonly associated with a different physical gender. The problem is that some parents have forgotten their role, and are too quick to judge the very children they have a responsibility to support and nurture as the wonderful, terrible, unfettered, unfiltered and curious little humans they are.
So what if a boy likes to rock a baby doll? So what if he feeds it from a play bottle and pretends to change its diaper? As a parent, are you worried he might grow up to be...(gasp)...an involved and caring father??
For that matter, who cares if the aisle says girls or boys. The next generation, like all before it, will inevitably face a myriad of societal expectations and stereotypes throughout life, and I, for one, am bringing up my children to be confident in who they are and what they enjoy doing, no matter how many societal labels they have to ignore. In other words, I want them to understand that it frankly doesn't matter if the aisle says girls or boys. Those are just arbitrary "suggestions" and you can like whatever you want to like. Lesson learned.
I take some satisfaction in saying that when my wife and I go shopping for toys, bedding, or anything else for that matter, we don't find it terribly difficult to go from one aisle to another, and we usually know more-or-less what we're looking for. So stores can do whatever they want with the organization of their products. As long as there's some organizational principle, we'll figure it out and find what we need. And very importantly, it won't change what we're planning or willing to shop for when it comes to our kids.
But if Target is really looking for a new angle, let me offer this suggestion: tell the public you're arranging your toys according to what sort of toys they actually are, as opposed to who they're supposed to be for.
Imagine a Target with toy sections like "Violence", "Adventure", "Exploration", "Creativity", "Physical Fitness", "Letters, Numbers, Shapes and Colors", and maybe even "Practical Living". Or perhaps a bit let pretentiously "Weapons & Fighters", "Kingdoms", "Space, Future and Robots", "Vehicles", "Building Things", "Animals", "Fantasy Lands", "TV and Movie Characters", and so-on. It would require a thoughtful approach to come up with just the right categories, but I imagine it could be done. For that matter, imagine the effect this could have on the kinds of toys being created by manufacturers!
But I digress. If Target wants to make a political statement that's their prerogative, and if anyone sees this as an affront to their own perception of gender roles or morality, then I pity them for the extent to which the order of toys on a shelf affects their sense of right and wrong.
Either way, Target's decision will have no effect on what sort of toys or bedding I give my kids. As before, my wife and I will get them what we can afford, what they like, and what's appropriate for their age, enjoyment, development, and experience level.
The truth is, I think Target's decision is driven more by marketing and economics than by morals or values (whatever roles those might play in the decision, it wouldn't have happened without a keen eye on profitability). That being said, though, if Target is trying to send a message then it's one I do happen to agree with:
Our society's stereotypical gender roles (especially as far as the toys, bedding, colors, and activities enjoyed by children) are a modern invention and in many cases have very little if anything to do with the inherent preferences of young boys vs. young girls.
So what will come of it? I doubt it will make much difference in how anyone raises their child, and it will certainly not trigger the country's decline into an unmanageable mob of immoral cretins. We're already there. I'd say at most, if we're lucky, this sort of approach might allow parents to avoid one more conversation about why it doesn't matter what the world says as long as you strive to be good to others and you enjoy life as the unique individual you were born to be.
Then again, perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe this kind of change will actually allow some more boys to follow their natural interest in something other than fighting, killing, and cars. Perhaps it will help some girls to grow up feeling like they really can be whatever they want to be without feeling wrong for it, including joining the army like GI Joe or turning a love of Hot Wheels into a successful career as a mechanic. For those that still gravitate naturally toward their gender stereotypes, more power to them, but for those that don't, maybe this sort of approach will provide them with a little extra support, whether they are aware of it or not.
It really shouldn't matter if boys enjoy butterflies or girls like gopher guts. They are kids and they are learning what excites their minds and stimulates their brains. So why not widen our kids' experience of the world and enhance their ability to understand all the different sides of life without making them feel like they're bad for being themselves to their full potential?
Does the arrangement of toys in a department store take us closer to that goal? I would argue not. The real change needs to come from the way parents perceive and treat the interests of their children, regardless of which aisles things comes from or what color the boxes are. But it certainly doesn't hurt.
Bonus note: did you know pink and blue were never defined as girl and boy colors until around the 1940's, and that our perception of the gender-roles associates with these colors was the result of a drive from marketers and manufacturers similar to the marketing that made diamond rings an integral part of modern marriages in order to line the pockets of diamond sellers? In fact, just a short time before society imposed current gender perceptions upon these otherwise indifferent colors, many magazines, manufacturers and designers were arguing that blue seemed more feminine and dainty while pink seemed more masculine and "decided" (read one of many articles about it here).
The truth is that the representation of gender by color-coding wasn't even a concern until the markets defined it and "society" bought into it, then promptly forgot where the ideas came from to begin with and began to act as though they were intrinsic moral certitudes (score another one for the almighty dollar in the struggle against man's rational judgement).
The point is: guiding or forcing kids into gender-based color and toy preferences is misguided, if not -- in some ways and at some times -- harmful. It plays right into the behaviors and stereotypes that "grown-ups" complain about later in life, like academic interest/performance, unreasonable beauty standards, violence, gender inequality in the workplace, and a hundred other societal problems with multiple layers of causality. But the problem is not rooted in the aisles of department stores as much as it is in the minds and hearts of today's parents.
We must, therefore, bear firmly in mind that we as parents are creating the next generation of society, and if we keep pushing our kids into arbitrary molds and segregating allowable personality traits by gender, we will only succeed in stifling our children's integrity and unleashing new members of society with the same insecurities. misunderstandings, and misguided conceptions as so many generations of the past.
