Feminist Intersectional Analysis

I physically was able to tour Walmart to see just how they present their toys for the public to buy. It was quite evident that the toy industry has created toys to be specific to one gender over the other by looking at Walmart’s toy section. They create toys that are made for a boy or a girl and there are no acceptations for in between. A feminist intersectional analysis of the toy industry would be acknowledging that the toy industry is dangerously creating toys that make children fall into society’s expectations of gender norms. What if boys want to play with a baby doll? Society immediately says that he is gay because he is playing with dolls or that his parents didn’t raise him right. Children are falling into this socialization cycle …show more content…
For example, when I walked down the Barbie aisle everything was pink compared to the other aisles. There was pink everything and very seldom blotches of any other colors in the Barbie aisle. It goes with what Riley said in the blog post video, what if girls don’t want to have pink? What if boys want pink? The toy industry has created toys that are intended for one gender over another by the coloring that they use in their advertising. As stated by Jennifer L. Pozner, “Pop culture images help us determine what to buy, what to wear, whom to date, how we feel about our bodies, how we see ourselves…” (Pozner 1). This is one way in which the toy industry is directly promoting socialization of genders by putting which gender should be playing with their toy right on the box. This action of using certain advertising tactics is a subtle form of discrimination based on gender for declaring who gets to play with certain toys and who …show more content…
By judging the doll section, young girls are facing the pressure to look a certain way at a young age. Specifically looking through the doll section showed how children are learning young about the sexuality of women. The dolls had on skimpy expensive clothes and lots of makeup, which focused on one class of children who could afford these outfits and dolls as better than another. These toys are telling young people that their worth is judged by their sexuality because many of these dolls had hardly any clothes on with an unrealistic perfect body. There was a repeated pattern of one race and ethnicity of the dolls over others which also is unrealistic expectation of society because toy creators are focusing on one type of people (white, middle class) for the main ideas behind making their toys. Through these toys, children are falling victim to multiple stereotypes. According to bell hooks, “…feminist interventions let females know that our flesh was worth of love and adoration in the natural state” (hooks 32). The toy industry is telling children that they must look a certain way like their doll if they are a boy or girl which is continuing the socialization cycle of gender binaries. Children need to learn that their worth is not found in their bodies but on how they are as a person. We are missing this important realization while the toy industry contradicts this