The hoo-haa from the ever-outraged right over Target's decision to integrate boys' and girls' toys is just the popping of one more bubble in the boiling stew of the culture wars. As my husband noted, no one seems to care that dollar stores have never had separate toy sections. In fact, such segregation is a recent phenomenon and perhaps indicative of the style of parenting that has destroyed childhood imagination as much as video games.
Preserving blue for boys and pink for girls is only important to the barely middle class folks who are taking their frustration out on progressive cultural change rather than the regressive economic and electoral policies that have been making them poorer. If you do not think you can make a difference in what matters, you still can dig in your heels elsewhere, such as on how to raise a child. Who cares if boys used to wear red or pink, girls were ignored, toddlers wore the same clothes, or any other facts from the past. Whatever cultural standards established when you were a kid are immutable and must be defended from the gay agenda or whatever.
The "I know what's best for my kids" theory relies heavily on believing that parents know how to be parents because they went through the process of being raised by parents who were raised by parents, etc., in one unbroken line back to Noah and his wife. Yes, we could take it back to Adam and Eve, but who wants to admit their parenting skills are descended from a couple whose son invented murder? The luckier parents of today may be the children or grandchildren of people who were blessed with guidance from Dr. Spock and the Friedman twins (Dear Abby and Ann Landers) or took those new-fangled parenting classes. However, the vast majority of parents shun advice except from their own mothers. Even then, more than one grandmother has had to say, "Fine. Don't take my advice. I did such-and-such and look how you turned out." Of course, considering the theories of the expert on child rearing played by Christine Baranski on "The Big Bang Theory" would make anyone doubt that science has any good recommendations on the topic.
At the local regional fair a couple of weeks ago, I was overwhelmed by the number of toy guns and other weapons on display right out front by vendors. I do not recall seeing them in previous years. I also never saw a vendor selling a bunch of tea-soaked sayings on t-shirts that prompted me to wish I carried lighter fluid and matches. These sightings were more annoying than all of the "Keep Calm and whatever" shirts being worn in numbers usually reserved for souvenirs from Florida. The toys and t-shirts seemed to be an effort to push a right-wing viewpoint amid the ultra-liberal displays of sparkling-clean tractors, spas that let you experience gay sex without a partner, and temporary tattoos (progressives never get inked, ya' know).
I know, I know. When we were kids we had toy guns and sling shots and steel-tipped darts and BB guns and Jarts, etc. Look how we turned out. True, but we also didn't have blood-enriched movies and television shows. We did not have murderous video games that even my five-year-old first cousin once removed plays. And her parents wonder why the little darling threw the book she was given at the great aunt who just gave it to her. Most importantly, we were not given toy guns so our parents could make a political statement about their reading comprehension-deprived interpretation of the Second Amendment. While we had our play weaponry, we also watched footage of a messy war on the evening news or saw pictures in the newspapers of dead Vietnamese and Americans. Despite our being involved in shooting wars for most of the time since 1981, kids have been paying much attention to video games not news videos.
My younger brother spent a lot of time playing with little, green, plastic soldiers. He played in the English ivy growing on one side of our house because that seemed to be the part of the yard most similar to the jungles he saw soldiers fighting in on the news. In his teens, my folks decided to get rid of the ivy. He gladly volunteered to apply "Agent Orange" to the ivy. Once the vegetation died and was cleared, he found enough little, green, plastic soldiers to fill a pencil box (yeah, what's a pencil box?), a weird take on the MIA issue in the late 1970s.
The soldiers were one of many sets of toys like Lincoln logs, Legos, marbles, jacks or cards that required play in the sense of using one's imagination to create a game. Not that we didn't have board games, but those meant following rules. Four kids is ideal for board games. But my older brother always wanted to cheat, the youngest, my sister, never seemed to understand them all, my younger brother always got bored and wanted to do something fun, and I always thought I should be in the maple tree reading or pretending to be a Tour de France competitor on my bicycle. Play with the toys that had many pieces was always fun even if they tended to get lost one by one. At least, like Calvin ball, we could make up the rules as we went along.
Ken and Barbie were around, as were a great many other dolls and stuffed animals. My younger brother's favorite book was one about Bambi because the images were covered in a fuzzy fabric. I always had a teddy bear. Relatives and friends of the family gave my parents a few dolls from their travels. The most striking was a 12-inch-tall geisha in an embroidered kimono housed in a glass box like at a museum. My father's aunt and uncle had dolls from living in Okinawa. Dolls were not just for playing; they were for display, too. Most people probably did not have this view instilled in them. Then again, for every Barbie on the block, there were two G.I. Joe dolls because boys made up about two-thirds of the kids in the neighborhood. G.I. Joes fought over Barbie and left gay old Ken on his own. Boys played with Barbie in preparation for reaching puberty, looking manly like Joe, and asking girls as pretty as Barbie on dates.
The supposed clearly defined split between toys for boys and toys for girls is the product of marketing by stores like Target. Toys 'R Us, Sears, Woolworths and all the other stores did not have sex-specific toy departments. They had a doll section, a board game section, a wooden toys section, etc. The packaging might allude to who should want to play with a specific toy the way My Little Pony products look with pastel rainbows. Once out of the package any toy was fair game for use by any child. Being told there are rules about who can play with what toy just isn't as much fun as choosing for yourself. Socialization to masculine and feminine roles through decisions about toys stifles creativity and the search for self-identity, two things that are much more important to success in life than making sure your kids know you know their sexes.