Monday, April 20, 2009

Blocks, or, Post-feminist my ass

I recently saw some decoupaged wooden play blocks on a website and thought "Cool. I could do that." So I've been looking for unfinished wooden blocks, which is more than a little challenging, sadly. In the course of my search, I tried Toys 'R' Us, though I didn't really expect to find them there. I was right. I clicked "Blocks" at the left of the page, then "Building Blocks" of the options that presented, and found various blocks, but no plain wooden cubes. Then I noticed the various "Narrow by..." options at the left. One was gender. I clicked "Girl" just to see what would happen. Instead of three pages of different building blocks sets, creating all manner of different creatures and objects, I now saw only seven items, all packaged and marketed for infants and toddlers. Apparently, girls are only interested in blocks during their infancy: as soon as they are old enough to appreciate that they aren't actually boys, they want to play with dolls.

F*&king gender roles.

1 comment:

  1. My girls must have missed the memo. They love blocks, all three of them. Did you try a craft store for blocks. You can also buy a 4 x 4 from a hardware store and cut it into 4 inch squares. I did that once. They're pretty easy to sand.

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