The article why Boys Dont play with dolls by Katha Pollitt has do do with alot of things we learned in class. Pollitt talks about how even the best looking mothers try very hard to look like the american ideal women. Barbie is what the sterotypical american women wants to look like. Barbie represents being sexy,thin and stylish. Pollitt is saying that barbie is still popular so women could base their looks off of. The main point of this article is to show that their is a sterotype as to what boys and girls should be like. Boys are suppose to play sports, play with action figures, and be a big sports fan. Girls are suppose to like barbies bake cook and clean. Pollitt talks about how if a mom sees their kids writing up in their diaries reading and baking then they are considered to be antisocial,lonely or gay. She talks about how 3 year olds think doctors are males and females are nurses even though their own mom is a doctor. The reason why the kid thinks this is because society dipicts men and women that way. In most cases if their is an ad about police,fireman or army personal they show men. If their is and ad about cleaning and cooking products they show a women. This is a gender representation.
We discussed in class how it can be the companies fault for all these sterotypes. People are not born knowing these things, they pick it up from their parents and the rest of society. Ramamurthy discusses how women are dipected to be beutiful. She also says that their are gender representaions, which we can see from the article why boys dont play with dolls. If a person does something diffrent then what the society deems normal they are then looked down upon.
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Pollitt states that children grow up in a stereotypical world. I agree with Jason that people stereotype what girls and boys should do and act. Barbies and dolls are for girls and sports are for boys. Children think that if they play with the wrong toys then they will be viewed as less of a boy or less of a girl. Sadly, children are taught stereotypes that are not real in real life. Children think one set of rules while growing up, but after that, they realize that the stereotypes have to be bended in order to live a real life.
I agree with what you say about how people are not born with such stereotypes in mind, but that it's the companies that put out such ideas in their advertisements that are to blame for shoving these ideas into a growing child daily. This Pollitt article also shows gender representation as Jason states, with the whole Barbie ideal image to the trucks.
I agree with what Jason has to say. I think we have society to blame for that. Boys are usually seen as playing sports and being with their fathers, while girls are always playing with their dolls. Just like the discussion in class with colors. Many of us agreed that pink is more of a feminine/girl color, while blue is a more masculine/boy color. If we see a boy with a Barbie doll, many of us may be weirded out and think he's gay or somethings wrong with him.
I agree with the point that Jason makes about society and the world in which we live in being very stereotypical. The day we are born our gender automatically refers to a certain color, implying that the color pink is worn by girls and the color blue for boys. Society has even taught us what toys to play with and what not to. What I mean by this is that majority of little girls are seen playing with Barbie dolls and kitchen sets, while boys are playing with action figures and a football. I believe that we all are a product of our environment. Which I think is the same idea Jason has about being taught stereotypes.
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