As so many of us are venturing into the toy aisles these days (well, for some of us, more often than we ususally do), ’tis the perfect season for articles such as this piece in The Atlantic about historical trends in gendering of toy marketing.

If you’ve been toy shopping recently, or even walked past the toy and game section of your local Big Box store, the current status quo is pretty darned obvious; it’s a fundamentally segregated environment. Dramatically sweeping fields of blues and silvers over here, *maybe* a Lego no-man’s land in the center (though that aisle is becoming remarkably segregated as well), and an eye-searing block of pink over there.

According to the piece linked above, it wasn’t always this way. Toy marketing has always played on gender cues to some extent; early 20th century advertisements tended to include role-based play; domestic/nurturing for girls, industrial for boys, though the majority of toys were categorized as gender-neutral. The lines blurred until the 80s, when the axes swung toward the current “Princess/Superhero” continuum, to the point where non-gendered toys have become very rare indeed, to the point that, according to this study, there are no toy products in the Disney Store catalog that aren’t characterized as “boy” or “girl” toys (though a few are included on both lists).

I suppose this says something about society and how it deals with gender; at least among the demographic making up marketing industry leaders (I suspect that these folks are, for the most part, still Boomers). I supoose the trend toward gender segregation might also have something to do with economics, as the 20th century progressed, manufacturing costs dropped, allowing for a greater variety of products – the early days of relative gender-neutrality in marketing probably had something to do with the fact that manufacturing capacity didn’t allow for much specialization; when you have a relatively small range of products, you want to be able to market them as widely as possible; explicit gendering didn’t make sense from an economic perspective. However, in today’s world of niche marketing, sharp categorization makes sense.

It doesn’t entirely jive with my experience with society, given the diversity of folks I tend to associate with; but then, my personal social circles tend toward geek/alt and liberal enclaves, so it doesn’t exactly represent mainstream middle America. I get to see these much more regimented social norms in less intimate interactions with my neighbors; I assume this is the more common circumstance.

If the generations coming up behind me are any indication, it won’t be this way forever. It seems every high school student I encounter these days (being the parent of one, I encounter many) has adopted some newly-minted gender identity or lack thereof – it’s hard to keeep the labels straight (as one can get the gist of from the first couple of letters in this week’s Savage Love). To be sure, one must correct for factors like “teenage rebellion” and “theater department” (as the majority of these kids, based on history and geographic and parental demographics, will, in a few years, be good, traditionally-gendered Republican-voting Baptists; but not all of them), but the idea of rigid gender roles, like the concept of homophobia, is fading as time marches on, which is generally a good thing.

Left to their own devices, kids play with what they like; most of the gender role stuff is learned behavior. Parents and peers influence things, to be sure, but most kids, in the heat of the moment, will play with whatever looks cool, regardless of what color it is. My youngest daughter, while a definite fan of traditional girly stuff, is just as likely to be caught playing with or watching superheroes (of which she has a tremendously deep knowledge…no surprise, given her parentage) as My Little Pony. As part of the silly gift exchange at a holiday party we attended this weekend (more on that in another post soon, I hope), she got her hands on a Stormtrooper figure, which has been her constant companion for the last week, playing happily alongside Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle. My son, a few years older, experiences greater exposure to peers, and thus expresses disdain for girlie things and celebrates sci-fi and military play, but can regularly be found enraptured by a screening of Frozen (depsite his protests) and semi-identifies as a Brony, if only for that episode with “Weird Al” Yankovic.

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls. It’s a mixed up muddled up shook up world…