Socialization: another feminist conspiracy theory
From the “Birth to 12 months” girls’ section at Toys R Us: The Little Princess Big Favor Pack. Includes pink tiara bag, Little Princess stickers, pink princess pen, glitter nail polish, birthday bubbles, marabou tiara, and daisy swirl lip gloss.
Whenever the conversation turns to ev-psych, some chump or two (or twenty) shows up to insist that any test score differences between male and female teenagers must reflect an underlying innate disparity between the sexes. Apparently it is widely believed by chumps everywhere that there is no such thing as socialization, that boys and girls are all raised in identical featureless plastic bubbles and are treated exactly the same by their caretakers. Maybe it’s like that in your neighborhood, but I’m not seeing it.
Eight years ago, the Renfrew Center found that “90 percent of commercial toys and dolls for girls age 2 to 10 emphasize beauty, shopping and dating.”
What’s changed since then? That would be nothing, Bob.
In 2005 Sudie Hofmann did a study of children’s toys and found the same thing. Girls’ toys: beauty, shopping dating. All pink. Boys’ toys: war, weaponry, and educational toys. That’s right — the challenging word games and chess sets and science kits were all in the boys’ section. Hofmann couldn’t find a single female pictured on a science kit, nor a single science kit in the girls’ aisle. Not even a pink one.
But Hofmann did find one area of girls’ toys that the Renfrew Center didn’t mention: housework! That’s right, pink housework toys. For when the girls grow up.
And for all the Larry Summers types out there who insist that these toys are just mirroring children’s behavior rather than shaping it, let me quote this long section from Hofmann’s excellent article:
The girls’ area, or should we say fantasyland, is well stocked with vanity mirrors, combs, brushes, nail kits, makeup, and polyester hair extensions. The focus is on being popular with boys. The shelves are overflowing with Mattel Barbies and endless paraphernalia, including Barbie’s scale, set at one weight: 110 pounds.
Shopping is a focus of many of the girl toys such as Lil Bratz Fashion Mall, which warns girls, “Don’t forget to stop at the makeup shop.” Packages provide fashion advice and tips about how to be trendy and get noticed. Crowns, pompons, and phones in lavender and pink hang on the separate carousels near the small, upholstered furniture. Jump ropes, umbrellas, tea sets, and sticker books are in abundance. Unlike the colors used on the panels of the boys’ toys, pastels reign here. The edges of the letters are smooth and an i or a t is dotted or crossed with a heart, butterfly, or star. Glitter is on everything — from the packaging to the product itself. The copy usually includes words such as “kitten,” “princess,” “fairy,” “precious,” “wish,” “dream,” and “wonder.”
The girls’ section does not have many board games that stimulate creative thinking or require higher-order reasoning. It has bingo and simple activities such as coloring books and car or travel games. Although the female area appears to be a pink fantasyland, the dream soon ends. After getting the guy, by playing Milton Bradley’s Mystery Date or through sheer vanity and competition, the girls get the brooms, mops, vacuums, diapers, and plastic food. And they are smiling in every packaging photo.
Boys are noticeably absent from any of the advertisements, promotions, store posters, or packaging for toy household cleaning products, kitchen items, or childcare toys such as baby dolls and strollers. The product lines do not model social acceptance for boys to play homemaking or parenting.
When young boys engage in dress up, pile on the necklaces, enjoy painting their nails or select other girl toys, cultural norms or homophobia often correct the behavior immediately. In fact, in Fisher Price Playlab studies where staff members observed children behind one-way glass, they found that boys will play with “girl” toys if they think they are in a safe environment.
My students frequently offer supporting evidence about boys crossing these gender lines, from their part-time jobs at after-school programs. They believe that young boys relish the chance to get their nails painted and have their hair styled when girls are doing it as a special activity. As one student told my class recently, “I think boys just like the closeness of being with a staff member, being touched while we paint their nails, and talking with us.” Perhaps it is the tactile, calming aspect of this activity that draws boys and girls to it. However, sex roles are reinforced very early in boys’ lives, and toys play a part in that socialization.
Jackson Katz in Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity, a Media Education Foundation video, explores the ways boys are taught to be tough and how they’re encouraged to define manhood in ways that hurt themselves and others. Katz provides an insightful analysis about how boys are socialized to be solitary, independent, and often violent through toys, video games, and Hollywood movies. According to Katz, the cultural message is that emotional connections are for sissies. Beyond the obvious problems of violence and aggression that many of the toys engender, even the science-based toys are solitary and don’t present opportunities for verbal or social development. Packaging hints at being the best or creating and building superior models or designs. There is little evidence that toys help boys in social and emotional development or in Katz’s words, help boys to be “better men” some day.
Toys for girls implicitly urge them to find husbands in order to get their dream lives. Girls are taught to compete with each other for male validation. One makeup kit states, “Wait ’til they see you.” Female rivalries, jealousies, and other negative behaviors such as bullying and harassment pose a host of problems for girls. Yet girls’ toys promote unattainable physical perfection and materialistic values. Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia, a groundbreaking book about the emotional lives of adolescent girls, including depression, eating disorders, and declining self-confidence, refers to contemporary society as a “girl poisoning culture” and offers many empowering approaches for addressing issues of self-esteem. The toys available to girls typically strengthen the cultural messages of inferiority and second-class status that have influenced and continue to affect self-image and academic performance for many girls.
Socialization? What socialization?
34 Responses to “Socialization: another feminist conspiracy theory”
-
anon says:
“Apparently it is widely believed by chumps everywhere that there is no such thing as socialization, that boys and girls are all raised in identical featureless plastic bubbles and are treated exactly the same by their caretakers.”
Please. One example of any reputable social scientist or evolutionary psychologist stating such a bizarre belief. Just one.
September 19th, 2007 at 3:49 am EST -
The Ghost of Violet says:
Are you saying that in your mind, “chump” = “reputable social scientist or evolutionary psychologist?” I’m having a wonderful giggle over this one.
Actually I was thinking of the chumps who show up in comment threads, like over at Pandagon or indeed anywhere this stuff is discussed, to talk about SAT scores as if they were handed down by God on stone tablets.
But since you mention it, virtually all evolutionary psychologists vastly underestimate the effects of socialization. That’s the key problem with their work. (That and the fact that their central hypotheses are just untestable assumptions.)
As for “reputable social scientists,” I love such beings. Wish we had more of them.
-
orlando says:
Also, think about how early the positive reinforcement for conforming begins. Your three year old daughter insists on wearing her pink fairy costume everywhere she goes? Surely it must be an innate preference, she hasn’t had time to be taught to like that sort of thing! Except that, from the day she was born, every time she was put in something pink and frilly she was surrounded by gushing, cooing attention from everybody she met. How long does it take for a kid to work out the connection?
-
The Ghost of Violet says:
It was news to me that 12-month-olds needed lip gloss and nail polish, but damn if that’s not what Toys R Us is selling in the infant girls’ section.
When I was a kid (in the 60s) I always envied my brother’s toys. He got cool stuff: a chemistry set, a microscope, a magic set. I got baby dolls and a Suzy Homemaker oven. I hated baby dolls. Instead I played with my brother’s stuff.
We did use the baby dolls to create a haunted house thing in our room — my brother beheaded them and we did fake blood and hung the dolls from the ceiling.
-
anon says:
“Are you saying that in your mind, “chump” = “reputable social scientist or evolutionary psychologist?” I’m having a wonderful giggle over this one.”
And a disingenuous one. I don’t think they’re chumps but clearly on some level you do, and if the ‘chumps’ are not actually from the field you’re criticizing and are, in fact, misrepresenting it why not say so and be clear about who you’re criticizing? Of course people who claim a totalising biological basis for gender are clowns, but as it stands the your post is clearly meant to imply these erroneous ideas about socialisation have, on some level, been gleaned from “ev-psych bullshit” but none of the reputable material I’ve read makes any such claim.
With regards to evolutionary psychologists underrating culture. Actually, I agree with you - even the best of it does this. But given that huge swathes of practitioners in the social sciences seem to basically deny any meaningful influence from our biological inheritance (other than the brute fact of the obvious physical differences) there’s some pretty egregious errors on both sides. Human beings are animals, and if none of the behavioural dimorphism along sex lines we see in humans has any basis in biology we are utterly unique as a species. Personally I view this as unlikely, but this doesn’t mean I think there’s a gene for knitting or wearing dresses.
-
The Ghost of Violet says:
The first sentence of my post:
Whenever the conversation turns to ev-psych, some chump or two (or twenty) shows up to insist that any test score differences between male and female teenagers must reflect an underlying innate disparity between the sexes.
I’m sorry it wasn’t clear to you that when I referred to chumps who show up at a conversation, I was referring to chumps who show up at a conversation.
Obviously their ideas are based on their understanding of ev-psych, but I disagree with you that there is a huge gap between their understanding of the material and the quality of the material itself. Most ev-psych is bullshit. There are a very few natalists who are actually doing serious work in psychology (Spelke comes to mind). Even the EP people whom I would guess you regard as “reputable” (Buss? Cosmides and Tooby?) are mostly just playing with untestable assumptions dressed up as hypotheses.
As for the popularizers and defenders, like Pinker — yes, they are chumps. They are sexists without a doubt.
-
Paul Tergeist says:
I seem to be missing the big picture here. WHO buys this sort of crap for infant girls? NOT MEN! Who dresses little girls and little boys? NOT MEN, with rare exceptions. Who takes the kids shopping for clothes? NOT MEN.
Who is shopping in the infant girl’s section at Toys R Us? NOT MEN! Stores sell what people buy, not the other way around. So who is buying all this prissy crap? Who dressed you as a child, Ghost of Violet? Who bought….correction….SELECTED your clothes?
Who buys Martha Stewart or Mary-Kate and Ashley brand-name crap in stores? Who watches Oprah and Dr. Phil?
Who do you think the buyer for Toys R
Us is who purchases the items in the infant girl’s section? Wanna bet it isn’t a man? -
The Ghost of Violet says:
Paul, congratulations. You’ve won the prize for “The most complete missing of the point of a post, ever.”
I will be sending you your engraved Glitter Sparkle Pony Princess in the mail.
-
Mary Tracy9 says:
HAR-HAR
I had baby dolls, and barbies, but I also had a microscope AND a telescope.
Oh, and I also had “household cleaning” stuff. I used to play I had a house of my own, which, of course, needed cleaning. HAR-HAR! (I was so naive those days as to believe a single person could actually have a house of their own)
Just to show that things are never that simple and straightforward.
-
Infidel says:
What strikes me is the speed and diversity of socialization. Sure there were tiaras and lip gloss in some exclusive circles through history but whenever had it become for the commonfolk to wear a crown. When a buck could be made on it. Still diverse, millions just want a bowl of rice and some broth, male or female. Get past that and some spare time and change and what do the phychiatrists bring to Darfur where there inevitably are seven hundred thousand absolutely crazy people through no fault of their own but through some skewed psychotic social structure and limited natural resources- one hopes there is a biological basis for psych that can be universally counted on, one hopes for a universal understanding of the mechanisms of social influence on psych that can be counted on. Then you take the numbers you counted, manipulate them, apply your variables, and get a desired result. NewYork Ad agencies successfully probed the psych of Americans and now we have Toys R Us- it worked! But it only made money and cashed in on patriarchy, big deal-already done by the Roman Catholic Church.
-
EB says:
Putting aside the rest of your post, as the parent of a two year old, I don’t believe that the product in your picture is sold for 0-12 months. No reputable store would sell swallowable, chokable stuff for that age, only for 3 and over.
-
EB says:
Ah hah, found the product, or at least the latest version of it: ages 8-10. Don’t believe everything you read.
-
EB says:
Scratch that, I found the actual set, ages 12 months and up. Looks like party favors for a first b-day party.
-
The Ghost of Violet says:
Ah yes, I was going to say that but I see you’ve found it yourself. It’s for a 1-year-old’s birthday party. It seems pretty bizarre to me.
Edited to add:
your links don’t seem to be working, so let me try this:
-
The Ghost of Violet says:
This is the original product that I found when I was browsing the 0-12 months section: Little Princess 1st Big Favor Pack.
Then I moved onto the “bigger” favor pack, which is the one pictured in the post.
But now I see the “biggest” favor pack and I want that one!
Little Princess 1st BIGGEST Favor Pack
That one has a light-up tiara wand, a crystal ring, and a pink glow bracelet!
Truth: until I read the description I could not figure out what the light-up tiara wand was supposed to be. Christ, I thought, is it a vibrator?
-
r68 says:
Do you have kids, Violet?
-
The Ghost of Violet says:
Nope.
I know what you’re thinking: I should just break down and buy the goddamn Little Princess Biggest Favor Pack for myself. ‘Cause I want that wand. And those feathers. And that tiara!
-
jokerine says:
Wait, so the manufacturer recomends 5 to 12 years old and toys are us recommends 12 month and up?????
whats up with that? -
Mandos says:
So I’m genuinely curious about the “untestable” part. Testability vs. untestability are very complicated issues.
So Cosmides and Tooby offer us:
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html
I rather like their distinction between EP and “behaviour genetics.”
-
The Ghost of Violet says:
Mandos, don’t you have some Cypriot nationalists somewhere you need to tend to?
But thanks for the exhibit of Cosmides and Tooby’s shallowness. “Once people thought the mind was a blank slate. Now we know there are Stone Age modules in the brain, just like electrical circuits…”
-
sam says:
My favorite anecdote about how intelligence tests have massive socially influenced biases is this one I picked up while training to teach ESL.
There were four pictures and the question was “In which scene would you need an umbrella?” The four scenes were a rainy day, a windy day, a sunny day, and a snowy day. Black students scored very poorly on this question and it was revealed that many black students came from tropical areas where umbrellas are used more for sun protection than as attempts at staying dry in the torrential rains common in such climates. The writers of the questions were mostly white New Englanders.
-
Infidel says:
SMILE!
Now think about how ready you are to bite.
Bite your hand(don’t draw blood though).
Smiling is getting your lips out of the way. For what? To eat!
Real happiness is not being hungry.
Now that is the kind of thinking evolutionary psychologists can run with.
Pink berries. When is the last time anyone ever saw a pink berry? -
bob c says:
well the fact that anyone can say what they want regardless of gender or proof(or lack thereof) or any value to anyone, may be considered a change. Maybe not enough for some to expose the fact. This was not always the case. Seems to me, from the thought contained or expressed in most conversations, there is definatly a long road to travel before skewed spin is eliminated from all sources. I do hope the view in the telescope and microscope was evaluated gender neutral as the universe is such beautiful place. Wait a minute, the universe already is, regardless of our biases. So all we need do is look for ourselves, without spin, to see the truth, hmmm.
-
Paul Tergeist says:
Paul, congratulations. You’ve won the prize for “The most complete missing of the point of a post, ever.”
-TGoVNo, I did that in a previous post. This one, although I admit I tried, is a dismal second. I hope to better my record soon, but it ain’t easy being green.
-
bright says:
nice post! it amazes me too, that people can forget the obvious influence of culture and society on human personalities. my parents were both engineers, and met in graduate school. still, at 5, i told my little sister that she couldn’t be a pilot. where on earth would i get such an idea?
-
Mandos says:
“Cypriot nationalists”
Nope, the situation seems to be resolving itself.
So, you picked a quote from Tooby and Cosmides, but…?
However, you’ve probably already seen this negative review of Pinker by Ahouse and Berwick.
-
The Ghost of Violet says:
Nope, the situation seems to be resolving itself.
Oh, Mandos, don’t sell yourself so short. I’m quite sure they still need you over there.
-
cicely says:
I always envied the toys my brothers got too, in the sixties. One time - for Christmas - an Ozzie Flying Doctor plane for one bro, a two foot long plastic ocean liner for the other…I got an eggshell-thin faced doll…
I got a nice wicker pram once. I filled it up with dirt and made little trees out of twigs and bits of green so I had a portable Sherwood Forest for the plastic Robin Hood’s gang figures that came free in the Kellogs Corn Flake boxes.
I have no doubt that adults still buy what they think they should buy for the sex more often than not (or something neutral like plasticine) and that kids still keep quiet about their real preferences when they understand, as they do pretty early, that they’re apparently not appropriate, more often than not as well. When toy stores no longer have girls and boys shelves, but all the toys mixed in together we might be getting somewhere. No more apartheid in the toy shops!!!!
-
Christina says:
The strangest thing is that it was way easier to raise my daughter while giving her educational toys and Tonka Trucks and so on, than it is to raise my son while giving him his own broom and allowing him to play with a baby doll. While plenty of people gave my daughter lots and lots of Pink Things starting at birth, it wasn’t as badly frowned upon as allowing my son to play Barbies with the neighbor girl or allowing him to have Roger the Polar Bear and treat him as a baby. “You really ought to stop that before other boys pick on him and beat him up.” WTF? For playing with a stuffed animal in his own home? Why can’t boys practice being daddies the way girls get to practice being mommies? My daughter has zero interest in being married or having kids at all. She wants to be a vet and have a career. My son, OTOH, wants to get married and have lots of kids. He’s the broody one. Always has been. Yeah, he likes shoot-em-up games and playing baseball and climbing trees. News flash! So does my daughter.
But, that all may be changing. Tonka’s new ad slogan is “Built for Boyhood”
http://www.hasbro.com/tonka/And while they now offer a race track for girls, it’s the Polly Pockets brand, with pink cars and the finish line is the The Mall.
http://www.amazon.com/Mattel-P.....B000PD2AZA
Danika Patrick’s racetrack it is not. -
Christina says:
Oh, and Sam?
Here’s one for the history books.
A child was given a test, an IOWA test, for placement in Elementary school. I’ll let his girlfriend tell it: “Another story concerns BF, who was given a culturally biased test when he was just a little guy. He must have been in 1st grade or so and he was shown pictures of objects that he had to identify–cars, houses, animals, vehicles, etc.
One of the pictures was of a ham butt, which this little Jewish boy whose parents keep kosher could only identify as some kind of meat.
The tester tried making a big deal of it. But what would a kid from a kosher household know about pork cuts?”
-
The Ghost of Violet says:
I got a nice wicker pram once. I filled it up with dirt and made little trees out of twigs and bits of green so I had a portable Sherwood Forest for the plastic Robin Hood’s gang figures that came free in the Kellogs Corn Flake boxes.
Young cicely, budding garden designer. You know they have pictures of things like that in the garden magazines now. Well, not the plastic Robin Hood figures, but the pram-as-planter.
Christina, I gotta say: Polly Pockets PollyWheels my ass.
Wanna go to the mall? I’ll race ya! If anyone understands a girl’s passion for needing to shop immediately, it’s Polly Pocket and her friend Lila. And this racetrack set is just the thing to get them to the mall in record time.
I’m sorry, that’s fucking whacked.
The best toy my brother and I had as kids was our electric race car set — which was probably a gift to my brother originally, but maybe it was to both of us (I imagine it was a relatively expensive item for my parents). Whatever the intention, it was always “our” race car set; in fact my Dad used to play with us too. We loved it so much that we would occasionally still set it up when we were adults (yes!) at Christmas and what not.
It was very cool, none of that garbage plastic or hideous colors. Just a black track and cool little metal race cars.
-
The Ghost of Violet says:
For another look at cultural bias, see how well you do on the the Original Australian IQ test.
-
cicely says:
Young cicely, budding garden designer.
Budding nothing, I’m afraid. Nothing I’ve ever done to earn a crust has ever had anything to do with anything I’m actually interested in!
I’m off to do the original Aussie IQ test…
-
cicely says:
I got one out of ten right. I guessed the right name for no particular reason in answer to question 7. Learned a few things though!
