Some time ago I found myself in a big a toy shop. I don’t remember the last time I was in something like this, maybe even in childhood, that is, according to rough estimates, about two decades ago.

Little has changed on the store shelves in these 20 years. On one side were glittering princesses (rather than princes), dolls seeking care from their little “mother” who would take them off the shelf at home, kitchen utensils dominated by pink shades and small girls Excitedly examine packages.

The Opposite Shore featured dinosaurs, combat-ready vehicles, action figures, and superheroes, with the hues darkening and often becoming blue, however small boys they were looking for their new toy. Amidst all this, more “neutral” toys, such as stuffed animals or board games, seemed like the only way for boys and girls to coexist in the same store aisle.

What did this visit confirm and that everyone can easily see by simply turning on the TV and watching any advertisement for “our little friends” this is a show games are still promoted using gender stereotypes – cute and colorful games for girls, wild and dynamic for boys.

No deep research is required to come to this conclusion. However, if you want to talk about the numbers, Stephanie Thompson recorded for the Atlantic all of the children’s commercials that aired in a week on a children’s television station. 68% were only involved in one of the two genders, while the remainder 32% despite the coexistence of boys and girls in the same advertisement, there was no shortage of minor divisions of this kind, such as a camera that was pink in the girls’ hands and blue in the boys’ hands. All this in such a huge market as the market USA, who, so to speak, are probably more “ahead” than others.

In a word, at a time when the world is trying to eliminate gender stereotypes even with slow and small steps, children’s advertising reproduces them in full and, in fact, (and) in products related to ages in which a person’s personality is formed.

Withdrawal cards and injections of doubt

To begin with, gender identity begins with one biological background on which a person’s sexual identity will be formed along the way, without having to be defined in childhood. As the psychologist notes Dimitris Starakis, “It is not paradoxical that children vacillate about gender identity across this age spectrum as they tend to make their own choices, thus essentially choosing a position as test subjects.” Which position is a mixture of tendencies and influences they receive from both intrapsychic factors and the environment.

Thus, advertising, in turn, reflection of social attitudes and beliefs. And the stereotypes that surround us also help each subject to define himself in his own way and choose his life path. Therefore, children, as the psychologist explains, “are at an age when they tend to cover their curiosity with the stimuli they receive from the environment, so their stereotyped images and sentences create a “map of conclusions” that they often accept uncritically. . Just like we adults often do.

It may not be possible for a parent to “protect” their child from every stereotype that exists around him – there are so many – but there are ways to keep him from apathetically sinking into them. The reporter Nicky Haya she is a young mother, and when she gave birth to daughter Chloe a few years ago, she only cared about “being happy the way she feels and being able to express herself the way she wants.”

She thinks it’s a game way of “fun, entertainment and relaxation”, but above all “Something very personal.” Therefore, she allows her daughter to choose toys herself. Somehow little Chloe can play with stuffed animals one moment and toy cars the next. She loves to put on music and dance ballet as much as she loves to play football with her father.

As Dimitris Starakis also notes, when a child’s environment leaves room for the stereotyped content they consume, it is as if they were, in some sense, given Doubt Injection. That is, the ability to give a different interpretation of things. From this moment on, every child should be able to form their own position against the ready-made conclusions of stereotypes.

For the upbringing and formation of the child, h family it’s definitely an A and a Z, but it’s true that the world of games and advertising could make any separation a lot smoother. Looking at online store of two major Greek gaming networks, one catalog had a clear separation of toys for girls and boys, while another may not have followed this tactic, but had a sub-category of play sets for girls, with Halloween costumes segregated by gender.

looking for answers from advertising people As for who ultimately chooses the “safe” way of stereotyping children’s advertising, the answer was no. “companies» or “advertisers“, ma “public”. In fact, in relevant surveys, it seems that people tend to prioritize familiar things that end up being stereotyped and role-casting like in a traditional nuclear family. And companies, in turn, follow the direction without risk, since the goal is nothing more than promote the product in the most efficient way.

Rethinking gender stereotypes

IN Sweden, of course, all this is in the past, starting with her space preschool education and training, as Niki Haya, who moved with her family to Stockholm a few months ago, can attest: “Kindergartens here are gender neutral. Games for all children. You see girls diving in the mud and boys dressed as princesses playing supermarket.” She does not hide her joy about this: “I saw it with my own eyes. And that’s great. And it doesn’t just happen in the nursery.” Yes, as he tells me most kindergarten staff avoid using masculine and feminine pronouns and instead selects neutral words such as the word “friend” or the gender-neutral pronoun “chicken”.

Maybe something is changing: last year her government Spain set a new code does not allow game makers to reproduce gender stereotypes in their advertising. That is, they are no longer allowed to use pink and blue to show that the product is for girls and boys, respectively.

Let us also not forget that in recent years Mattel, that is, the company that has been sending it into the hands of millions of children for decades Barbie, the most clichéd model of female beauty has now “broke stereotypes”. And so we saw dolls with dark skin, with a lot of weight, with wheelchairs, with scoliosis, even in a gender-neutral version. And this is something, even if the tall, slender blonde Barbie still appears in most children’s (or rather, girlish) rooms.

Of course, Dimitris Starakis comes at the end to remind us how the notion of a stereotype in itself is not harmful, because they come to ease us and lead us to conclusions without cognitive processing: “Imagine if we had to think for a long time in our car, in front of a traffic light, whether green or red allows us to move. The fact that we immediately begin our movement is due to a stereotyped conclusion.

Thus, the problem is not not to have stereotypes, but to study their content. In other words, “Children need to learn that play is about having fun and sharing with others, not necessarily about color or other gender differences.”