The World According to Josh and Sara

I’ve just recently read Helen Boyd’s book “She’s Not the Man I Married.” I make this statement because it may explain why I’ve been overly sensitive on the gender subject lately. The book is A-MAZING! And we’ll be interviewing her soon, so stay tuned for that gem (I have plans to not let Josh talk.) Anyway, back to board games.

I was on the Toys ‘R Us website last night looking for the ’90’s version of Trivial Pursuit. There’s a readily available ’80’s version, but my friends and I have realized that being born in the late ’70’s means you know nothing about the social and political goings on of the world when you’re playing with transformers and care bears, therefore a ’90’s version is MUCH more our speed. We paid more attention to things when we had a grunge soundtrack in the background. (Btw, I downloaded a free trial of it last night from the Trivial Pursuit website and pretty much kicked the computer’s ass.)

While on Toys ‘R Us’s website, however, I came across an appalling new addition to the holiday toy rush: Monopoly for Girls. Here is the description directly from the source:

“This is Monopoly like you have never seen it - dressed up in pink and all about things girls love! Buy boutiques and malls, go on a shopping spree, pay your cell phone bill, and get text and instant messages. You and your friends will adore the funky tokens, cool buildings, and cute illustrations. Best of all, the game is stored in a beautiful keepsake box which doubles as a jewelry box. Cool game features include: 8 collectible tokens just for girls, keepsake storage box with removable tray and mirrored insert, pink gameboard with fun properties, pink and purple translucent boutiques and malls instead of houses and hotels, Instant Message and Text Message cards instead of Chance and Community Chest, pink Title Deed cards, redesigned Monopoly money, flocked banker’s tray, 2 pink dice, and instructions. Paint the town pink with Toys R Us Exclusive!”

Let’s talk about everything that is wrong with a Pink “For Girls Only” Monopoly game, shall we?

1. It’s pink.
2. It’s aimed at young impressionable girls.
3. It assumes no self-respecting woman would ever want to buy Boardwalk and will instead settle for Mall of America. Let me tell you, I grew up half an hour from Atlantic City, people, there’s WAY more money in oceanfront property and towering casinos than any half-assed shoe boutique.
4. It assumes that every female likes to shop.
5. It assumes that every female likes to talk endlessly on the phone.
6. It assumes that the best way to incorporate a “bank” into a boardgame is to bedazzle it into a totally cool jewelry box.
7. They have pink dice, but I doubt they are fuzzy. Honestly, if you’re going to offer someone pink dice, they better be fuzzy and hanging from the rearview mirror of a kickass car.
8. They make the completely ridiculous assumption that only young girls would appreciate all of the opportunities afforded them with the creation of a pink shopaholic Monopoly. They err on two counts. Not just in demeaning females by forcing gender-specific ridiculousness on them, but by neglecting to realize that there are many young men out there who would kill to play pink Monopoly. (I should know, I work side-by-side with one!)

Society not only forces young women into gender roles, but forces young men out of them. If Toys ‘R Us needs to make a pink Monopoly about shopping, whatever. Its mere existence isn’t necessarily my issue. It’s the fact that it is marketed to any specific portion of the population which leads some feeling confused because they don’t want to shop and talk on cell phones all day but think that they should, and others feeling confused because they’d love a good mall purchase but society tells them they shouldn’t. I’m not even going to go so far as to say that it should be marketed to young straight women and young gay men, because gender is so fluid I bet there’s some straight guy and lesbian gal who would throw down their trucks and guns for a chance at a pink Monopoly game (there’s also a pink Jenga and a pink Twister, but this blog is already too long and ranty.)

If there’s a reason anyone feels any kind of gender shame, it is because we are taught so young that we each should fit into a gender role, of which there are only two choices. I wish that the folks at Hasbro and Toys ‘R Us realized what they are doing and that it’s not just some feminist rant. We really do a lot of damage when we market toys to specific genders. We do a lot of damage when we force any kind of gender-specificity on any person.

Ugh! I could go on for days about this, and honestly I think I’d feel better about the whole thing if they’d just stick a little boy in the picture with the girls and show some kind of reality. 

Sara

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Sara. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.