Playing with dolls

An article by Christina Hoff Summers, You Can Give a Boy a Doll, but You Can’t Make Him Play With It. It’s all daft but you can read the rest if this interests you:

Is it discriminatory and degrading for toy catalogs to show girls playing with tea sets and boys with Nerf guns? A Swedish regulatory group says yes. The Reklamombudsmannen (RO) has reprimanded Top-Toy, a licensee of Toys’R’Us and one of the largest toy companies in Northern Europe, for its “outdated” advertisements and has pressured it to mend its ‘narrow-minded’ ways. After receiving ‘training and guidance’ from RO equity experts, Top-Toy introduced gender neutrality in its 2012 Christmas catalogue. The catalog shows little boys playing with a Barbie Dream House and girls with guns and gory action figures. As its marketing director explains, ‘For several years, we have found that the gender debate has grown so strong in the Swedish market that we have had to adjust.’

The article is quite sane so it’s safe to read. But while the article is sane, you do have to wonder about the people she is writing about.

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