Wednesday, September 27, 2017

The Glorious Gender Construction of Wal-Mart

Because I don't want to go into an actual store, I'm browsing online to observe the differences in baby products from consumer empire that is Wal-Mart.
Up first is clothing.
Immediately noticeable is that age and sex is organized into different sections, with baby and toddler and boy and girl sections under each.
The baby girl's section has lots of pastel colors, pinks and purples, dresses paired with pants (because, you know, they're babies), and lots of cutesy animal stuff. A couple of things are gender neutral, which are the only actually blue things I've seen that aren't pastel.
The baby boy's section is immediately very different, with lots of blues, greens, browns, and even black. There's a couple of red things along with some camo as I keep scrolling. There's a couple of lighter outfits but other than that there's no pastel at all, and literally nothing pink or purple.
Toddler girls deviates from the baby section a bit, as it has some deeper colors, and lots of characters from kids shows. They're either gender neutral shows or things that are noticeably "girls" shows.
The toddler boys are pretty much the same, darker colors, no pinks or purples, and characters that are from "boys" shows. Something that's different is that there's some sports stuff included in here, where the girls ones don't have anything like that. Along with sports, things like dinosaurs and trucks are also popular.
The bibs and burp cloths are up next for scrutiny.
The first thing I'm noticing is a bib with "Lil' Man" written on it in blues and greens. Thanks for making this easy, Wal-Mart. I see some pink ones, blue ones, and some flannel burp cloths. They're not organized by gender, but it's pretty easy to see what's what. There are some labelled baby girls, and they're pink and purple. There are some boys bibs that I don't even want to try to describe, so I'm just gonna show you so you can see for yourself
And to show the opposite side of the scale, I'll show you this:
"Parent's choice". Nice.
I decided to try one more section before finishing, which was pacifiers and teethers. Not really much to say for those, other than there's a lot of pinks and blues, and though they aren't labelled for a specific gender, it's still pretty obvious what they're meant for. Here's the highlights from what I saw:
In conclusion, I found every stereotype that I expected to find. Lots of pink for girls and blue for boys, and also a correlation with light colors for girls and dark colors for boys. Things such as sports, the mentioned colors, boys shows, dinosaurs, cars, and being a "ladies' man" are assigned to being things associated with boys, and things like being sweet or ladylike, the mentioned colors again, girls shows, princesses, hearts, flowers, and other sunshine and rainbow junk are assigned to being associated with girls.
I feel really bad for gay guys honestly cause damn dude, the stereotypes than even a child is already flirtatious and wanting the attention of any and all girls is like, really really toxic. Let kids be kids, jeez.
Anyway, nothing here surprised me, and I doubt any of it will actually change, especially since the topics of gender and children are really tense, since toddlers and babies really can't speak for themselves, and even as a young child, they can't really understand the implications or consequences gender has in our society.

But what do you guys think? Lemme know, I'm interested in your opinions and what you found in your explorations.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with the first part with the baby and toddler clothing. Where the clothing makers are already assuming what direction to steer the child. With their clothing choices. Since many already assume blue for males and pink for females. As they guide the child into showing what he should like with pictures of trucks and dinosaurs on the articles of clothes.

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  2. I'm so glad you included those images to help show the power of the messages on the bibs! We haven't talked about it yet, but you touch on the concept of heteronormativity--how we organize society in a way that makes heterosexuality the default/the norm. Messages like "ladies man" on bibs reinforce that from the very beginning. And it's interesting that even pacifiers seem to be gendered...wow.

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