Until the colors pink and blue no longer contain their “gender markings”, there will always be girl toys and boy toys. Though McDonalds seems to be doing better on the “They’re just frickin toys guys.” side of things.
Maveric1984
Actually, the colors pink and blue used to be associated with the opposite genders that they do today. Pink was a “manly and firey” color, whereas blue was “cool and feminine”
JetstreamGW
That wasn’t even that freakin’ long ago. Less than a century I think.
Gigafreak
Hell, most Disney princesses wear blue for this exact reason. Who even is the earliest Disney princess that never wears blue? …Vanellope Von Schweetz, maybe?
Random832
Her regular outfit (from before she’s a princess) is blue, though I’d guess it’s not used for those associations.
Gigafreak
I considered that green, but considering it’s an aqua-ish shade, it might still count as blue. (I was counting pre-princess outfits, or Belle would’ve been earlier- her town clothes are blue, but her big castle gown is gold.)
Umm. Okay so… HAS there been a non-blue Disney princess ever?
kelticat
The princess in “The Black Cauldron” is dressed in pink and purple.
And though she wasn’t a Disney princess at the time the movies were made Princess Leia wears white, red, green, gold, and brown. Does that count?
garaden
Uhm. Aurora? And Rapunzel? (Who, embarrassingly, I first thought of as “the girl from ‘Tangled'”)
Donald Duck’s regular outfit is ALMOST entirely blue… and the Genie in Aladdin doesn’t wear clothing, but he *is* blue 🙂
Tynam
(responding to Gigafreak)
Fix-It Felix actually kind of proves the point, since he’s a hero who is not the protagonist. Disney heros apparently only get to wear blue if they’re not on screen too much.
Ralph, on the other hand, is the most stereotypically manly character on screen. (Except Zangief.) And he’s bright red.
Phillip Wilde
Flynn Rider wears blue (and Rapunzel wears pink), but Tangled was made long after those colors gained their current gender associations.
ProfessorZoot
About 1500 years after as it was Asian steppe nomads who first used blue as a color that protected male children from evil spirits (and pink in order to let the evil spirits know that the child in question was a female and therefore not worth bothering with).
gwalla
Isn’t Beast’s suit blue?
Jackson
Aurora?
Kinoko
But Aurora did wear blue. And pink. And blue. And pink…
Annie
Aurora’s dress is constantly being changed by the fairies Flora and Meriweather between pink and blue. The reason that’s even in the movie is because the animators honestly couldn’t decide whether to make her dress pink or blue.
E.R.
I was going to suggest Mulan, but then I went and checked. She actually wears more blue as a woman…
JDavis
I think all of the “canon” Disney Princesses wear blue, but….
Eilonwy, Megara… and maybe Tinkerbell (assuming she never wears blue in her CGI movies that I haven’t watched) are the only non-human animated Disney protagonists I can think of that (as far as I know/remember) never wear blue.
Some others wear it only in small amounts (Jane Porter’s blue cravat, for example)
begbert2
Tink ended up with some blue in the most recent movie. But it wasn’t exactly her choice; Green is definitely her preference. (Apparently through draconian/magically enforced indoctrination.)
Mary
Tiana as a princess doesn’t wear blue, only green. Though a pre-princess dress of hers is blue.
Mary
Though her super-princessy friend only wears pink.
JayeRyane
Ariel’s original princess dress was poofy and pink. recently it was changed to green, simply because of the clash of her red hair and the pink dress. But it was ariel.
turoni
I believe the colors changed during WWII.
Under the nazis gay people had to be identified by wearing a pink something and thus pink got a more feminin meaning.
Devlerbat
What colors do what is not so much the point as the fact that we HAVE colors that are very distinctly for boys and colors that are distinctly for girls. If those colors suddenly change from blue and pink to orange and green it won’t REALLy change anything.
Jerden
IT WOULD RUINEVERYTHING! We’d have to burn our children’s clothes and replace them with the correct colour, we’d have to frantically repaint rooms to either orange or green. Or else, how will people know which gender they are meant to be?
Yep, the guy that just won the second-hardest Grand Tour bike race, the Giro d’Italia was awarded a pink jersey as symbolic of his great strength and endurance.
Bill
He was awarded the pink jersey because La Gazetta dello Sport, the original sponsor of the Giro, is printed on pink paper. Same reason Le Tour de France awards the yellow jersey; L’Auto (the newspaper that originated the event) was printed on yellow paper.
Carriethedragon
Last I noticed, McDonalds was handing out Spider Man toys… and pink versions of almost the exact same toys.
Annie
I’d say that until colors are no longer gendered. And even then it will be difficult.
It’s something that drives me crazy. My son is 4 and I’m trying to instill in him the lesson that “there are no toys/colors just for boys and toys/colors just for girls. There’s only toys you like, and toys you don’t like.” before he gets to kindergarten and his classmates start insisting he do things in a gender-normative way.
He adores playing with small dolls like Little People. I’m already dealing with his friends seeing all his Little People and the house that goes with him and telling him those are only for girls.
I also hate that I’m nervous to buy him things he actually wants for his birthday, like a specific baby doll or a LaLaLoopsy doll, because of what my family might say when he opens it at his party. I shouldn’t have to be afraid of full grown men and women intimidating a 4 year-old, but I do. And it sucks.
Toys are toys. Just let kids imagine and play and have fun without worrying about whether they’re imagining the “right” things or playing the “right” games.
Vibbles
That is the saddest thing I’ve read all day. =/ I hope he manages to stick with the things he likes and isn’t bullied into changing his interests by kids who have an ingrained idea of gender-normal roles and adults who should really know better.
That absolutely does suck. My niece has had to hear that she doesn’t play with toys that are “girly” enough from her father because she likes action figures, Transformers, and Nerf guns. She also plays with dolls and My Little Pony (after being introduced to the latter by me), but his tiny, closed mind just can’t grasp that it’s okay for her to like whatever the hell she likes. Her mom is really cool, though (they’re divorced), and she encourages her to follow her imagination. And of course, he won’t say anything like that when her mom is around, and he certainly won’t say it in front of me. In addition to trying to force his archaic view of gender on her, he’s really passive-aggressive about the whole thing.
Your son sounds awesome, and anyone who can’t just let him be awesome is a jerk.
Alan Lafond
My daughter watches Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with me. She also received season 1 of He-Man as a birthday gift one year, and has watched every episode in the set.
On the other hand, she also likes She-Ra, Disney princesses, Tinkerbell, and Barbie. So she likes a wide variety of stuff.
Jen Aside
That sucks, but I was heartened by a teacher who started a lesson with the “what are boys toys and what are girls toys” stereotype, then went into, “Do some boys like Barbie?” “Do some girls like Hot Wheels?” etc. to teach them that they can like what they want to like.
Annie
I hope and pray that my son’s first teacher is one like that.
Just wanted to say that it’s super weird to see Five-minutes-from-being-impregnetad-Robin talk to Childactor-Walky.
Disloyal Subject
Speaking from experience, I wouldn’t want to leave the goat kids toyless either unless it was a big enough group that they’d keep each other entertained.
Though I’ll grant that the hummies might need more intricate toys to keep them interested.
I remember going over to my cousins’ (all girls) house and having them be totally jealous of the toys I’d bring. Somehow their mom never heeded their requests for Ninja Turtles, but bought them fifty different Barbie dolls who were identical save for what outfits they came with.
Which is pointless because I’ve never known a Barbie to have clothes on more than 10% of the time. Seriously, what’s up with that? Isn’t the fashion thing kinda the point? Why are Barbies always naked?
Congrats Mongoose, you just managed to out evil Megatron. I hope your proud of yourself. You monster.
Disloyal Subject
“You monster,” says the commenter on a Willis comic.
Using ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re,’ no less. They don’t even sound the same!
Ahh… Glad that’s outta my system. G’day and g’night, folks.
Swear, people act like nobody makes a spelling or grammatical mistake on the internet when every goddamn person alive has and will continue to. Why do people feel the need to bongo about it? Cause some people just like to be assholes for no reason. Kindly stop being an asshole, DS.
BlueRam
….and THIS is what ends up making me a vocaloid fan. *slow claps*
Plastic man, plastic. Exceedingly fake. If she fell in a pool she wouldn’t need a flotation device.
Yotomoe
All of my cousin’s barbies were naked ALL THE TIME. It’s like she didn’t have clothes for them!
LeslieBean4Shizzle
So you can dress them when the occasion demands it.
But yeah, you only ever need one Barbie, and maybe one each of her friends. Then you just buy the stand alone outfits and you’re set. Or you learn to make them, which is both girlish and badass.
On the plus side, I got to have Shera toys, which some of my male friends were rather jealous of.
Maveric1984
She-Ra was the shit
Doctor_Who
She-Ra is one of the purest examples of how marketers hate little girls. He-Man’s commercials were all about how awesome he was battling evil, and show off cool vehicles and badass playsets.
She-Ra’s commercials? They’d point out that she comes with a hairbrush.
Maveric1984
Yeah, but her cartoon was just as “good” as He-Man’s, just with a female main character and more pink and rainbows.
I put quotes around good because I’ve watched He-Man as an adult, and it really hasn’t held up.
Doctor_Who
Oh, I agree,her show was just as good (and bad) as He-Man’s.
That’s sort of the point. The products were more or less identical, save the presence of boobs. But they were marketed as if one was a badass superhero, and the other was for playing dress up.
From what I recall, He-Man had the bigger ‘boobs’. 😀
Yotomoe
At least it was equal!
He-man was a pretty effeminitely dressed man and
She-ra was a masculine woman!
Gigafreak
Ah, to be gender-equal for all the wrong reasons!
I thought for a while that it was maybe kind of wrong that Princess Peach speaks in falsetto.
Then I realized that Mario also speaks in falsetto and things seemed fair again.
Kamino Neko
She-Ra was way better than He-Man, just because Etheria was an actual occupied world. Instead of being a desert that had other environments only when plot demanded, and kingdoms that seemed to consist entirely of the monarch, it’s a world of cities, and various environments that have people and animals that aren’t plot-necessary.
begbert2
Adding on to Kamino Neko’s point, She-ra was also better because her series started from a position where the heroes were backed up against the wall (well, magically protected forest) with an enemy that had already conquered the entire damn planet. This allowed them to actually mount offensives against their enemy and win actual, meaningful victories, as opposed to just kicking Skeletor’s incompetent can back to snake mountain again and head-thrown-back-laughing about it. And speaking of cans, the fact that Hordak had robots allowed them to actually fight their enemies, beating them into rubble as opposed to just tossing them into omnipresent mud pools all the time.
She-ra is by *far* the superior show. I would go so far as to say it’s actually held up (somewhat) over time.
I think the sentiment was presented when the two toy-lines were given a one off crossover in comic book style.
gwalla
IIRC the “Masters of the Universe” was originally supposed to be what Skeletor’s group called themselves (kind of aspirational, really), but since it never actually got used in fiction people assumed it meant He-Man’s side.
In the later reboot, “the Masters” explicitly referred to He-Man’s side, though I don’t think it was ever explained.
Leonou
She-Ra was better because of goddamn Battle Pegasus-Unicorns !
no contest.
Jen Aside
I have to admit that She-Ra’s origin story is pretty good for what I expected. Well played, Filmation.
365 thoughts on “Genderidentity”
Jen Aside
ah Reddit
Jen Aside
also, girl things ARE dumb, because marketing people MAKE them that way |=(
how ’bout make toys for kids and leave it at that
-Sentinel-
Preach it.
ShaggyDonahugh
Until the colors pink and blue no longer contain their “gender markings”, there will always be girl toys and boy toys. Though McDonalds seems to be doing better on the “They’re just frickin toys guys.” side of things.
Maveric1984
Actually, the colors pink and blue used to be associated with the opposite genders that they do today. Pink was a “manly and firey” color, whereas blue was “cool and feminine”
JetstreamGW
That wasn’t even that freakin’ long ago. Less than a century I think.
Gigafreak
Hell, most Disney princesses wear blue for this exact reason. Who even is the earliest Disney princess that never wears blue? …Vanellope Von Schweetz, maybe?
Random832
Her regular outfit (from before she’s a princess) is blue, though I’d guess it’s not used for those associations.
Gigafreak
I considered that green, but considering it’s an aqua-ish shade, it might still count as blue. (I was counting pre-princess outfits, or Belle would’ve been earlier- her town clothes are blue, but her big castle gown is gold.)
Umm. Okay so… HAS there been a non-blue Disney princess ever?
kelticat
The princess in “The Black Cauldron” is dressed in pink and purple.
And though she wasn’t a Disney princess at the time the movies were made Princess Leia wears white, red, green, gold, and brown. Does that count?
garaden
Uhm. Aurora? And Rapunzel? (Who, embarrassingly, I first thought of as “the girl from ‘Tangled'”)
TachyonCode
Show me a male Disney hero who wears all blue.
You won’t win anything, I’ll just be amused.
Gigafreak
Fix-it Felix, Jr.
Led
Donald Duck’s regular outfit is ALMOST entirely blue… and the Genie in Aladdin doesn’t wear clothing, but he *is* blue 🙂
Tynam
(responding to Gigafreak)
Fix-It Felix actually kind of proves the point, since he’s a hero who is not the protagonist. Disney heros apparently only get to wear blue if they’re not on screen too much.
Ralph, on the other hand, is the most stereotypically manly character on screen. (Except Zangief.) And he’s bright red.
Phillip Wilde
Flynn Rider wears blue (and Rapunzel wears pink), but Tangled was made long after those colors gained their current gender associations.
ProfessorZoot
About 1500 years after as it was Asian steppe nomads who first used blue as a color that protected male children from evil spirits (and pink in order to let the evil spirits know that the child in question was a female and therefore not worth bothering with).
gwalla
Isn’t Beast’s suit blue?
Jackson
Aurora?
Kinoko
But Aurora did wear blue. And pink. And blue. And pink…
Annie
Aurora’s dress is constantly being changed by the fairies Flora and Meriweather between pink and blue. The reason that’s even in the movie is because the animators honestly couldn’t decide whether to make her dress pink or blue.
E.R.
I was going to suggest Mulan, but then I went and checked. She actually wears more blue as a woman…
JDavis
I think all of the “canon” Disney Princesses wear blue, but….
Eilonwy, Megara… and maybe Tinkerbell (assuming she never wears blue in her CGI movies that I haven’t watched) are the only non-human animated Disney protagonists I can think of that (as far as I know/remember) never wear blue.
Some others wear it only in small amounts (Jane Porter’s blue cravat, for example)
begbert2
Tink ended up with some blue in the most recent movie. But it wasn’t exactly her choice; Green is definitely her preference. (Apparently through draconian/magically enforced indoctrination.)
Mary
Tiana as a princess doesn’t wear blue, only green. Though a pre-princess dress of hers is blue.
Mary
Though her super-princessy friend only wears pink.
JayeRyane
Ariel’s original princess dress was poofy and pink. recently it was changed to green, simply because of the clash of her red hair and the pink dress. But it was ariel.
turoni
I believe the colors changed during WWII.
Under the nazis gay people had to be identified by wearing a pink something and thus pink got a more feminin meaning.
Devlerbat
What colors do what is not so much the point as the fact that we HAVE colors that are very distinctly for boys and colors that are distinctly for girls. If those colors suddenly change from blue and pink to orange and green it won’t REALLy change anything.
Jerden
IT WOULD RUINEVERYTHING! We’d have to burn our children’s clothes and replace them with the correct colour, we’d have to frantically repaint rooms to either orange or green. Or else, how will people know which gender they are meant to be?
Opus the Poet
Yep, the guy that just won the second-hardest Grand Tour bike race, the Giro d’Italia was awarded a pink jersey as symbolic of his great strength and endurance.
Bill
He was awarded the pink jersey because La Gazetta dello Sport, the original sponsor of the Giro, is printed on pink paper. Same reason Le Tour de France awards the yellow jersey; L’Auto (the newspaper that originated the event) was printed on yellow paper.
Carriethedragon
Last I noticed, McDonalds was handing out Spider Man toys… and pink versions of almost the exact same toys.
Annie
I’d say that until colors are no longer gendered. And even then it will be difficult.
It’s something that drives me crazy. My son is 4 and I’m trying to instill in him the lesson that “there are no toys/colors just for boys and toys/colors just for girls. There’s only toys you like, and toys you don’t like.” before he gets to kindergarten and his classmates start insisting he do things in a gender-normative way.
He adores playing with small dolls like Little People. I’m already dealing with his friends seeing all his Little People and the house that goes with him and telling him those are only for girls.
I also hate that I’m nervous to buy him things he actually wants for his birthday, like a specific baby doll or a LaLaLoopsy doll, because of what my family might say when he opens it at his party. I shouldn’t have to be afraid of full grown men and women intimidating a 4 year-old, but I do. And it sucks.
Toys are toys. Just let kids imagine and play and have fun without worrying about whether they’re imagining the “right” things or playing the “right” games.
Vibbles
That is the saddest thing I’ve read all day. =/ I hope he manages to stick with the things he likes and isn’t bullied into changing his interests by kids who have an ingrained idea of gender-normal roles and adults who should really know better.
Compulsive Collector
That absolutely does suck. My niece has had to hear that she doesn’t play with toys that are “girly” enough from her father because she likes action figures, Transformers, and Nerf guns. She also plays with dolls and My Little Pony (after being introduced to the latter by me), but his tiny, closed mind just can’t grasp that it’s okay for her to like whatever the hell she likes. Her mom is really cool, though (they’re divorced), and she encourages her to follow her imagination. And of course, he won’t say anything like that when her mom is around, and he certainly won’t say it in front of me. In addition to trying to force his archaic view of gender on her, he’s really passive-aggressive about the whole thing.
Your son sounds awesome, and anyone who can’t just let him be awesome is a jerk.
Alan Lafond
My daughter watches Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with me. She also received season 1 of He-Man as a birthday gift one year, and has watched every episode in the set.
On the other hand, she also likes She-Ra, Disney princesses, Tinkerbell, and Barbie. So she likes a wide variety of stuff.
Jen Aside
That sucks, but I was heartened by a teacher who started a lesson with the “what are boys toys and what are girls toys” stereotype, then went into, “Do some boys like Barbie?” “Do some girls like Hot Wheels?” etc. to teach them that they can like what they want to like.
Annie
I hope and pray that my son’s first teacher is one like that.
Clayton
“. I’m already dealing with his friends seeing all his Little People and the house that goes with him and telling him those are only for girls.”
Bullcrap, I’m a dude, and I played with those from the time I was 5 to the time I was 11. Little People were the shit.
Plasma Mongoose
Baby goats don’t need toys, children do. 😀
ShaggyDonahugh
Winning.
Plasma Mongoose
^_^
Aolbain
Just wanted to say that it’s super weird to see Five-minutes-from-being-impregnetad-Robin talk to Childactor-Walky.
Disloyal Subject
Speaking from experience, I wouldn’t want to leave the goat kids toyless either unless it was a big enough group that they’d keep each other entertained.
Though I’ll grant that the hummies might need more intricate toys to keep them interested.
Doctor_Who
I remember going over to my cousins’ (all girls) house and having them be totally jealous of the toys I’d bring. Somehow their mom never heeded their requests for Ninja Turtles, but bought them fifty different Barbie dolls who were identical save for what outfits they came with.
Which is pointless because I’ve never known a Barbie to have clothes on more than 10% of the time. Seriously, what’s up with that? Isn’t the fashion thing kinda the point? Why are Barbies always naked?
Plasma Mongoose
Cos she psychotic?? 😛
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lOiI0_v0JBQ/URLmPymyiJI/AAAAAAAAF9Y/eLkzoVa3MnU/s1600/psycho-barbie.jpg
NSFW
Megatron
I would have preferred being rick rolled.
Plasma Mongoose
You asked for it! 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28FVxYQuLOQ
nothri
Congrats Mongoose, you just managed to out evil Megatron. I hope your proud of yourself. You monster.
Disloyal Subject
“You monster,” says the commenter on a Willis comic.
Using ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re,’ no less. They don’t even sound the same!
Ahh… Glad that’s outta my system. G’day and g’night, folks.
nothri
*you are
Megatron
I don’t know what I expected when I clicked on that link.
Plasma Mongoose
@nothri: What can I say, it’s a talent. 😀
nothri
Hey Disloyal Subject, found some words of wisdom for ya.
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2754
Swear, people act like nobody makes a spelling or grammatical mistake on the internet when every goddamn person alive has and will continue to. Why do people feel the need to bongo about it? Cause some people just like to be assholes for no reason. Kindly stop being an asshole, DS.
BlueRam
….and THIS is what ends up making me a vocaloid fan. *slow claps*
Plasma Mongoose
And now my mission is complete. 😀
Jen Aside
Now I’m thinking “Avannaroll” as the natural consequence [might sound more natural being an English Vocaloid, after all]
Maveric1984
Curiosity as to how those boobs stay up without a bra.
I’ve also rarely known a Barbie to keep their head for very long for that matter. And those high heels were landmines as bad as a lego.
Plasma Mongoose
Simple, they were made of plastic.
Opus the Poet
Plastic man, plastic. Exceedingly fake. If she fell in a pool she wouldn’t need a flotation device.
Yotomoe
All of my cousin’s barbies were naked ALL THE TIME. It’s like she didn’t have clothes for them!
LeslieBean4Shizzle
So you can dress them when the occasion demands it.
But yeah, you only ever need one Barbie, and maybe one each of her friends. Then you just buy the stand alone outfits and you’re set. Or you learn to make them, which is both girlish and badass.
On the plus side, I got to have Shera toys, which some of my male friends were rather jealous of.
Maveric1984
She-Ra was the shit
Doctor_Who
She-Ra is one of the purest examples of how marketers hate little girls. He-Man’s commercials were all about how awesome he was battling evil, and show off cool vehicles and badass playsets.
She-Ra’s commercials? They’d point out that she comes with a hairbrush.
Maveric1984
Yeah, but her cartoon was just as “good” as He-Man’s, just with a female main character and more pink and rainbows.
I put quotes around good because I’ve watched He-Man as an adult, and it really hasn’t held up.
Doctor_Who
Oh, I agree,her show was just as good (and bad) as He-Man’s.
That’s sort of the point. The products were more or less identical, save the presence of boobs. But they were marketed as if one was a badass superhero, and the other was for playing dress up.
Plasma Mongoose
From what I recall, He-Man had the bigger ‘boobs’. 😀
Yotomoe
At least it was equal!
He-man was a pretty effeminitely dressed man and
She-ra was a masculine woman!
Gigafreak
Ah, to be gender-equal for all the wrong reasons!
I thought for a while that it was maybe kind of wrong that Princess Peach speaks in falsetto.
Then I realized that Mario also speaks in falsetto and things seemed fair again.
Kamino Neko
She-Ra was way better than He-Man, just because Etheria was an actual occupied world. Instead of being a desert that had other environments only when plot demanded, and kingdoms that seemed to consist entirely of the monarch, it’s a world of cities, and various environments that have people and animals that aren’t plot-necessary.
begbert2
Adding on to Kamino Neko’s point, She-ra was also better because her series started from a position where the heroes were backed up against the wall (well, magically protected forest) with an enemy that had already conquered the entire damn planet. This allowed them to actually mount offensives against their enemy and win actual, meaningful victories, as opposed to just kicking Skeletor’s incompetent can back to snake mountain again and head-thrown-back-laughing about it. And speaking of cans, the fact that Hordak had robots allowed them to actually fight their enemies, beating them into rubble as opposed to just tossing them into omnipresent mud pools all the time.
She-ra is by *far* the superior show. I would go so far as to say it’s actually held up (somewhat) over time.
Megatron
He-Man was ok for a show about fleshlings.
Yotomoe
I’d imagine Megatron would be mad about that whole “Master of the Universe” thing.
Megatron
I’ve gotten used to fleshing delusions.
SomeUnregPunk
I think the sentiment was presented when the two toy-lines were given a one off crossover in comic book style.
gwalla
IIRC the “Masters of the Universe” was originally supposed to be what Skeletor’s group called themselves (kind of aspirational, really), but since it never actually got used in fiction people assumed it meant He-Man’s side.
In the later reboot, “the Masters” explicitly referred to He-Man’s side, though I don’t think it was ever explained.
Leonou
She-Ra was better because of goddamn Battle Pegasus-Unicorns !
no contest.
Jen Aside
I have to admit that She-Ra’s origin story is pretty good for what I expected. Well played, Filmation.