holidays

Thanksgivng and holidays in general are one of those times where gender stereotypes seem to be extra-super heavily reinforced. Every movie, commercial, story, song and tradition seems to have the underlying message that the women should cook, clean, take care of the kids, and if dad isn't home-its simply not going to be the 'same'-implying it wont be as fun, important, or memorable. based on commercials we can imply that all men/dads are loyal, young, white and crave golf clubs, power tools or razors. whereas women are all loving, skinny, perfectly dressed, generally cooking/cleaning/putting the kids to bed and reallllly want diamonds, clothing, or a lexus with a red bow. its the man's obligation to dazzle the woman with glitz and glamour, whereas the man wants a sensible gift thats worth the hefty pricetag. Although marketing towards adults is annoying and repetitive, i hope that most of us are sensible to base our gifts and choices on indivuals instead of commercials-however, the marketing towards kids with relation to gender is a little scary. I have a 2 yr old nephew and shopping for him makes it blatantly obvious gender stereotypes are in little kids toys and clothes. There aren't really any gender neutral products. For example before we knew the sex of my nephew we tried shopping just for baby clothes in general and found that it was nearly impossible because every article of clothing seemed to have some implied gender. I have also found that this applies to toys. With the exception of some musical instruments or stuffed animals everything seems to be marketed specifically to boys or girls. Id like to think that we're getting more progressive and becoming more aware that boys do liek to play with dolls and girls do like action figures and dinosaurs, but a simple stroll through target proves that most people are still stuck in the boy/girl distinct differences. This seems small, but it shapes the way kids play and therefore has huge impacts on what they learn about their world and themselves. Overall i think its really frustrating that we're still so wholly stuck in and williningly buy into gender stereotypes that are so ghastly exagerated yet widely accepted.