Zeleznick 1

Hannah Zeleznick
Professor Ditch
English 114A
28 October 2014
Toys could be the Influence
The media has a big impact on children in American society today. What children are
taught and shown when they are younger is how to act, and when they get older, teach their
children the same ways they were brought up. The toys children have access to when they are in
the beginning stages of growing also have a big effect on who they become when they grow up.
If you turn on the television to any children station, you will notice all of the different
commercials for toys that are being shown. Along with these many commercials, you will see
one with the toy called Shopkins. This is a toy where girls can feel as if they are shopping with
mommy and get to feel grown up at a young age. This is the setting at a young age the gender
norms, such as males have to be masculine and females have to be feminine, in which American
society is trying to not make the only way for children. When children develop, they need to
know that it is okay that they can be anything, or anyone, they want to be and do not have to
conform to the social constructed norms of their society, like the dolls and toys seen on
television. Toys are a huge factor in what children can do and are pre-setting their place in
society. Some of these toys advertisments also prioritize one gender over the other.
Cute toys with big eyes and little faces, thats all it takes to get little girls to want a
product. Shopkins is a new type of toy on the market, its main target, little girls. If you have
not seen one of the many commercials for this toy, I will explain it for you. You are first greeted

Zeleznick 2
with a catchy little tune that gets your attention from the moment it starts. After the tune starts,
you are greeted with little figures with smiles and big eyes. But these figures are not just any
normal figures, they are different types of food that are made so they look so cute that you
cannot resist them. It is things like this that attract many little girls attention. As the commercial
continues it shows the audience all of the different little figures it can offer. While it is showing
these figures, it is showing them as if you were in the grocery store going up each and every
different food isle. They have the fruit and veggies, the bakery, the frozen isle, even the candy
isle. Women are often stereotypes as weak, overemotional, and at the mercy of [their] raging
hormones(Hubbard). By saying things such as these, it is setting a place for girls and that
they need to be in the kitchen. It is also teaching girls at a young age that shopping is important
and that it is the womens role to cook and be in the kitchen. Although these toys seem
harmless, they can be the mini gateway to the growing stereotype of what girls are supposed to
be. These commercials have not only affected out generation, but have been affecting the
American Society since the 1970s.
Commercials have always been gender specific, even as long as 30 years. In the 1970s.
Daniel Chandler and Merris Griffiths write in their collaboration article, Gender-Differentiated
Production Features in Toy Commercials, that in the 1970s, the Center for Research on the
Influences of Television on Children (CRITC) at the University of Kansas was the first time that
research had actually been conducted on commercials that were gender specified. After that
experiment, it opened many doors for others. After the CRITC did an analysis of the
commercials, Welch et al. (1979) undertook content analysis of 20 toy commercials in each of
the three categories: male, female, and neutral (Gender-Differentiated Production Features in
Toy Commercials). While doing this experiment, they discovered that different techniques

Zeleznick 3
were used for a boys and girls commercials. In the boy commercials they had higher cutting
rates than ads directed at girls (Gender-Differentiated Production Features in Toy
Commercials). So why was it that more production value was put into male commercials than
girls? This is answered by Verna who is mentioned in the article and did a study on this in 1975.
Verna states that male dominance of voice-overs in commercials in general (Livingstone
&Green, 1986; Manstead & McCulloch, 1981) (Gender-Differentiated Production Features in
Toy Commercials). This was seen as wrong in later years and female voice-overs were then
increased by the 1970s-80s. Although things were beginning to look up for commercials, many
more toys would soon come out onto the market and create more gender specified ads and toys
which then created more of the issue with gender conformity.
Many dolls have been seen and made through the years, but one we cannot really get
away from is a house hold name; the Barbie doll. Barbie was created by Ruth and Elliot Handler.
They did not create the Barbie doll right away, first they created and founded Mattel Creations in
1945 and then fourteen years later Ruth created the worlds first Barbie doll. Looking through
Barbies official site, it says that Ruth created the first Barbie doll for her daughter Barbra, which
the doll is also named after. Barbra loved fashion and Ruth wanted to create a doll that
represented her daughters big love of fashion. She presented the Barbie doll to buyers at a Toy
Fair in New York in March of 1959. They loved this idea for a doll and had never seen anything
like it. They took the doll and made it to the big franchise that she is today. In American society
today, Barbie can be seen as a toy version, on the big screen, and even in video games. Barbie is
a household name that each parent, and little girl and boy know. Barbie is mainly a girls toy and
is aimed more towards younger girls. Barbie has become a big influence on what girls want to be
now a days. Barbie is a skinny, tall, blonde teenager who has every job imaginable. Girls think

Zeleznick 4
that they have to live up the expectation of Barbie and look like her. But others do not like the
doll and express their feelings for the doll in many different ways.
Marge Piercy created a poem titled Barbie Doll. Marge Piercy was not just a woman
who disliked the Barbie doll, but she was a woman feminist. On her website and her biography,
it even says the she did not fit the role of what women were supposed to be. So I can see in how
the Barbie doll would be something she does not approve of. The first segment of the poem says,
This girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves
and irons(Piercy). Already here Piercy is already bringing up the typical looks and things that
a girl doll would do. You can tell that her tone is very serious. At the end of the first segment
Piercy writes Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: You have a great big nose and fat
legs. She is putting in here that it is not okay for girls to have big nose and fat legs and it is not
acceptable to look this way in our society. Throughout the rest of the poem she constantly brings
up the big nose and the fat legs. This is something that Marge obviously does not take lightly and
takes the way that females look very seriously. At the end of the poem she says how the girl ends
up cutting off her big nose and fat legs and offers them to the people who said she had those
things wrong with her. It is basically saying that this girl has conformed to the society around her
and did not accept herself for who she was, which we see a lot in American Society today.
Media and toys do have a big impact on who we are today, even for me. As a young kid,
I was always in front of the television and watching tv. When I was in kindergarten I would
watch Mickey Mouse and all those little kid shows that we all love so much I would also see all
the toy commercials and want every toy, boy or girl specific. I would ask my mom for certain
toys and she would have no problem getting me a toy whether it was for a boy or girl. My sister
and I also had a big collection of Hot Wheels which was generally aimed for boys. My brother

Zeleznick 5
also had them but never actually played with them, so he gave them to my sister and I who had a
ball playing with them. I also had girl toys like Bratz, Betty Spaghetti, and even a few Barbies.
But really, all of these dolls looked the same and we all really the same thing. All of them were
tall, skinny, and were what society wanted girls to be. I enjoyed playing with the Hot Wheels
more because they were all so different and fun to play with. Besides being able to push them
across the floor and they would just keep going and going, they all were so different. Some had
stripes, some were checkered, one even was a toilet on wheels; each different in their own way.
As I have grown older and looked back at what I used to do as a child, I say thank you to my
mother because she let me be who I wanted to be and did not let her children conform the norm
of the children and what they were supposed to play with. Yes it was mainly my choice in what I
wanted to play with, but without my mothers help, I would not be who I am today. Today I am
an independent, confident college student who feels comfortable with anything I Hot Wheels
helped me find my way in the easiest of ways; just playing with them.
Looking through the other side, many girls and women do not become what they see
from television and become something much greater than many of us will ever become. Women
like Hilary Clinton, who was not just the woman of the White House because her husband was
President, she actually did many great things for our American society. She ran for President and
was the first woman to run for office and got really close. Many girls in todays American
society say they want to be President when they are younger, and then by the time they are 10
have a different dream. Elizabeth Cullingford states in her article Something Else:
Gendering Onliness in Elizabeth Bowens Early Fiction that Womens access to reliable
contraception, higher education, and work outside the home has enabled them to reschedule
motherhood. Although most women still intend to have at least two children (Bongaarts 426-27)

Zeleznick 6
(Cullingford). She also adds that women also frequently delay pregnancy to establish their
careers; subsequently, satisfaction with their lives, [and] ecological responsibility
(Cullingford). Many women in our society today often put aside settling down and focusing on
family to pursue their dreams and life goals. They are starting to realize that making a family is
not top priority but that being successful in the work force and creating a name for themselves
before creating a family is more important. This is a lesson that all girls should be taught and that
having children should not be their only way of life.

Zeleznick 7

Works Cited
Chandler, Daniel, and Merris Griffiths. "Gender-Differentiated Production Features in Toy
Commercials." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 44.3 (2000): 503-20. Web.
Cullingford, Elizabeth. ""Something Else": Gendering Onliness in Elizabeth Bowen's Early
Fiction." MFS Modern Fiction Studies 53.2 (2007): 276-305. Web.
Ruth Hubbard, Rethinking Womens Biology from The Politics of Womens Biology.
Copyright 1990 by Rutgers University Press. Reproduced with permission of the publisher.