Last week, Target issued a press release detailing some of its new marketing practices. The retail giant announced that its stores will no longer feature signs assigning a gender to toys and home goods. In other words, there will no longer be aisles for “girls’ bedding” or “boys’ decorations,” and items like dolls will cease being marketed as “girls’ toys.” Gender signs in clothing departments will remain, largely due to fit issues — as in a men’s shirt might be loose in the shoulders but tight in the hips on a woman — but the retailer has chosen to remove gender signage where they deem it “unnecessary.”
The aim of this policy is likely to make children more comfortable defying gender stereotypes and to encourage them to play with toys that are not typically for them. However, there still lies an issue in the way that toys are marketed. Society has been conditioned to associate the color pink with female, and blue with male. When walking past the toy section in one of my local Target stores, there is often at least one aisle that’s completely pinkwashed, and one that only features dark blue toys.
There are relatively fewer toys made in gender-neutral colors, but toy companies have begun to shift toward making traditional boys' toys in pink and purple hues. Some may see this as a step toward equality because they are making these toys more desirable for girls who consider pink to be feminine. I, however, see this as a shift away from gender equality because it suggests that certain toys, such as squirt guns or Hot Wheels, are not accessible to girls unless they’re in “gender-appropriate” colors. Additionally, I’ve more often observed traditional boys' toys being made in “girly” colors than the opposite. There are not many young children in my family, so I don’t spend a lot of time in toy aisles in stores, but I have yet to see a baby doll shrouded in blue or green.
Some parents believe that Target should have taken its actions even further and suggest that the retailer create a gender-neutral section of clothes for children. For men and women, this would not be plausible; the general differences in body type would make it difficult to create styles and cuts that would flatter and comfortably fit both. But for children, parents may find it refreshing to buy clothing that don't immediately broadcast their child’s gender to the world. Gender-neutral clothing is made for babies, presumably because some parents do not know the gender of their child before he or she is born. But once the child outgrows infant sizes, it’s difficult to find things that aren’t either pink and sparkly or dark blue with trucks on them.
Expectedly, there are some — soon-to-be-former — Target customers who are less than thrilled about the company’s recent signage changes. Some particularly conservative shoppers have decided to boycott Target stores because they feel that children will begin to question their own genders if they do not have signs to point them in the right direction. To be honest, I think it’s fascinating — and absolutely terrifying — that in 2015 some people still think that their child’s gender is determined by whether he or she prefers to play with cars or dolls. I applaud Target for being one of the few retailers to stop imposing stereotypical gender roles onto impressionable children.
