Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 26

24

Popular Culture Review

baby dolls, fashion dolls, doll clothes, hair and makeup toys, and
housekeeping toys for girls. Although the modem advertisements
and packaging attempt to be more |x>litically correct than the
aggressively separatist Suzy Homemaker campaigns of the 1960s,
gender-specific toys still thrive. The difference between toys then
and now is that gender-specific toys thrive now mth a vengeance.
Girls' toys now more than ever seek anxiously to define femininity
in a so-called liberated age.
In the late eighties . . . the media in general, and
particularly advertising agencies, have decided that
we’ve done feminism and it's time to move on. We can
call ourselves 'girls', wear sexy underwear and short
skirts; because feminism taught us that we're equal to
wen, we don't need to prove it anymore. (Lee 168)
This suspect philosophy of "postfeminism" has recently been
blasted for what it truly is—a sexist "backlash" against women. The
reactionary politics of this, as described by Susan Faludi, and the
backlash in the form of the "beauty myth" as presented by Naonti
Wolf have also manifested themselves fully in the toys and cartoons
for small girls with the attempt to indoctrinate and cripple them
early in their careers as women. Thus, the only difference between
the past and present toys is in cultural attitude. The patronizing and
bemused attitude towards teen girls we witnessed with Gidget and
Patty Duke has been replaced with the conviction that girls can do
whatever they want, and simply choose to subsume themselves in
matters of makeup, boys, dating, and hair. As a result of this illusion
of choice applied to the desires of little girls, the toys no longer
merely perp>etuate but actually validate traditional sexist attitudes.
Toys and cartoons teach girls complete and subtle lessons about being
girls, and "Pretty in Pink" is the message of the day. In the name of
liberation, such toys subvert female identity.
Walk into any major toy store, or even the toy section of any
department store, and you will be able quickly to identify aisles
containing toys for boys and separate aisles with toys for girls. This
ubiquitous lay-out alone harkens back to the 1950s and 60s when
gender separatism in child-culture went more or less unquestioned.
Hence, Ideal packaged Robert the Robot for boys, and Betsy Wetsy for