I’m Guessing I Won’t Be Asked Back

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An old acquaintance sent me an email about a focus group for a local company that makes products for children. The reward for participating was free swag and dinner. Sounds fun, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I went and was in a room with five other moms who have children in my age range. The leader of our group showed us a drawing of a prototype and asked us what we thought as moms. Would our kids play with this? What would they like about it? Would we buy it? What would make us buy it?

I chimed in and said, “I think my younger daughter would like it, but the older one would reject it on the grounds that there are no unicorns anywhere on it.”

The leader whipped out a second drawing that was pink and had a fairy theme. She explained what the “boy” one did, which involved piloting a spaceship and having adventures, and how it involved role playing, and that the fairy one involved role playing as well, although all I could see was that it was pink and had some flowers and bugs on it. All the other moms seemed pretty sold.

“What I’m seeing here,” I said, “is a boy product that encourages the boys to take a leadership role, to DO something, to be actors. On the girl product I am seeing only a chance to pretend to be a fairy. What does the fairy do? Because if it’s just about being a pretty fairy, I would not buy this. I am trying to encourage my girls to be do-ers and leaders.”

They didn’t really have an answer about what the goals of the fairy toy was, because I don’t think they thought it out that far. I hope they rethink that one, but they probably won’t. Oh, well. The pizza was good!

In Related News

Companion just brought home a graphic novel by one of my favorite artists, Joann Sfar. Many of his works are now being translated into English, which is good for me. The book he brought home is called Sardine in Outer Space. It features a grade-school aged girl, Sardine, who works with her uncle (a space pirate) to fight crime and right wrongs. Sardine is in a strong leadership role, so it’s not one of those bullcrap sitches where the girl helps the main superhero or gets into pickles and needs to be rescued. They all get into pickles, and Sardine often has the best idea. And she has a bad ass pirate scar on her cheek, which I have always coveted. I suppose it’s not too late; maybe I’ll still get one someday.

I am going to make Franny read it when she arrives back from her dad’s, and she likes Sfar, too, so I think she’ll love it. I think ages six to ten would enjoy it, but I enjoyed it too. It’s funny.

PS

Dear friends, enemies, lovers, and mongoose porn fiends. I am having some issues with blogspam right now. My dope administrator is trying to figure out a dope solution to this undope problem. In theory, if you have one comment approved, you should be golden forever, so I appreciate your patience while being in comment limbo.

Love,
Totie
totiefields.gif

36 thoughts on “I’m Guessing I Won’t Be Asked Back”

  2. MMM Sardine and pickles.

    The Sardine books looked pretty cool, but how can you pass up ‘Little Vampire does Kung Fu!’ that could be the best book title evah.

  5. Ooo, ooo, you should tell them about Vampire Loves and Dungeon. Those are good Sfar books, too, and they’re totally different than Sardine.

  6. Hi squid–we just read that! And I saw the JN thing. I was meaning to tell him, since I just had him over for dinner and forgot. Duh.

  8. SJ, please sneak back into as many as those focus groups as you possibly can! They need to hear how undope the “girl” toys are. Do-ers and leaders, indeed!

    And I am totally going to look up that book about Sardine. Thanks!

  9. They probably didn’t get the doers and actors thing but it was worth a shot.

    What gets me is when I go to the Target toy site and there is this crazy gender division and the boys get the dinosaurs. All the cool animals, actually–sharks! What’s up with that?

  10. A few years ago there was this Carvel ice cream cake commercial, and it had this song where a different kid sang each line explaining why they got a cake:
    “I lost my tooth today!”
    “I starred in my school play!”
    “I finally got an A!”
    “I got new glasses today.”
    The school play and getting an A lines were sung by boys, and the tooth and glasses lines were sung by girls. So pretty much they had the boys working to achieve things, while the girls’ special occasions resulted from things just “happening” to them, stuff that happens to everybody at some point or another. Sorry, girls, no good grades or theater debuts for you! Those Carvel jerks.

  11. I’m ridin’ on that bandwagon, hatin’ on the perpetuated gender role-stereotypes right along with ya’ll.

    And I HATE HATE HATE that peeps don’t get it.

    When my daughter was wee, I refused to dress her in pastels and pretty much not pink. When I put her in primary colors, peeps would say, “what a beautiful boy.” I’d look at them and ask what makes them think it’s a boy???

    Makes me want to have lotsa babies so the world can have more kids raised without gender-role stereotypes. Okay, maybe not.

  12. I’m cool with us having gender roles to a certain extent. I wouldn’t want a world where we’re all generic Barbie-crotch type people. What I don’t like is, as you say, the bad stereotypes.

  13. Agreed, SJ. It’s important for kids to learn that a wide variety of roles are okay for both boys and girls. It’s the pidgeonholing I have a big problem with.

  14. If that local company is smart, they’ll ask you to lots of future panels. I know I’d go for toys designed with your ideas in mind.

    Bad Kitty, the funny part is, plenty of people have that same reaction to a baby boy in non-blue primary colors. “Oh, what a cute girl! Wait, not a girl? But you’ve got him dressed in red.”

  15. Growing up, my brother had an unnatural attachment to Totie Fields on those family variety shows during the 1970s. So much so, when he found some frogs in the wild, he named one Toadie Fields.

    Seriously.

  16. That is good.

    I always remember some bad joke about Truman Capote marrying Totie Fields…Totie Capote ensues. EURGH!

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