My 4 year old daughter got this Hallmark card yesterday for Halloween in the mail:
The good news is, right away, she said, “Oh no, only two girls. Eight boys.” She gets it. But the bad news, of course, is the repetitive message in kidworld, whether from Hallmark or Target, boys can be so many things– pirates, superheroes, cowboys, monsters, skateboarders, clowns, or aliens. Girls, however, get limited choices.
My daughter will be Wonder Woman tonight, and I’m off to go see if, at this last minute, I can find her a golden lasso….
This is so stupid some of the things you complain about are just funny.
These are candy corns, the vampire or the “cow boy” could very well be a “cow girl”
You can’t tell, are you saying little girls can’t dress up as werewolves and vampires?
Maybe you’re teaching your kids the wrong things if they look at candy corns and see gender.
I technically agree with Cat. By assuming all but obviously female characters are male, we’re adding to the male as default.
However, looking closely at it, I think we’re meant to see three female, seven male. Because the two obviously female have their pointy bit on top and the cowboy and the skateboarder (the two most stereotypically male of the remaining eight) as well as five of the six other figures have their pointy bits down. So my guess is the clown, witch and princess are meant to be female and the rest male.
I would argue that you know for sure that two of the characters are girls but you can’t tell whether or not the others might be girls.