Toy Op Ed Reflection

Our in-class seminar really helped me see many points of view for this topic. I do believe that gender specific toys shouldn't be in the way that they currently are (very drastic difference, blue for boys, pink for girls). I think its important to keep race cars and dolls or whatnot, but to have them in a wider range of colors, to be inclusive to everyones identification. We did talk about how the kids may be too young to know what they identify as, but giving them room from a young age to figure that out  instead of forcing the current stereotypical blue vs pink. The conflict sociologist theory reminded me of our conversation, since it is from the point of view how society accommodates between different interest groups, and the 2 groups are fighting for more gender neutral toys. When we were talking in class, we brought up the McDonalds happy meal toys. They normally offer 2 different options, one being hello kitty themed for example and the other one would be transformer themed. What caused the uproar was how instead of saying hello kitty or transformer, they would ask boy or girl, indicating only boys and girls liked those toys that they had for each gender. Now a days, we are seeing how from earlier ages, people are getting more accepting of how people identify themselves. After this discussion, I really realized how prevalent this issue is, and how its limiting kinds into this 2 gender box, and not really allowing them to fully express who they are. We didn't exactly come up with a perfect solution, but just making a wider range of colors of any kids toy would help not directly indicate what gender its meant for.