Making a tiny positive difference in the world, or good job, chain store

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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And besides which, the “Girls vs Boys” designation is really pretty uninformative in a lot of situations. Which way do you head if you’re in there looking for buckets and spades? Or bath toys, or plastic animals, or an Etch-a-sketch?

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It seems like the sign was changed quickly, so I wonder if changing it was something the store was supposed to do earlier and didn’t.

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Besides, the way the world works, kids are going to find out about gender stereotypes on their own pretty quickly. You don’t need to encourage it. They’ll get it, either by boys getting the crap kicked out of them on the playground as Martini Enfield suggests, or by beginning to feel depressed about liking Barbies and frilly dresses. Girls have more latitude in what’s acceptable, but they’ll learn soon enough as well.

I was in a chain bookstore awhile back, and saw a kid showing his mom a diary he wanted to buy. I think it had a gem on the front, and it might have been purple. I think his mom just didn’t want to buy anything (from the tone of her voice), but she turned him down by saying, “No, that’s for girls.” She walked off, he stared at the diary in his hand for a minute before putting it back on the shelf and then went following after her saying, “Oh yeah, it is for girls.”

Bummed me right the hell out, it did.

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This’ll make you feel better then:
A couple years agao, around the time the back to school sales were going on, a woman called me looking for a particular pink Barbie lunchbox for her 5 year old son. We were the third or fourth store she had called, and when I told her we had it, she thanked me profusely and told me I had just made her son’s day! They came right in and bought it, and both left just as pleased as punch!

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Awww. That is just the sweetest thing. I needed to hear that this morning. Bless your heart.

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I’ll see if I can dig this up. I though I read an article recently about a study showing that children don’t have a “toy gender” preference when unsupervised, but do when there are adults around. The kids were put in a room stocked with toys and filmed. With no adults around they played with whatever, but with adults around they tended to play with the toys classically associated with their gender. No idea about the ages or where I even read this :confused:. Anyone else see this?