My daughter, Liza Ryus, sent me a link to this video this morning.
Liza saw the post on Jezebel, a site she loves and follows. In this video, a five-year-old stands in the toy aisle and rants about the way the toy-makers try to “trick the girls into buying the pink stuff,” when it is obvious that both boys and girls want superheroes and both also want princesses.
Though I was myself one of those little girls who wanted pink stuff and princesses, I loved this video. This five-year-old is so feisty and so critical–to me, it proves once again that the human critical faculty is present even in children.
My own daughters (especially Liza) were always big on the pink stuff, too. But no one who knows either of them would ever think they were anything less than strong women. So I don’t subscribe to the notion that these toys make women weak. In fact, I argued in Fresh Lipstickthat the first Barbie generation disproved that idea by staging the most wide-ranging feminist movement in human history.
Still, the implicit insult of all that pink packaging is enough to make me rant, just like Riley!
