Last year, I wrote about gender-specific toys.
An incorrectly titled post, in hindsight. Really, it was about gender-targeted toys. Toys marketed along gender-specific lines, with girls expected to play with dolls, ponies, vacuum cleaners and all things pink, while boys play with trucks, planes, blocks and all things blue.
My daughter wanted an ironing board. A particular ironing board. A (groan) pink one.
She wanted it for a very long time. So Santa delivered one.
And marketing schmarketing. Gender-targeting schmender-schmargeting. You can’t argue with these smiles.
I love my girl, and I love making her smile. Now, I just hope that the actual ironing makes her smile just as much in approximately ten years. (We’ll have to work on her ‘hand-ironing’ technique before then, though.)
What did your child(ren) get for Christmas? Did it make them smile?
Gorgeous! As leave this comment I’m watching my son push a pram and my daughter build a tower. They’re smiling. Marketing’s for losers. 😉
As a former marketeer, and a documented loser, I must concur. x
And what a smile it is!! Does she want a job? I hate ironing! lol…
You’ll have to get at the end of a loooooong line…
Yep, pink. I’m with you. It’s all pink in my neck o’ the woods, too. But, like you said, the smiles say it all. That’s a happy little girl right there. 🙂
Pink and purple EVERYWHERE. But she loves it.
That smile is priceless Em! Fingers crossed her ironing desire carries on. x
Fingers, toes and eyes!
Awww, I hate when they love things we don’t want them to! My Miss 10 went through a stage where she was obsessed with those revolting Bratz dolls and try as I might I couldn’t dissuade her.
As for ironing, I’m not sure my kids would know what an ironing board is, I’m not much of a domestic diva 😉
Oh yes, Bratz dolls. Not yet. Hopefully not ever!
That is awesome! I got my boy a shopping trolley full of annoying food and he loves it! I’m all for buying gender targeted toys if it’s what they like. We got kids big outside play/cubby!
I cannot WAIT to have a backyard and start cubbying it up!
No ironing boards! My girls wouldn’t have a clue, with my influence, what to do with it! They got a basketball ring, a slip and slide and books from us. Lots of pink, girly orientated stuff from everyone else. No bad, it’s all good, they love it all. (I think they just like anything new, a bit different from the boring outdated, overused stuff in the toy box!)
Basketball ring, slip and slide… still can’t wait for our backyard!
Love it, she is happy and that’s what counts. My girls were polar opposites, one irons and never travels without a travel iron, is a frequent visitor to the dry cleaners and the other one I don’t think possesses one, if it needs ironing she won’t buy it. xxx
They be who they be who they be, hey?
The girls got a swing set and the look on Punky’s face when we took her out to the backyard was worth staying up till 2am putting the bloody thing together! They also got lots of cute clothes and a few cool toys and books. Zee is all about grabbing whatever comes in contact with her hand and Punky is all about dinosaurs and bugs at the moment so I went with more dinos & bugs for Punky, whatever makes her happy I say!
That would have been adorable! Building in the dark, and quietly. Sounds fun!
Oh my daughters would have loved this at that age too. And I would have bought it. I get really annoyed though at all the pink and the gender marketing as it does restrict kids or at least they are given a message they SHOULD be restricted. Now my girls are 8 they “hate” pink and they get annoyed themselves at the lack of colour choices in everything. One of them gets her stuff in blue and green but feels embarrassed about it, the other laments the lack of orange in toys and clothes. Nothing I say helps, though I think (believe) my encouragement and my annoyance at the fake restrictions ( and I do tell them they ARE fake) sink in.
LOL! Your must make real-like ironing look like so much fun that she would want to do this in play. I hope the practice pays off in 10 years as you say!