All of this thinking about what texts are gendered and why. Well i was thinking about where does it all start back to the beginning of a child's life. You find out you are having a boy or a girl what do you do? Paint the room pink or blue accordingly or a 'neutral' colour like yellow or green. What if your having a girl and you paint your room blue? what if her favorite colour is going to be blue? Do you get matching pink furniture to go with all your little girls needs?
SO going back to the beginning I thought I would check out a few of the designer website, for ideas plans and options for decorating. I first started with IKEA personally I love IKEA.. they surprised me. They didn't have a break down of boys rooms and girls rooms ideas on their website. (at least not listed) as you scrolled through the rooms one was ALL PINK Furniture, walls, carpets, chairs EVERYTHING PINK. But they listed it as a children's bedroom.
I then ended up on a Lowe's website to choose wallpaper for your rooms. An easy 1-2-3 step system to choose the right wallpaper for your needs. In the list of choosing styles we see "search by specialty" among about 10 choices of specialty we found boys and girls. Some of the options within these boys and girls "specialties" were pretty 'neutral' colour wise but then you found things in the girls section like "flower power" or in the boys section like "earth explorer" or "get into action". The girls options also portray "leap into action" as opposed to the boys "get into action"? leap is a very delicate word compared to 'GET'. Looking into the two of them the girls leap into action portrayed fun bright colours and the boys portrayed dark colours and army images.
Also when you are selecting a room to which you want to place this border you can select bedroom or boys or girls. Providing you with 3 different layouts of bedrooms.
Some of the earth explorer ones were of tropical places ( i want that in my room now) and a wallpaper border for puppies but of course dinosaurs too. so why is it listed under the boys section?
the more i look at this website the more i wonder where they got their "gendered" ideas from.
(Complete side note: when i clicked a piece of wall paper decoration they showed a sample bedroom where the boys bed was made out of wooden sticks and a latter of wood sticks up to another part of his room).
This website portrays gendered ideas that are portrayed as very specific to a boys or girls bedroom. If the girls bed they provide is pink and you want to put in a dinosaur border/wallpaper. That doesn't match very well. Companies that provide the designing should list things by a subject heading rather then a gendered heading like boys and girls.
List puppies, dinosaurs, flowers and flare separately.
Wow, makes you think....
- Kate Bauer
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it is also important to think about who is buying the furnature, because realistically children do not get much say in the matter, theydont have money....mothers typically say "no darling you dont want the blue dinosaurs, wouldnt the princess' be better!?" and the fathers influence sons to want the 'macho room'.
ReplyDeleteif parents have been influenced to think in stereoptypical gender roles from their parents, than the cycle will continue until someone stops it..but its hard when you dont realise 'where did these ideas come from?"
~beautiful bombshell~