The Effect of Our Barbies Ourselves

On Tuesday, we read the short story Our Barbies, Ourselves, which argued how society shapes the way females behave. The toys that children play with are just physically influential to the perception of how people should behave or look. Her argument that toys provide negative influences should not be allowed to children, is starting to evolve toys today: many industries have began producing toys for young females that provide positive educational influences. One of these companies is called Goldie Blox. Established in 2012 in Oakland, California, this company plans to produce toys that introduce the field of engineering. Unlike Barbies, who was "made by men", Goldie Blox is made by Debbie Sterling, who is a female mechanical engineer. She was unsatisfied with the percentage of women in engineering in the United States when she was a student (10%). Because of her creative toy invention, more and more women are no longer influenced to become princesses but rather be engineers.

Here is a Goldie Blox Commercial:

In class we debated that toys are separated by color. Blue is for boys, pink is for girls. Usually, this is a negative effect as it changes separates boys into only playing with transformers and girls with only playing with barbies. However, in this commercial, the pinkness is to send the message girls don't need to be masculine to be engineers or something that's strongly connected with men.