Very funny…also You Tube “Cougar Barbie”…an excellent portrayal of Barbie at age 50. All of these will be discussed in our presentation…gotta love feminist class!

But my most deliberately destructive act was taken out on her horse. I was tremendously excited when the walking version came out, but angry to discover that only her front legs lifted, rendering it useless on carpet. In my rage, I made it walk off the balcony and laughed as it smashed on the first floor again and again until it cracked open and got taken away.

I know someone who used to dismember her Barbies and bury them in the backyard so she could have archaeological digs. Actually, I don’t know anyone who played with Barbies “correctly.”

At no point was I destroying my toys — I repaired it after my friend did. I used barbies as drumsticks, but never for dismemberment. For what it’s worth (that is, here is another anecdote to prove I’m not too stuck up in my childhood masculinity to admit to playing with “girl toys”), I had a little kitchen set that I think would be considered a feminine toy that I played with in the manner that kitchen sets are intended to be played with. Mind you, it wasn’t pink :).

I don’t at all mean to say my experience is universal, I was just throwing my anecdote out with the others. I’m sorry if my wording implied anything other than what I meant.

Exactly where she’d left it.

On Ken.

Of course not. But you didn’t say it was unsurprising that toy companies use sex-segregated marketing. You said it was unsurprising that you, as a boy, only wanted to play with “boy toys”. Which is not really “unsurprising” at all, since I’ve spent almost 30 years now watching boys happily play with “girl toys” without feeling the urge to destroy them. I know of more girls who were all “eeeeeeew girl toys! nooooo! the pink, it burrrrnnnnssss us!” than boys, actually.

The only reason I called it out, btw, is that the way you phrased it was really weirdly normalizing of stuff that just isn’t that cut and dry. And on a subject where my experience is the opposite, so your experience can’t really be all that universal.

It’s unsurprising because that’s the entire point of marketing. They market toys the way that they do because it makes people buy them. If they market a toy very obviously to boys, then probably boys will be more interested in it than girls. They wouldn’t keep doing this over and over if it didn’t seem to work. This says absolutely nothing about people’s innate natures.

I’m kind of confused as to how that could be the point of contention. The opposite of unsurprising is surprising. Is it really surprising that a boy wanted a toy that was marketed to boys?