start those little girls young
WTF? So S. and I reading through all the Sunday paper ads and as I'm reading the Sears ad, I see that they're now marketing a washer-dryer TOY for kids under the name "My first Kenmore." For boys, there's a "My first Craftsman" workbench with all kind of tools and stuff, and it actually looks fun. But the picture of the girl shows her folding a goddamn towel. Look at this product. While I can see the possiblities for fun that a kitchen holds for a little girl and her friends--there's actual creativity and play involved in pretending to cook and bake things--I fail to see how a washer and dryer inspires any kind of creativity or play. Or how it does anything but persuade young girls that they should enjoy folding towels while their brothers are over there building cool birdhouses or something. FOLDING TOWELS. Did I mention that the little girl in the picture in the Sunday ad is smiling while she's FOLDING TOWELS? MOFO.
S. tried to think up a scenario in which this could be a good thing. Maybe there are some little girls out there whose parents are in the laundry and dry-cleaning business who want to be just like their parents. Um, honey, they probably get to go to work with mom and dad all the time. It was a stretch, but that's S. Always looking for the good.
Me, not so much. FOLDING TOWELS, for god's sake.
posted by aerobil @ 6:06 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Or, parents could actually let/make their kids help them with the laundry (and working on the cars).
Because if my kid is going to "pretend" to fold a towel (or pretend to turn a wrench), it might as well be a real towel coming out of the real dryer to go into the real linen closet.
Or a bolt on a real muffler on a real car. Kids are small enough to fit under cars! Small hands to fit the wrench into hard-to-reach places!
I agree with the gender-specific problem--but *my* immediate problem is that my kids don't need to "pretend" to do housework--they just need to frickin' do it.
Yes, but...I loved playing house. We had a yellow stove made of plywood in our playhouse in the backyard, and it was great fun to do pretend stuff.
On the other hand, I'm not buying some fancy schmancy stacking washer-dryer that looks cooler than anything I'll ever own for any small children in my life!
I guess you didn't get the memo about us being post-gender, and all. Didn't you know that gender-based disparities have all been dispelled? Those little girls are folding towels because it's inherently fun, and the good folk at Sears want all little girls to know that.
I agree Sears would have been better off had they shown a little boy folding towels--it would have made more people actually look at the ad--as in "what the . . . is going on?"
I solved my laundry problems by simply telling the kids, this is the washer, this is how it works, from here on out this is your job. You do your own laundry period. I shop, cook, chauffeur, and work outside the home. This is your job. And when the 15-year-old came to my whining that she didn't know how, I told her I thought she was totally capable of doing it, but if she didn't remember something I'd be glad to watch her do it once to make sure she understood. Worked like charm!
shoe
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