Toy Makers See Girls Growing Up Faster, and Wonder How to Entertain Them

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Bored With Her Toys
Makers See Girls Growing Up Faster, and Wonder How to Entertain Them
By Margaret Webb Pressler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 2, 2006; Page F01

...."When I tour different company showrooms and look at what they're doing, many times it's a bunch of guys making decisions about what girls would like, and they miss the mark," said Nancy Zwiers, president of industry consulting firm Funosophy and former head of worldwide marketing for the Barbie doll line at Mattel Inc.

But this inherent difficulty has been exacerbated by the "age compression" that has been affecting all kids and putting huge pressure on the toy industry. Children are moving through play stages faster now, always wanting to go quickly to the next level of toys and encouraged by their parents to do so.

This change is especially pronounced in girls. The result is that Barbie, which used to be a doll that 7- and 8-year-olds would play with for hours, is now the domain of 3-year-olds. Never mind that 3-year-olds don't have the fine motor skills needed to dress the 10-inch bombshell in her tiny outfits and teensy accessories. Playrooms across the country are littered with naked Barbies with missing arms and matted hair.

By age 8, girls are gravitating away from Toys R Us to fast-growing chains like Club Libby Lu, which lets them dress up like rock stars, get glitter on their faces, put on fake ponytails and buy itty-bitty accessories to put in teeny-weeny purses.

But boys, bless their little hearts, stick with toys longer, thanks to their unwavering interest in building things and wrecking things, in things that move fast and things that fight. That simply makes them a bigger, easier target for toymakers....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100186.html

(NOTE: Interesting article. Near the end the controversy over toys becoming more battery-driven and techno is discussed, with the upside being more sales, and many being gender neutral, "bringing boys and girls together.")

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. if they grow any faster, some of their toys may be illegal in some states.

then again, only a coalition of christians would find something wrong or dirty with the idea of having an orgasm. Toys lead to role playing. As kids grow up faster, their role playing will involve more mature issues. GUESS WHAT! the next step is sex.

The more I see of the direction our country is taking, the more it seems that our country is totally fouled up about sex. Youths should be encouraged to learn about their won sexuality and the implications. Yet, them's fighting words in a growing number of states. Add to their deliberate backwardness, the fact that kids are growing up faster, partly from the internet and cable TV, and partly because of all the hormones and other medical remnants in foods, water supply, even medicines, and you have a problem just waiting to happen.

If kids grow up faster, that means they become sexually curious that much sooner. Will we see increased prosecutions of younger teens simply because they explore their bodies with willing partners of the same age?

[TheBaldyMan]

2. Do kids grow up faster? there is more societal pressure to act

in a packaged way, everything from your mobile phone, to what you wear, to what you eat. Very little of this has anything to do with the development of a kid as a well-rounded individual and more about shifting the latest product in volume.

If this was such a wonderful idea there wouldn't be so many young women with eating disorders. I think it's indefensible to encourage pre-pubertal kids to become fashionistas. Watch some of the cartoon channels and examine the adverts, crap food, unhealthy narcissism, it's a technicolour festival of hyperstimulation. Little wonder the younger generation have the attention span of goldfish.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

11. beautifully put, baldy. beautifully put. Except, you may need to apologize

to goldfish.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Fascinating article

and relevant somewhat to what I do... thanks

[Deja Q]

4. Here's an idea: Slut Ho Barbie.

It'll sell because TV is just as gross.

[grasswire]

5. what do the girls play with?

They connect to electronic devices. They sit and watch other people do real things on television. They "play" at life with the Sims computer games and such web sites as Habbo Hotel, where they can role play for hours on end, in a world where no one is authentic.

It IS pathetic. The life of a girl in America today is an artifice. The only alternative is to interest girls in sports and arts, IMO, at an early age and push them hard to accomplish something.

[Jade Fox]

17. "Push them hard to accomplish something".....

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Girls are not encouraged to push themselves hard for their own goals, and this takes a terrible toll. Without goals, girls naturally gravitate toward wanting to grow up and attain the one consistent form of female power always available: being an attractive object.

While many girls are encouraged to have high academic standards, by the time they reach school their ability to choose a goal and push to attain it has already been severely damaged. Girls need encouragement to fight starting very young.

[AngryAmish]

23. How does this correspond to gender ratios in higher education?

[Jade Fox]

24. Don't know...

but as I said in my original post, academics is the one place where girls are encouraged to excel.

[Tesha]

6. Two words: "Vibrating Barbie" (NT)

[YouthInAsia]

33. LOL!

[VelmaD]

7. Wouldn't it be nice if the headline...

read "Toymakers see girls growing up faster, apologize for how they contributed to this problem".

But no...it's all about selling them something...never mind whether they something is good for them or good for the larger society.

[Pugee]

8. Good post VelmaD

[liveoaktx]

10. Yes, you're on the mark....

[Raine]

28. GREAT observation

TOTALLY on the mark.

[Reverend_Smitty]

9. If they stopped marketing toddler thongs....

then maybe the kids would stay...um I donno kids longer. I'm only in my lower 20's and growing up in the early 90's was nothing like it is today. It's disgusting really

[ChairmanAgnostic]

13. Rev, you are kidding, aren't you? thongs for tots?

then again, we still see cable news coverage on that murdered 6 yr old beauty star. three names, something something Binet something?

From my perspective, all I saw was parental child abuse and two idiots living their frustrated dreams through their child, a poor kid who was trained like a puppy to perform on stage. The whole idea of toddler beauty pagents is sickening, as is the plastic surgery industry that helps some of them along the way.

[Reverend_Smitty]

16. Take a tour of any department store's girls section...

sexy underwear and those belly shirts with slutty sayings on them are all being marketed to pre-teens. It's sick, they may as well say "molest me creepy old man" on them. I can't imagine any parent buying that stuff for their little girls, do they have no sense? I don't have any kids but I have younger cousins...the kids would love to buy the stuff because they want to look grown up but it would be a cold day in hell before my aunts would ever buy it for them.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

18. I am no prude. I don't mind nudity in any form. This still bothers me.

Part of our victorian hang-over we suffer with in America is partly historical in nature, but much more so an unpleasant side-effect of hyper-religious evangelicals and fundamentalism attempting to reform our society in their religious images. Part and parcel of that has been selling sex as dirty, nudity as filth, and normal human drives as sinful feelings. Then, as an outgrowth of such sickening religious beliefs and morals, we end up worshiping (oh wow, I can't believe they dared do that!) the very thing which has been forcibly removed from the broad range of human nature and natural reactions.

The upshot is we suffer from little Jon Binets being parroted like a toy whores on stage, we have children dressing up in uncomfortable, age-inappropriate, and unhygenic costumes, and we have sex treated as something sick, yet interesting.

Woody Allen was all wet about it. Sex is not best when dirty; it is best when your partner is your best friend.

But back to the original topic. Forcing kids out of childhood too soon prevents them from becoming thoughtful, thinking, rational and responsible teens and adults.
(and apologies to those who think that I hijacked this thread inappropriately. I now return you to your original programming)

[ScreamingMeemie]

14. ...and if parents stopped buying them.

We, the parents, are at fault here just as much as the marketers. :hi:

[ScreamingMeemie]

12. I think, as parents, we have kind of pushed our daughters into growing

up quicker. I tried to encourage my daughter to enjoy childhood while it lasts...but I am swimming upstream. So many of her friends were into boys and makeup at 8. I bear the full responsibility of not keeping her younger longer. Toy companies may have been complicit, but it's our job as parents to resist.

[tom_paine]

15. Maybe they need to open a Stupid Spoiled Whore store

[LeftHander]

19. our consumer society already has found out...

10 year old girls wearing thongs, high heels and gobs of eye make up.

Wet Seal
Limited Too
Abercrombie
CoverGirl
Maybelline
Hot Topic
American Eagle

etc...

etc...

etc...

Brittany
Shakira
Chirstina
Jessica
Ashlee
Pink


It goes on and on and on....

Cosmetics is the American veil...

Sadly it is all so alluring too....The girls want the attention. The boys want an idealized female fantasy object. It is one thing for ADULTS to purposely play sex games with clothing and make up but to sell that image as the IMAGE of women and to promote that image to young males as being the most desireable attibutes is not good.

Teach the kids that it is okay to dress like a hooker when you are an ADULT and do it FOR intimacy OR you have enough confidence to use your sexuality for healthy and invigorating enjoyment....not to sell your self or products....Might sound a little prudish,,,,it is.

[progressivebydesign]

22. I've been giving that message to my girls..

early on we talked about makeup and trying to dress "sexy". We discussed it in very non-personal terms that many young girls dress and act in ways to be "sexually attactive" when, in fact, they are WAY too young and not intersted in sex at all. All about what messages you are sending out to the world, not just copying what some star who is 10 years older than you is wearing.

My stepdaughter is 14 and wears braces. She looks like a little girl, really, but she's my height. It GROSSES her out to no end to see adult men CHECKING HER OUT! She wears very simple jeans, nothing tight, nothing low cut, nothing suggestive.. tiny bit of make up.. but the older men look at her far too much. She understands about advertising certain things about yourself that are untrue to who you are and how old you are. She would have never owned one of those skanky "Bratz" dolls... preferring American Girl dolls a few years ago. Parents don't HAVE to let their daughter buy all the Paris Hilton crap, they have control, but so many parents are so caught up in their own self esteem issues played out on their daughters (They seem to enjoy trying to make their 14 year old daughter look hot and sexy, like it's a contest between parents). In my suburb, the parents spend thousands on their high school daughters hairstyling, nails, tanning, plastic surgery. WHen they are interviewed on the subject, the parents mostly say that they didn't have those things in school and want their daughters to have everything, or they say that they think it's extremely important that their daughters are very attactive, as it is the way for them to succeed in life. sheesh.

Unfortunately, in talking to a clerk at an adult video store, the titles that fly off the shelves are the ones that have something to do with "barely legal". Porn featuring the youngest most teen looking actresses are astronomically popular. So... the young girls who are being pressured into buying into that adult look, are playing right into that objectification.

Oh.. and to all the men in their mid-20's on up... you're grossing teenage girls out when you check them out. They laugh at you after you walk by. And they DO know what you're thinking. You're creeping them out. So stop it and get back in the minivan with the wife and kids, teenage girls don't want to have sex with you.

[Zookeeper]

35. You are so right in that last paragraph!

My teenaged daughter's usual comment about any actor over the age of 22 is, "EWWWW! He's so gross!!!" Why? "He's OLD!!!"

She also had a guy who claimed to be 17 trying to sweet talk her on her Zanga (it's like MySpace). Her response, "F**k off, PERV!" (I don't love the "language," but he did leave her alone after that.)

[ContraBass Black]

31. I didn't know Hot Topic targets children.

[HughBeaumont]

20. So, my wife and I were at a Toys R US last winter . . .

. . . looking for a present for our neighbor's six year old's birthday. I think for some reason she had a few drinks with dinner before we went that evening . . . so she's taking a stroll in the girls aisle and the whole time she's vocally spewing vitriol at the, well, let's put it bluntly, BULLSHIT toys they market to girls 11 and under. "Where the hell are the GIRL'S chemistry sets? Where the hell are the girl's DOCTOR toys? Where the hell is anything educational for a girl? No, instead the message given here is 'either be a dumb fucking club slut or a housewife'. Men run the whole fucking world, so there's not much for you to shoot for but to just put your fake tits in your slut top, change this Betsy-Wetsy's diapers or bake me a fucking cake!"

I noticed the women in the surrounding area, while looking away in embarassment, were also smiling and nodding as well.

I don't think we'll be getting drinks before shopping anymore.:dilemma:

[spuddonna]

27. LOL! Tell her I say the same thing!

And she's right. It's pathetic...

My favorite toy when I was little was my teddy bear (lol), so maybe I'm too old-fashioned to judge what makes a good toy anymore! :)

[TheBaldyMan]

29. That is one of the most beautiful posts I have ever seen on DU

you are a very lucky man to have a wife like that :)

[omega minimo]

36. You might see a lot more sharp/strong/funny posts like that on DU

if women who do so weren't attacked and shut down en masse.

Has a chilling effect.


:hi: :bounce: :hide: :bounce:

[progressivebydesign]

21. Advertisers and corporations are FORCING them to grow up.

Ever since the corporate masters decided that marketing to "tweeners" was going to be lucrative, because parents are spoiling them with thousands of dollars a year in spending cash, then the girls are "growing up faster". Has nothing to do with anything evolutionary, or biological, it's all thanks to the advertisers and marketers that NEED them to become mini-adults, so that they can BUY things.

Capitalism is really a failed experiment. We're creating kids with no soul.. no empathy.. no childhood, all in the name of consumerism.

[SoCalDem]

25. Gotta start tranin' 'em young, so they can start dating at 11

and have 25 yr old guys ogling them by the time they are 13..:puke:

I am SOOOOO glad I did not get the three girls I wanted.. I think I might have locked them inside the house.

[Gormy Cuss]

26. Reaping what they have sown.

They blew it by marketing Barbies to ever younger girls and now they can't figure out what to do next.

[beagle72]

30. You kids get out of my Parthenon!

"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers."

--Socrates, 469BC

[BlooInBloo]

32. Men.... Eternally confused about how to entertain girls....

Lemme know if somebody figures it out! Thx!

rofl

[kestrel91316]

34. They won't have this dilemna much longer............when the

Christofascists complete their takeover, girls won't need entertainment. They won't need formal education either. They will have and learn everything they need while clinging to their mothers' skirts in the kitchen and confined to the home. At thirteen they will be married off to a much older man and don their burqas. End of problem.