Hon! Can You Get Me a Sandwich?

On a recent Saturday I was enjoying an afternoon of cartoons. After about half an hour, I noticed a disturbing pattern in the commercials. For little boys there were commercials about monster trucks, muscular action figures, and things that explode. Little boys were shown throwing their heads back and giggling or making the sound effects that only little boys make when in the thick of playtime. It was all fun and games until the the commercials aimed at little girls aired. Toy ovens, little vacuum cleaners, and babies who could really cry and pee were advertised to appease little princesses. I kept watching hoping that at some point there would be a commercial for Ivy League, Presidential, or Business Suit Barbie, but that never happened. The whole experience got me thinking about the way we are trained to believe what our roles are from early on and how those assumptions can ultimately be a detriment to us as adults.

Based on what I saw that day, I feel it safe to assume that the message sent to our kids early on is that the role of boys is to play while girls are supposed to pick up the boys' toys and cook post-recreation snacks in a tiny oven heated by a light bulb. While Little Tommy is making his volcano explode and fighting imaginary wars with his superhero action figures, Little Susie is in the back room wearing an apron, pushing her baby mop, and trying to stop the crying of her ever peeing baby. As it is in kid land, so it is in adulthood.

Though many of us are much more evolved than what was implied by the advertising I saw, there are many who still subscribe to the implied theory that men make messes and women serve to clean them up. In adult television programming the husband is often a selfish, immature oaf who is always getting into trouble and the wife is a homemaking saint who rules with an iron fist (the other hand is used to dust something). This premise comes from somewhere and I am now convinced that place is childhood. Despite what appears to be a dire existence, I am convinced there is hope. That hope starts with teaching our children their REAL roles; those of self-sufficient, responsible, fair-minded, humans with integrity. Once we implement this theory, our boys will know they don't have to be limited to living as a silly man who does nothing but make trouble for his wife and our little girls will know their adult existence doesn't have to be spent at the beck and call of a man who "underappreciates" her greatness.

I am sure I won't have a job in advertising but I will have a hand in helping to mold the minds of my future children, nieces, and nephews. It is time we stop limiting our children based on gender and start encouraging them to move beyond the dribble we pass off as gender roles.