The Weekly Whims Of HatManJim: From The Mouths Of Babes… Toys ‘R’ Us Gets Told Off By A Bunch Of Kids

A weather-beaten eye cast over the media: HatManJim looks at a story in the headlines and as a feminist with a penis (Menimist? Femi-meni-mist? I just believe i n women’s rights, I’m not having gender-reassignment. OK?), attempts to map the sexism inherent in the press, without inadvertently saying anything lecherous about breasts.

This week is more about education than anything else. Specifically, education in Sweden, where a group of sixth graders (Year 7s to us UK residents) have made a complaint to a retail watchdog about Toys ‘R’ Us promoting ”outdated gender roles”. And the complaint has been upheld. A multinational toy retailer just got a ticking off from a bunch of 11 year olds.

The watchdog in question, the Reklamombudsmannen (Ro), agreed with the children that the company’s Christmas catalogue featured “outdated gender roles because boys and girls were shown playing with different types of toys, whereby the boys were portrayed as active and the girls as passive”.

What I found really interesting about this was the fact that their teacher described the complaint as the culmination of more than two years of “long-term work” by the students on gender roles. What the hell? Does every sixth grade kid in Sweden do two-year projects on gender roles, culminating in handing a public bitch-slap to a major company?

Then again, why the hell not? In a consumerist society where from an early age we are constantly bombarded by advertising telling us the difference between male and female (boys like football, violence and heroes; girls like cooking and dolls, especially if they can change the dolls’ nappies) why should the education system not step in to provide a little balance?

Of course, there are a number of reasons this will not happen (outside of Scandinavia). Any discussion of gender can of course be seen as leading to discussions on sex and that’s something that certain conservative elements would not let into primary/early secondary school in a million years. Except in Scandinavia where children as young as seven start learning about sex. Oddly enough there are very low rates of teenage pregnancy and STIs there.

Children are not stupid; ask Jeffrey the giraffe and his sexist retail team. Perhaps its time we gave them a little more credit.

HatManJim’s column will appear every Saturday.