Toying with kids' gender stereotypes

When my godson grows up, he wants to be a bumble bee. That's not a bad ambition for a boy who is almost four

When my godson grows up, he wants to be a bumble bee. That's not a bad ambition for a boy who is almost four. As Bee Movie tells us, bees are responsible, good-humoured if you don't mess with them, smartly dressed even if they stick to the same two colours, and get to buzz about and make lots of honey. His twin brother wants to be a fireman, writes Quentin Fottrell.

Their parents are proud of their bee and fireman aspirations. When one of the boys came home from kindergarten, he asked, "Are ponies for girls?" No, he was told, ponies are for everybody. Their motto: their children can be anything they want to be in life . . . as long as it doesn't involve using guns, real or otherwise.

This Christmas, one fancy Dublin store is selling realistic toy handguns which fire plastic pellets. The box says they're not for children under three and warns the user not to fire at animals or humans, as if a child of four would be able to read the instructions and suddenly have an epiphany about the inherent dangers of using firearms.

Buying toy guns for little boys is the most reckless type of social stereotyping: little boys must be aggressive and foolhardy, while little girls must be beautiful and fey.

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A hop, skip and a jump away from the guns, there are racks piled high with pink tutus, shredded as if fashioned in some enchanted forest where little girls are bewitched to believe they are pretty, ephemeral waifs. They are one layer of chiffon away from a child pageant costume. I wouldn't put a niece of mine in one of those things.

Children rarely grow up free from the expectations of others. We always tell girls how pretty they are. Why not tell them they are smart instead? We tell boys they are brave for not crying. Why not just let them ball? They will be bombarded with enough dire messages about masculinity and femininity later in life.

Toys for boys go from Bob the Builder to Thomas the Tank Engine at age four to troubled superheroes like Batman at age five. It's one giant leap for a four-year-old to make, imaginatively and emotionally. They must be innocent and industrious one minute, and fight the forces of evil the next. (Little girls must be perennial princesses.)

When I was a snotty-nosed kid, I tied the string of my bomber jacket around my neck and ran around the garden like a lunatic if I wanted to be Superman. Or Superman one day and Wonder Woman the next. (Diana Prince always had the last laugh.) This was at the dawn of He-Man, but before video nasties like Grand Theft Auto.

Chinese toys with lead are bad, but so are toys coated with a toxic cocktail of adult prejudice, fear and loathing about gender and sexuality and what maketh a man. Gender stereotyping can be as destructive as racial stereotyping: we plead with young men not to speed, but give their younger brothers gifts entitled The Dangerous Book for Boys.

It's time for a mass decommissioning. A headline in this newspaper last week, "Man slashed with samurai sword", is the result of boys becoming he-men. If you sell samurai swords to young men, you will open the paper to read these headlines. It's that simple. You don't have to be a whiz with a chemistry set to figure that one out.

Boys wear low-slung jeans, so you can see their Y-fronts. This is from rap/hip-hop prison culture. (Inmates don't wear belts.) But a more worrying trend is teenage boys walking around Dublin with their hands down the front of their trousers, grabbing hold of their family jewels. This is yet more aggressive gangland culture imported through music.

This is not about game-playing and entertainment; it's about role-playing and conditioning. Nor are gay men immune: tight T-shirts, military gear and muscles are the same hypermasculine byproduct that heterosexual men deal with. Many gay men are also obsessed with prospective partners being "straight-acting" - whatever that means.

There are some exceptions. Nursing, once an all-female profession and one that is still grossly underpaid, requires the qualities that any man or woman would be proud of: emotional strength, compassion, intelligence and all the rest. Consultants - some brash, some not - breeze through their rounds. Nurses abide. More men are joining their ranks. A friend is a sister in a cancer ward. He deals with life and death, and is often by his patients' sides when they die. He does this with good humour, sometimes tears, always grace. In fact, this sister is probably one of the finest men I know. He doesn't want to be on TV. He wants to be matron by the time he is 30.

Girls may like Meccano. Boys may love My Little Pony. It's no big deal. It doesn't mean anything. It is what it is. They could become talented architects or veterinarians, interior designers or organic farmers, engineers or hairdressers. It may be too late to buy new presents for little girls and boys this Christmas, but it's still not too late to switch them.

John Waters is on leave