I love Christmas. Like, LOVE Christmas. As early as October I “might” start streaming the Countdown to Christmas on The Hallmark Channel. I recognize the myriad representational problems – raging heteronormativity, heavily whitewashed, almost exclusively Christian – in addition to feeding into the idealized image of small town over urban centers where everyone is upper middle class, and gainfully employed (although with seemingly endless time to spare for hot cocoa, gingerbread contests, caroling, skating, and, of course, shopping for Christmas presents.
I give myself grace in loving these movies, knowing that I actively work against these kinds of frames with my feminist scholarship and activism.
So, I do not press pause on my feminist killjoy identity, I just choose to temporarily point that activity elsewhere – here and now, towards a Target circular encouraging us to “Discover new toys at Target all season long.”
You can criticize something and still enjoy it (Ahmed, 2023, p. 80)
I remember my brother and I dog earing so many pages of the Sears catalog when we were kids in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, that the book looked like the contracted bellows of an accordion. I was not your normal assigned female at birth “girl” child, so my I circled radio-controlled cars, slot car racing tracks with their perfect figure eights, a Stretch Armstrong toy and his nemesis Stretch Monster (think, Creature from the Black Lagoon). We “stretched” those toys so violently, pulling and tugging until we tore the skin, revealing the weird semi-jellied substance that made the toy stretchable and supposedly “indestructible.” We just had to know what was inside. Another favorite was Hugo, Man of a Thousand Faces. A bust of a bald man, that came with “disguises” – wigs, glasses, prosthetic noses, scars.
I was already a killjoy before I began speaking up. I found the requirement to be a girl oppressive (Ahmed, 2017, p. 53)
To my non-binary credit, I also chose a Barbie “Fashion Face,” meant for putting on make-up and doing its hair, and an Easy Bake Oven which I thoroughly enjoyed because, cake.
I did realize that most of my toy choices were not for me, assigned “girl,” by the gifts given by other relatives (Barbies, anything PINK), and the reaction of kids when I toted my favorite toy gun or new fishing pole down to the park. My choices made others unhappy, and if, as Ahmed says, “happiness can function as a technology of inclusion” (2023, p. 105), I was definitely feeling excluded by my willful resistance to “girl” toys.
And that is how feminism can be lived: as a failure to be habituated to a gender system (Ahmed, 2017, p. 55)
Stepping into 2024, truly, we must have liberated the toys from their gendered assignments by now. Yet, as with the holidays, we are full of wishful thinking.
In 2015, Target announced that it would remove gender labels from its toy aisles, opting for the gender neutral “kids.” The brand also said it would shift from gendered based colors that signify gender – blues and primaries for “boys” and pinks and pastels for “girls” – to wood grain tones on the back of toy shelves.
Problem, solved!
This is where I would INSERT RECORD SCRATCH on the podcast. Changing terms and labels are good, if the other things change along with it.
Case in point, the Target “pre-holiday” 2024 circular. The mailer is chockful o’ gender gatekeeping around the toys that are “good for girls” and “good for boys.” Target will be getting a lump of coal for this one!
Killjoy Commitment: I am not willing to get over what is not over (Ahmed, 2023, p. 243)
The circular starts out on the wrong foot, with this image welcoming us on page 2 and encouraging us to “shop:”
Of course, female bodied people LOVE to shop and are the de facto holiday maker in a “family.” I use quotes there because I am definitely thinking cis-het-normative families.
Through visuals, we learn that what is “not for girls” are action-oriented toys that don’t revolve around cooking, shopping, or taking care of families/kids. What is for girls are plush toys they can hold and nurture, and other nurturing chores like cooking and shopping).
For boys, the Target leans into Star Wars and Marvel, and places an emphasis on characters' weapons. We see a boy with a light saber, two others with a Spider Man and Captain America “blaster” that shoots disks, one wearing Hulk “smash role play fists,” and there is even a boy with a Darth Vader bot.
Perhaps the most telling are toys within the same category or of a similar style, that are framed in distinctively gendered ways.
Remember this when you are tempted to tell a "joke" about female presenting drivers... You get what you pay for, thanks to Target and all the gender police insuring that girls and boys are playing with the "right" toys.
As always, when you hear those jokes, go with your feminist killjoy gut:
Killjoy Maxim: When it is not funny, do not laugh! (Ahmed, 2023, p. 242)
Works Cited:
Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press.
Ahmed, S. (2023). The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way. Seal Press.
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