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Monday afternoon, as I ran on a treadmill at my gym, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a commercial for Tonka toy trucks on the overhead TV. Was I delirious from my (slow) long run or did dehydration caused me to hallucinate, because I swore their new slogan read "built for boyhood." That seemed way too ridiculous to be true, so I shrugged it off until I got home and noticed the latest best seller list. For the umpteenth week, The Dangerous Book for Boys by British authors Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden, hovered near the top of the list. Maybe I wasn't overcome by endorphins when I noticed the Tonka ad. I did a quick internet search, and Feminist Philosophers confirmed it: explicitly gendered toys are back, baby!
Was my immediate instinct to dislike children's products that seem fun but are "for boys" irrational? Mom Unplugged seems to think so. Because of the high quality content, she plans to use The Dangerous Book for Boys with both her son and daughter, and doesn't care whether the book's title says it is "for boys:"
Call me a wimp, but for better or worse, I am a very non-confrontational person and I really don't want to get into a feminist, nature vs. nurture, girls vs. boys, or any other kind of debate here or anywhere else. All I can say is that the title does not bother me in the least. Might some girls like this book? Yes. Might some boys NOT like this book? Yes. Could/should the authors have called it something else? I don't know. End of subject. I want to talk about the book, not the controversy.
The whole point is simple: kids should be out in nature and experiencing life, not sitting in front of a screen. The aim of this book is to provide a little non-preachy inspiration and some fun ideas for things to do with your kids that don't involve a screen or a joystick.
I'm not convinced it's so simple, though. (Then again, I don't mind getting into a feminist, nature vs. nurture type of debate, so what did you expect?)
Like Mom Unplugged, Amba at AbivaBlog also supports the ideas behind The Dangerous Book, although she is a bit cautious about its unintended effects on girls:
… I'm all for it. All for boys being boys in the ancient and honorable way. I think this book is a great thing… [however] People who acknowledge boys' need for rough-and-tumble, acted-out fantasy adventure, invention, skill, and physical risk have an alarming tendency to want to set up an opposite for girls -- necessary, it's implied, to help boys define what it is to be a boy -- that involves playing house, doll tea sets, frilly clothes, and a lot of domestic and social sitting around.
Now, a lot of girls may well be into a lot of that, some of the time. However, the ones I've known have also, without exception, been into running around like maniacs, riding bikes, climbing trees, getting dirty, sledding, hanging upside down from the jungle gym . . . even the odd acted-out fantasy adventure. Unless, that is, they were taught that they mustn't.
Leave this phenomenon alone, let boys enjoy it and thrive on it, as long as pushing girls back to the other extreme is not part of the program. I note that a number of people are cheerfully buying The Dangerous Book for Boys for their daughters, and why not? Girls will pick out from it the stuff that interests them.
While it is true that many adults are ignoring the book's intended audience and giving it girls, I am not so sure that it is as innocently accepted by girls as Amba is. Just reading Feminist Philosophers post about how the Tonka ads made one girl feel like she had no right to play with trucks confirmed in my mind that there is something insidious about this whole "for boys" only marketing. I'm not the only one objecting to this, either.
Amy at Pasquinade wrote in response to an Ellen Goodman column that appeared in The Boston Globe that criticized the recent hype of boys as neglected in favor of girls:
I didn't have an entirely positive reaction to The Dangerous Book for Boys, either. A friend emailed me after seeing the book
