Gender problems spiked recently when Hasbro and Playskool, the company behind the building toy Mr. Potato Head, announced that their titular character would be rebranded as a non-gender-based toy. This means that future packaging will not use identifying terms such as Mr. or Mrs. and instead focus on allowing the user to create any Potato Head character with the supplied parts.
There are two interesting things to note about this. First, the original concept for the toy was that Hasbro supplied the parts and the users broke out their own potatoes to festoon with feet, hands, eyes, etc. The whole idea behind building as play is to allow children in particular to explore their understanding of how the world works and see what new things they can discover. I have not recalled ever seeing a study in which scientists were worried if children put hands where legs should be, or gave Mrs. Potato Head a pipe to smoke. Nobody rolled out a tape measure to see if the eyes were inserted levelly. It was play building, for heaven’s sake!
The second thing about removing the names of things is that nouns are a necessity, and children who are learning about the world need solid parameters by which they can identify that world, and the toy company seems to want to remove those definitions in favor of appealing to an audience that should not have cause to fret about such things. Not everything is tailor made for individuals. Except for men’s clothing, which requires a tailor.
Let’s go out on a limb and say, for sake of argument, that there is a sect out there that eschews shoes; when they visit the department store, do they avoid the shoe department like vampires avoid the garlic in the produce aisle? They probably just don’t venture down that aisle. In the same manner, if a child wants to build Sam and Marsha Potato Head, and not have them be Mr. and Mrs., what harm does that do?
This news came along with the bombshell dropped on readers of Theodore Geissel/Dr. Seuss’s classic books, announcing that several of his tales will no longer be published because they depict racial stereotypes. One example was of Asians with pointed hats. Folks, hate to point this out, but those hats were worn by farmers for generations (and, I’ve read, even by Samurai); it’s not a stereotype, but a historical reference. Some people wince when reading how Dr. Seuss referred to a “china man,” but we’re looking at old things with eyes directed by a brain from another era. Another example was of African natives hauling things strung on poles; that too has historical basis of fact. Natives didn’t have Jeeps or flatbed trucks. Check out any old (and I mean before WWII) National Geographic and you’ll see actual photos of these.
Maybe our problem is that everybody wants to be included, but on their own terms. Being white is problematic because we don’t often become a party to observations about what makes us the subject of study or jokes. However, I remember Eddie Murphy doing a damn good stint in full white person makeup a few years ago, and he used white humor in his comedy routines, and I laughed until my tummy hurt. It was refreshing to take a ribbing about being. . . .how do I say this? . . . .the broth in the soup pot. Think about what goes into a soup; the broth is the major component, and then other things are added to bring individual character to the whole concoction. Nobody would pick on half a chunk of carrot; it’s a carrot and it’s in the soup. We should be more diligent in defining our own history, rather than trying to conceal it or change how we categorize it. What is, is. What was, was. What our future is, will be built on what we learned then and do now.
Like poking features into a potato.
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