Friday, November 20, 2009

fun with the 2009 target catalog

omg... my besties gave me a copy of the target toy catalog for 2009 and pointed out the front cover.

at first i thought it was just your typical run of the mill gender socialization propaganda...
white girl on the cover? check.
is she wearing pink? check.
is she wearing a tiara? check.
is she wearing a tutu? check.
is the tutu pink? check.
is she smiling? check.
is she playing with barbie? check.
is there a little boy in the image? check.
is he doing one of the following: making a mess, eating something or expressing anger? check.

ok, the basics are covered.

but upon further inspection, i realize that the barbie is holding Lego flowers.... and...wait a minute...are those church bells i see?! is that a priest/pastor/bishop/knight/pawn getting ready to perform a marriage?! (clearly i know very little about church officials...or the game of chess)


holy shit... that little boy isnt just upset because she is playing with his (read: a boy's) toy... he is mad because she is marrying them!

so not only do we have an image of a smiling white girl wearing a pink tutu and tiara playing with barbie while a little boy is expressing anger...but we can add heteronormative relationships and male aversion to marriage to the list. yay! the only things missing are caption bubbles:


as a silver lining i like to look at this image and imagine that the little boy is upset for other reasons...
or maybe the little boy is a radical activist:

the idea of the little boy being a big ol' queer or a radical activist was quickly squelched when i turned the page to find the following images....

page 18...


page 21...

*sigh*

thank god im barren and dont have to deal with toy catalogs.


11 comments:

  1. Excuse me, I have to go clean chewed-up grape particles off my monitor.

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  2. I love this. At first I got excited because I thought the girl was just playing with the transformer. Then I saw what was really going on. If you look even closer, you can see that both kids got lego sets for Christmas, there's a pink tub and a blue tub. According to the description on the target website, the boy legos come with doors and windows and lots of cool stuff. The girl legos come with a pony and flowers.

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  3. This is 'freakin hilarious!

    And hey, you've been missed...

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  4. Your besties must be real social activists and have a big motabas!

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  5. big motabas? check.

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  6. *sarcasm* Why must you ruin my fondest childhood memories of disney?!?!? Tomato, Tomatoe...You say sexual assault & battery...disney says love and affliction, oops scratch that, I meant love and AFFECTION, yeah yeah ;-) Great post!

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  7. I just wanted to say that I wholeheartedly want all of these images as posters. :D

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  8. I just found your blog via the SQ's blogroll and thought I'd say hi. This post is hysterical - thanks for the laugh!!

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  9. Halleluiah! My daughter sent me this. My job as a mother is done!

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  10. I heard this on Qn. Liked it!

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