Once Upon a Time There Were No Toys for Boys and Toys for Girls
Seduced by the $49 sale price and succumbing to the pressure to keep up with the neighborhood Joneses who’d given their children iPads in preschool, I bought two Kindle Fires for my then five- and seven-year-old daughters. The devices were, as advertised, easy to set up: I signed in, entered my children’s birthdays and then... their genders.
As anyone trying to raise a gender-independent kid, knows, “What is your child’s gender?” can be a difficult or unpleasant question to answer. I always wish Why do you want to know? was an option in the drop-down menu.
Amazon wanted to know because they’d filter every app, video, and book that loaded onto it according to the way I replied. Answer “boy” and the screen filled with sports themes and bold colors. Answer “girl” and it was as if a bottle of calamine lotion had dripped down the screen, coloring every app pink and bestowing upon it a fairy-tale theme.