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Abstract

I began my St. Mary’s Project with an interest in toys and the messages they can convey. I thought about the connection between toys and children’s development and believe game playing is a major way we humans engage in and learn about life. A child's play is often a way they train for adulthood. Issues of gender development are what began to interest me most. Gender identity is very much shaped by the games and toys that children play with. When children play with toys like tea sets and easy-bake ovens they model themselves in domestic roles at an early age. Boys playing with airplanes and fire engines imagine being heroes and being tough, strong men. I believe that children’s toys reinforce, if not create, much of the gender stereotypes that exist in our culture. Gender is not only about a person’s sexual identity; it is at the root of all natural and learned behaviors, social roles, and cultural assumptions. Play is actually a big part of our culture and our adulthood even after those stuffed animals and toy trains have been put away in boxes in the attic. Our culture accepts and encourages the way toys shape the gender of their children. Teaching young girls how to be like Martha Stewart and boys how to be firemen is the norm in our society. Teaching boys how to be boys and girls how to be girls is a very divided lesson that is shaped by game playing in our society. Gender difference is first learned through childhood play and then acted out in later years. I explore these issues of gender and childhood in my work by re-contextualizing and transforming the very toys that shape us so.

I use found objects that have certain associations with happy and innocent childhoods, which include games, toys, and candies. These toys might at first glance seem innocent but after closer inspection one sees the toys have been altered sometimes in ways that seem the opposite of innocent. People's first impulse to interact with something cuddly might suddenly switch to repulsion.

My hope from making these pieces is that the gaps between male and female won’t stay so wide. Hopefully people will walk away thinking about how they don’t need to be apart of categories and listen to the stereotypes set up by society.

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