I mentioned in an audiopost earlier that the toys advertised on TV are stupid, but I did not elaborate on the how's and why's of their stupidity. Please allow me to do so now.

Many of the toys aimed at girls frankly make me embarrassed to be a female. Judging by the toys offered, the ideal way for a girl to spend her time is putting on make-up and shopping at the mall. Bratz and Flavas look like little tramps who only think about boys and parties. I don't see anything here that encourages real creativity or sparks imagination. This is what girls are encouraged to dream about: clothes and make-up. How disappointing.

So why do I even care? I keep thinking that perhaps there is a connection between this and how females are perceived in general. I'm always shocked and dismayed when I read or hear someone say that they just don't like or respect women. It bothers me even more when I hear it coming from another woman. These people claim that women are shallow and uninteresting. They claim women only want to talk about men, clothes, hair, make-up, and shopping. And when I see toys that reinforce that stereotype in impressionable girls, it disturbs me.

So last night when I was griping about this, Joel asked me what girls should play with. To be honest, I don't know. Maybe my perspective is all screwed up because 1.) I was and still am a tom-boy; and 2.) my parents couldn't afford expensive Barbie dolls and accessories. We played with off-brand dolls and made their clothes ourselves out of scraps of cloth and tissue paper. We made their houses out of cardboard boxes and legos. But we didn't even play with them all that much. We had stuffed animals, cars, trucks, John Deere tractors, lots of plastic farm animals and fencing, electric trains, board games, tinker toys and lincoln logs, lots of Fisher Price little people, and lots of second hand toys that were probably as old as our parents. OK, and Transformers. We were able to whine and complain until our parents bought us those.

See, most of those toys are gender neutral or even considered boys' toys. But there's such a strict barrier between what girls play with and what boys play with in these ads. Boys get trucks, robots, and construction sets. Girls get air-brush tattoo machines, voice-activated diaries, and "truth detectors" that reveal secret crushes. The only gender neutral toys I see are the old classic board games (and new upstarts like "Gooey Louie," where you pick gooeys out of Louie's nose! Good grief).

But why aren't trucks gender neutral? You don't have to have testicles to enjoy a truck. How about your Bratz doll spend her days helping her dad at his construction company before getting dressed up for a night on the town? Maybe that's not the bratty thing to do.

I'm probably just projecting my own insecurities, jealousies, and gender issues onto these ads. I'm sure millions of dollars and hours of research have gone into finding out what girls want and what boys want, and these ads reflect a reality that I'm trying to deny in vain. It's hardwired into our brains: boys build things to impress girls, girls put on make-up to impress boys. You want to know the unvarnished truth? I wrecked my dolls trying to put make-up on them with permanent markers. There. I wanted to play with dolls and make-up, too. So I'm not only a silly girl, but a hypocrite, too.

I will admit, though, that the baby dolls have me quite impressed. For a long time, some people have claimed that baby dolls portray an unrealistic portrait of parenthood, encouraging girls to become mothers before they're ready by setting up unrealistic expectations of how a baby behaves. But these modern baby dolls are so realistic what with complaining about being hungry, needing a diaper change, and running a fever, they're almost as big of a pain in the ass as the real thing. If they come out with a model that cries between 1:00 AM and 3:00 AM every night, maybe they'd prevent a few teen pregnancies.