A new Swedish toy catalogue is enjoying free publicity after challenging traditional gender roles in its pages. Leklust, which pictures a girl driving a toy racing cars and a boy dressed as Spider-man pushing a pink pram, has grabbed the media’s and the public’s attention.
Leklust CEO Kaj Wiberg said it is high time that old-fashioned rules about girls’ and boys’ toys were put to bed. “Gender roles are an outdated thing,” he told Metro newspaper.
The concept has been welcomed by the country’s Feminist Initiative, with spokesman Carl Emanuelsson telling The Local, “It’s great that this company has tried to show that people don’t need to be stuck in gender roles. Examples such as these show other ways that we can break free from the roles that are forced on us, the roles that we are limited by,” he added.
As well as the racing driver girl and the Spider-man dad, the catalogue also features a boy slaving over a toy stove.
“I’m 71 years old, and those of us who have worked in this industry for a while know that boys play with doll houses. We know that boys can play with Barbie dolls,” Wiberg told Metro.
The unusual adverts have been shared on social media sites and have even been featured on ‘Lady Dahmer’s’ prominent feminist blog.
“The problem with toy stores and their catalogues is that they’re selling a concept; an idea about boys and girls and what kind of qualities and interests they should have,” Lady Dahmer told The Local. “It’s about money because as long as they can fool us into believing boys and girls are fundamentally different, they can keep selling us twice as much.”
“Children have a strong need to fit in, not stand out. When they see what is “right” for their gender, it becomes less likely that they dare to break the norms,” she said.
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