Assvertising

Relevant Transcript: A computer-generated version of Chuck the Truck bounds into frame, introducing himself as "Your boy's new friend!" Moments later, as the kid in the commercial plays, the announcer again enthuses that Chuck is "Your boy's new best friend!"

I just found it rather interesting that this commercial found it necessary to twice insist that Chuck the Truck is your boy's friend. Because a girl would never, ever want to play with a truck. Nor should she want to.

When Melissa and I were emailing back and forth about this ad, she said:

I know I'm a big poopypants and everything, but I hate gendered anthropomorphized toys, because they're almost always male. It's "Chuck the Truck" and "Thomas the Tank Engine" (yeah, I know it's a cartoon, but a cartoon obviously designed with marketing toys in mind) and blah blah, which reflects little boys' male personhood back to them, whereas the EZ-Bake Oven isn't "Shirley the Oven" -- "girls' toys" just underline girls' need to engage in service and don't reflect back any personhood at all, unless it's a babydoll, which is a person that the girl needs to care for.

So kids who play with "boys' toys" get the message that being male is being a person, and kids who play with "girls' toys" get the message that being female is being a servant to chores and other people.

Disturbing, right?

Totally. I assumed that none of Chuck's "friends" shown at the end of the advert are female, because none of them are pink. Ahem. A quick look at Chuck's website proves me right.

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