They cannot be serious.
Via the Facebook page Destroy the Joint:
It’s Monopoly for Gurrulz.
Of all the icons in the universe that could be produced for “girls only”, perhaps the last one you’d think of would be good old Monopoly. Sadly – it has.
Monopoly “for girls” has been around for a while, but perhaps you haven’t heard of it. To make sure it is suitable for the “fairer sex”, it’s:
•Packaged in a keepsake storage box with removable tray and non-glass mirrored insert
•Has a pink game-board and dice with unique properties to buy such as spas and jewelry stores
•Has boutiques and malls instead of houses and hotels
•Has Instant Message and Text Message cards instead of Chance and Community Chest
Spas and jewelry stores; boutiques and malls. Because the female of the species really is that stupid and that limited and that weird and creepy and alien.
It makes me want to…well, to destroy the joint.
I am instantly reminded of this immortal satire by Ellen DeGeneres, a review of Bic For Her.
Ah yes, I remember that.
This sort of thing used to be the norm. Take a look at vintage Battleship:
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120303020434/battleship/images/thumb/f/fd/Battleship-1.jpg/300px-Battleship-1.jpg
This site (B&W) won’t take an image, but if you follow the link, you can see the vintage board game box cover. You can see Dad and Son happily playing Battleship, while Mom and Sis happily do the dishes in the background! Isn’t it JUST GREAT to be a girl??????
My daughters would roll their eyes so hard at that, we’d be trying to get the eyeballs back from the cats. So to speak.
If I ever buy another version of Monopoly, it’s going to be the Dr Who one, not that silly pink travesty.
The daughters went through a Barbie phase in their youth, but as I remember, it wasn’t too long before the Barbies were under the beds, and the dinosaurs and Troll dolls and stuffed cats were wearing the Barbie clothes and had moved into the pink house.
Who sits in the marketing departments of the companies and decides putting out something so deliberately segregating *improves* sales? Have they got actual evidence this sells to a larger market share than not doing it?
Are they affected by a country’s regional differences where girls wouldn’t be socially/famillially allowed to use products unless they were gender segregated as being for ‘normal’ girls? Do these products sell in Europe? Or just Anglo North America?
Are boys, affected by the same socialization, going to come anywhere near a multiplayer game framed in ways that would publically open them to censure and ridicule for participation with the props and specifics?…so there’s even less social interaction between the kids hammered into the gender roles?
Huh… I can imagine the anti-feminist scoffing now, “wow, you’ve had a game made just for you? How awful for you! Wait, I thought you wanted more representation in games?” Because, you know, it’s the act of trying to include girls in and of itself that’s the problem, and not the execution or the underlying attitudes being displayed.
I hope we grow out of this nonsense before my niece is old enough to be influenced by it.
Next up: chess for girls! In hot pink/white of course. Bonus points for anthropomorphized chess pieces, especially if the company can partner with Disney and use their characters. That way the queens can be Disney princesses (and they’ll be the best pieces either way). And if the girls get tired of the dull and complicated game, they can always use the board and pieces to play tea party!
Girls don’t get chess, silly, they get checkers.
Let’s not forget the appropriate girl role as cheerleader and admirer!
http://i.walmartimages.com/i/p/00/84/01/44/04/0084014404025_AV_500X500.jpg
Remember – make sure to get the right color:
http://notanothermummyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/boys-and-girls-drum-kit.jpg
Even a 7-year-old can see the problem!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/01/1274307/-Lego-Sexism-Pointed-out-in-Awesome-Letter-by-7-Year-Old-Girl#
No, MyaR, girls don’t get chess OR checkers – they get the card game “Old Maid” O_O
Because it must be brought up, I shall describe the horror that was… Careers for Girls!
Careers is a classic board game and one of my personal favorite of the American-style boardgames. (Indeed, one of the very few American-style games I care about in the slightest.) You have a monopoly-like board, where you move around in a square, except you can take paths off the square into the middle of the board representing different careers. The careers reward you with money, fame, and happiness. At the start of the game, you establish your own personal winning combination of those three values, and then you attempt to gather what you need to win. It’s a cool game.
So, Parker Brothers decides to put out Careers for Girls. As you can imagine, it’s pink. “Male” career paths like “Go to sea” or “Farming” get replaced with “Fashion designer” and “school teacher”. You can no longer pick your own formula for winning at the start of the game, the game provides you with one, high in happiness points! Because god forbid women start after money or fame. Oh, and the cards that you can use to modify your dice role and which add make the basic careers remarkably strategic for an American-style boardgame are gone. Too complicated. Girls, your fate will be controlled almost entirely by the dice. Oh, and the final insult? The greatest career in the basic game was Astronaut. It was hard to get into, but it had massive rewards in every category. You wanted to get into it. What did Careers for Girls replace Astronaut with?
Mommy.
Yeah.
This anti-feminist travesty was still being produced in the 1990’s.
suttkus, ewwww.
You know, this Monopoly edition wouldn’t bother me so much if they called it something else. “Monopoly for Mallrats.” “Monopoly for Fashionistas.” Something like that. Something that didn’t imply that all girls love pink and shopping and pink.
Because there’s nothing wrong with liking those things. Earlier today I was reading a comment thread on Facebook and several women were expressing their love for Elle Woods, Reese Witherspoon’s character in Legally Blonde; a girly-girl, pink loving character who’s also smart and feminist.
I noticed this year that kinder surprise eggs have started doing this too. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re a chocolate egg with a small toy to be put together inside. Half the fun is the “surprise” of what type of little toy you’ll get. Anyone getting the “just for girls” version, completely misses that, they’ll know as soon as they see the wrapper that they’re getting something pink & princessy.
Oh, no! It’s worse than I’ve heard! Here’s a picture of the “mommy” track from Careers for Girls:
http://boardgamegeek.com/image/344807/careers-for-girls
You get fame and happiness by telling your fellow players how to change a diaper! And massive fame for describing what’s for supper! And I think this is from the 90’s version instead of the 72 version (since Mommy isn’t replacing Astronaut here, or maybe my memory is screwed up, it happens).
@ suttkus, 14
Is it just me, or does it say “tell us the names of your 8 children” on that board? Is that the threshold to being a professional mommy, or is it the Quiverfull edition?
Should include directions for how do disenfranchise remaining 48%!