Is it no longer OK to buy your daughter a doll?

'Tis the season for anxious parenting

Doll
(Image credit: (Bettmann/CORBIS))

We should be living in shopping's age of ease. In a matter of minutes you can find the best product for the best price; two days later it's at your door. But this era also happens to be one of increasing awareness about the social and environmental impact of the goods we buy. All that time we've gained through technology? We end up spending it in conscientious deliberation.

Thanks to the feminist revival of the past half-decade more and more parents now hesitate to buy their daughters a doll or sons an action figure. In Australia, activists are calling for a "No Gender December;" in the UK a campaign called "Let Toys Be Toys" is pushing for gender-neutral toys; in Sweden some toy stores are now gender neutral; and here in the States resistance to the pink aisle is growing louder and louder.

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Elissa Strauss

Elissa Strauss writes about the intersection of gender and culture for TheWeek.com. She also writes regularly for Elle.com and the Jewish Daily Forward, where she is a weekly columnist.