Instruction:
Yoav Ziv

My project examines our perception of gender and how this perception is expressed in children’s toys and affects child development.

As a tomboy who defied social norms, I always felt different from my gender, as if I were doing things “backward”. For my final project, I chose to focus on toys as an area of influence and tool for change, since this is where stereotypes about gender start to become permanent with color, morphology, and areas of interest. This is expressed in the separation between construction, deconstruction, war, and thinking games (intended for boys) and dress-up, cooking, and grooming games (intended for girls). This is prevalent even in our era, where we have more than forty types of gender, and even among children who identify as a gender different from their biological sex. This separation affects children’s futures, their interests, and their ability to imagine a variety of identities and personal and professional aspirations for themselves.
In the project, I chose to tackle the immediate association of Barbie with girls and Superman with boys, allowing children to choose the appearance and gender attribution of their toy: it can be a feminine character, a masculine character, or a queer character – all options are open.

The toy is comprised of a main body to which limbs can be attached: three different kinds of hands, legs, and heads. Due to its triangular form, the body works in both directions: either a feminine or masculine body shape can be emphasized by flipping the triangle.

Photo: Michael Svadron