The Pressure on Children: Compulsory Toxic Masculinity, Femininity, Gender, and Heterosexuality etc.
From birth, toys are separated by gender. Cisgender/straight/able-bodied/neurotypical white men are seen as the "default" human beings that society revolves around; everyone else is seen as a lesser alternative. And if you are not cisgender, straight, or white, forget about seeing yourself in toys. Some kids are neither boys nor girls or don't fit in the binary.
It is essential not to let gender dictate play; play is crucial in a child's development and helps shape their worldview and relations to others. For example, to be a girl, a child must perform femininity and see their value only in unattainable white-standard beauty; they cannot play rough. They must reserve their emotions for performing labor for others.
Dreaming big means finally seeing "Doctor Barbie" created, while boys have had career toys and every other toy genre (sci-fi, etc.) available the entire time.
To be a boy, one must repress all emotions except anger and entitlement because that's power. Boys live out violence and colonialism through G.I. Joe and Transformers. A male-dominated society creates emotionally volatile and incompetent men who thrive on their privilege and harbor abusive relationships, starting with these childhood experiences. The onesie shows that heterosexuality is imposed on literal infants.
Usually, the only toy options that are untainted by this is open-ended play, like blocks.
In popular franchises, there will be only one girl, maybe two. She will be skimpily clad, over-sexualized, straight, white, conventionally attractive, able-bodied, and fail the "sexy lamp" and "Bechdel" tests (which aren't even intended to test for all women's representation, but cinema is so bad that most movies fail even these tests), etc.
She will be effortlessly cool because she "is not like other girls", meaning she hates other women and flouts "ditzy" feminine qualities; while simultaneously being thin, conventionally attractive, white, able-bodied, etc.
For example, the cool skinny trash-talking female character that is constantly eating fast food, yet never puts on weight, and is posited as the down-to-earth alternative to other women (if there are any).
Our double standard is that girls need to perform femininity, but then femininity is seen as a weakness, but a girl performing masculinity or striving for simply neutrality is also shunned, and so on. Performing womanhood is a moving target with no flexibility unless one is also straight, able-bodied, white, and so on...
Our double standard is that girls need to perform femininity, but then femininity is seen as a weakness, but a girl performing masculinity or striving for simply neutrality is also shunned, and so on. Performing womanhood is a moving target with no flexibility unless one is also straight, able-bodied, white, and so on...
Story
If there need to be promotional storylines or media for the toy, they will revolve around exploration, friendship, kindness, and positive qualities that foster healthy environments, growth, and wellbeing.
Expansion packs can provide new parts for further mix-and-match. There won't be any weapons, just cool technology with different skills like exploration (space, water, forests...) Other packs can promote art, reading, environmentalism, animals, etc.
Expansion packs can show how the things around us are special and fun to learn about.
Fully poseable joints! Equipped to explore!
The doll has interchangeable parts. Kids can mix-and-match parts of various size, function, aesthetic, and level of robot-ness. These parts are open to interpretation, so that kids may shape their own stories.
Sketches
The first few color scheme explorations
3d Models
3d Printing: Formlabs and Makerbot Printers / 3d Models: Rhino / Drawings: Photoshop
Thank you!