“What? A boy who plays with Barbie dolls? This is messed up man. Only girls play dolls. Everyone knows it! That's seven-year-old Cavin's response when asked what he thinks of boys playing with Barbie dolls. Listening to these words, we can realize that even from a very young age, children have been heavily impacted by gender throughout society. According to sociologist James M. Henslin, gender refers to “the behaviors and attitudes that a society considers appropriate for its men and women; masculinity or femininity” (280). Over time, gender has been a way of thinking about what is appropriate for different sexes, a term that Henslin defines as "biological characteristics that distinguish women from men, consisting of primary and secondary sexual characteristics" (280 ). For many years, society has firmly constructed gender characteristics and continued to encourage traditional gender roles among new generations. Toys, common objects that many children play with early in life, are actually an agent of gender socialization that many people take for granted. Through observations at a local toy store, such as Toys R Us, one can recognize how toys reinforce gender roles. To fully understand toys as reinforcing gender roles, one can look at the toy display in Toys R Us. Walking through a toy store, one can see the obvious categories according to which toys are separated, including by gender. Upon entering Toys R Us, you can see that the aisle categories on the left side are in blue. Some of the categories in this section were action figures, cars and trucks. From an overview, the colors featured in these aisles are in dark colors like dark blue, black, dark gray, dark green, dark orange, etc. In this part of...... middle of paper... ...stratification - inequality of power, property and prestige between men and women (Henslin 280) - is still found within our society , and men are generally superior to women; women raise feminism. Henslin defines feminism as “the philosophy that men and women should be equal politically, economically, and socially; activities organized in favor of this principle” (292). An example of a toy I've seen showing feminism is a pink bow and arrow in the archery section of the toy store. Although black bows and arrows dominated this aisle, there was a bow and arrow for girls showing that women have the right to be equal to men. One last game that I saw in Toys R Us that interested me was a video game called Grand Theft Auto, which is a video game aimed at boys. The goal of this game is to join gangs and do their "dirty work". In parts of this