“Word Cloud: How Toy Ad Vocabulary Reinforces Gender Stereotypes”

The other day I was rather troubled when my daughter referred to one of her sippy cups as being a “boy glass”. It has characters from Toy Story on it, and the one she always notices is Buzz Lightyear. As a formerly knee-jerk feminist (I’ve grown weary in my old age, but the sentiment is still there), it really troubled me to hear that, so now I’ve become even more focused on gender roles in what she sees. I happened across this article last night, which feeds into my current train of thought. It isn’t really surprising, but it’s interesting to see this quantified & displayed in such a visually compelling way.

http://www.achilleseffect.com/2011/03/word-cloud-how-toy-ad-vocabulary-reinforces-gender-stereotypes/