How Toy Ad Vocabulary Reinforces Gender Stereotypes
achilleseffect.com
achilleseffect.com
If you really think everyone else is being irrational, stop writing blog posts. Put your money where your mouth is and arb it.
Of course, if boys really want ultimate special forces power battle swords and girls really want mommy&me friendship magic wands, you will lose your time/money. But you are confident that won't happen, right?
Zach Weiner (SMBC) did a comic that fairly eloquently expresses the problem: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883
The problem highlighted in the blog post is that children are conditioned by the toys they are bought, and those that they see their friends with, to perpetuate the gender roles and stereotypes that have been so omnipresent--and harmful--in our society.
I think the answer is far more boring than most pedants would like. It's both.
Biologically, men are born with hormones that give them aggressive traits, while women are born with hormones that give them nurturing traits. These are adaptive influences: male protector, female child-rearer; a partnership that works. Advertisers target their message to exploit these instincts.
None of the above implies that we cannot rise above our instinctual urges and make something different of our lives. It also does not imply that any of this is black & white. Some men are born passive and some women are born aggressive. Some women have no desire to have children. Some men prefer to stay at home and raise their children.
Humans are a complex and diverse bunch, but as with most systems, there is a distribution wherein lies a "typical" state of being. When there's money to be made, you don't make it by ignoring the facts, so advertisers target the "typical" boy and girl, and make a boat load of money doing it.
Regarding gender differences being in-born, poster cpt.sanity wrote: “It has been repeatedly shown and is accepted as fact in modern psychology from Rogers onwards, that while sex is a biological fact, gender roles are sociologically determined, largely by peer pressure in early years and mediated by advertising and media images.”