7.Genderization

But little girls aren’t just building triple bunkbeds and decorating doll house rooms with theRoominate set. When I visit Roominate’screators at their Toy Fair booth, Chen andBrooks are standing behind a model of SanFrancisco’s Bay Bridge. It’s one modeled off ofan 11-year-old’s design that originally featuredpipe cleaners as suspension cables, and tookhalf an hour for Chen and Brooks to recreate,they say. They’ve also seen test groupsmanufacture everything from amusement parkrides with the spinning circuit motors to the Great Wall of China.Still, while Chen and Brooks claim that their toy might be less “pinkified” than, say, GoldieBlox, the toy doeshave some trappings of stereotypical little girl-ness--pastels, two dolls, and two big-eyed pets. Parents,however, are reporting that little boys are using Roominate, too. That’s part of the reason why Chen andBrooks are also looking to expand into gender-who-cares-territory.“We started this for girls, because it’s a problem we lived, that we continue to live. We want to get morefemales in the [science, technology, engineering, and math] field,” Brooks says. “That’s why we started it,because we want to make this hands-on, creative, open-ended play. But as we’ve been developing it, we’vebeen realizing that that kind of play is really missing for boys, too.”Source: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3026671/this-new-girl-powered-engineering-toy-asks-kids-todesign-and-wire-their-own-dollhouse285 She Culture CRT: Genderization