Today, I went to the new Target store in San Francisco. When I walked into the toy section I thought that I had left 2013 and walked into the 1950's, the kids section was rigidly segregated into pink aisles for girls and blue aisles for boys. This is regressive, and I believe that it hurts our children by curbing their imaginations into prescribed channels of acceptability.

I don't want my child and other kids to grow up with rigid gender roles presented to them at every turn. If you believe that girls naturally have an inclination toward princesses and dolls chatting on cell phones dressed in lurid pink and that boys will prefer to play with robots, spaceships and hot rods packaged in blue, then surely they will gravitate to that themselves no matter how you present the toys to them. Scientifically, there is no evidence to support the idea that there is anything biological that prevents girls from enjoying robots and boys from caring for a baby doll, please see the excellent work of Cordellia Fine for reference.* Kids will be kids, they like to get dirty, role play, dress up, build things with blocks, cuddle and hit, no matter their gender. We had this battle in the 70's let's not roll things back to the 50's. Or, if you insist on being so regressive why not go back to 1917 when the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls."**

Organize toys by the type of toy, put figures with figures, blocks with blocks, etc. Don't paint the aisles pink and blue: there are more colors in the rainbow, we should be encouraging creativity in our kids not pigeon holing them into a color coded gender bureaucracy.

* http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244

** Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-Start-Wearing-Pink.html#ixzz2jLH5k5jw