About six weeks ago, the kid's school decided to upgrade their kitchen toys and offered the old ones to any parents who could haul it away. Luckily I was one of the first to respond and so I scored a very nice wooden kitchen. You remember what I am talking about, right? It has a little sink and two faux burners and some knobs and some shelves. A faux little kitchen.
So I get it home and realize that, although we have some wooden faux food, we don't have much and we don't have any toy utensils or pots or kitchen stuff. I thought for a few minutes about going to buy some but decided that it would induce creativity if they didn't have these things and had to
really pretend.
What it actually did was induce them to play elsewhere.
Sooooo, I started looking, just barely, when I was at various stores for kitchen-y things. By this I mean, if I remembered as I was in Target, I would keep an eye out. But I NEVER saw any kitchen toys. After a while I started to think it really odd.
Then, two weeks ago, I went down the toy aisle with all the dolls because I was trying to short cut to another department and there, there with all the dolls was kitchen stuff. Kitchen sets even! Whole boxed sets of pots and pans and spatulas and egg beaters and cookie cutters. These were right next to the sets of hair curlers and most of it was PINK!
Now, I grew up in house where my Dad did most of the cooking, and so many famous chefs are men, and all kids play in the kitchen center so it never occurred to me that kitchen toys had a gender bias. I wonder, if Wolfgang, Emeril, Thomas Keller, Bobby Flay and John Besh all started with a little pink sauce pan?
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