I am going to take my time figuring out the cultural meaning of American Girl's introduction of a boy character doll, because it is hard to interpret until the consumer response is clear. After all, I don't create the meaning, nor is the meaning inherent in the packaged and advertised product. 

Last week I did an interview with Kathryn Luttner of Campaign US, about Logan, and it was published yesterday. It's quite interesting, since she writes for an industry audience. I mentioned at the end of the interview that we'd be discussing Logan in my Fashion and Consumer Culture class, she was curious about what my students would have to say. Most of the discussion was more of a review of Grant McCracken's theory of meaning transfer from culture to consumer via consumption objects, so it isn't particularly relevant. But here is the interesting part:

"Ruff 'n Tuff" play pal for boys. Dressed in non-removable play clothes". I pointed out that the earlier versions could be undressed and dressed. One discussion group decided that boys would certainly be harmed if they undressed a "boy" doll and discovered he had no penis. 

If a boy doll has no penis, he is not a boy and can not use men's bathrooms in conservative jurisdictions. If he does have a penis, and his clothes are not removable, his masculinity is like "a tree falling in a forest" with no one to hear. If his clothes can be removed (penis or no penis) he is encouraging cross-dressing and possibly homoerotic sexual curiosity. Poor American Girl! Caught between a rock and a hard place!​

​    Children are born into an intersectional network of culture. In addition to being surrounded by racism, classism, religious and political beliefs, and myriad other norms, children learn to define and shape their gender identities according to prevailing gender rules which are predicated on a binary. According to the binary view, there are two sexes: male and female, and two genders: masculine and feminine. (The first is anti-science, and the second defies common sense, but the binary exists, nonetheless.) However, boys AND girls are influenced by girly culture, and girls AND boys are shaped by masculine culture. Consider the cultural landscapes and boundaries marked by pink and blue. A firm knowledge of girly culture is required for boys to avoid being contaminated by femininity or anything associated with women and girls. Pink identifies “girly culture” for both girls and boys. Pink is visual femininity repellent for the very young boy.
    If all we need to protect the fragile masculinity of boys is a visual culture (pink-unicorns-sparkles) that signifies GIRL so clearly that no child under the age of six months will ever mistake one for the other, why do we need blue? In some ways, we don’t; we just need not-pink. It’s been clear for me for some time that pink and blue are not just opposite equivalents, functionally.

What do men learn from boy culture? (Little macho culture? Machito culture? Still looking for the right word!)

According to some of my male friends and former students (a very small convenience sample)* , they learn:

• a boy is not a girl
• a boy should never be mistaken for a girl
• boys should have nothing to do with girly things 
• boys should play with boys doing machito things
• machito things are more exciting and interesting than girly things
• boys are better than girls
• boys who are like girls or who like girly things are sick/bad/scary

,*Many thanks to ZS, CC, and WW for their contributions!

I would add to this my own observation that boys also learn that girls who are like boys or who like machito things, can be good friends, but that boys should never allow them to win.

Girly culture -- pink, princess, sexually precocious -- has been studied extensively. Right now I am at work on a piece that examines boy culture, specifically the norms and expectations that shape boys from infancy to adolescence. I am working my way through the academic literature, especially the works of Michael Kimmel, but I have a question for the men in my audience. 

This is very much a draft.
Let's assume that boys AND girls are influenced by girly culture, and girls AND boys are shaped by masculine culture. I want to look at this from the boys' point of view. Girly culture has a purpose for boys, and it the same as insect repellent. A firm knowledge of girly culture is required for boys to avoid being contaminated by femininity or anything associated with women and girls. If all we need to protect the fragile masculinity of boys is a visual culture that signifies GIRL so clearly that no child under the age of six months will ever mistake one for the other. What then, is the purpose of boy culture? 

Here's a great post from Kyle Wiley of The Good Men Project (re-blogged via the Huffington Post, but hey, Arianna's rich enough). My favorite line:

Made up words are the best, because like all custom-made items, they fit better than the off-the-rack-versions. That is exactly the idea I have been trying to get across, less articulately, when I talk or write about pink and blue. Blue is NOT a spokescolor; pink is a spokescolor. Why is that, do you think? Is there something magical about pink itself? Mais non.

The magic is one of the oldest known superpowers: giving birth. Stay with me, friends. Here's how I see it: Women used to be powerful because they gave birth. The only way men could be more powerful than women was to control reproduction -- through marriage, through rape, through laws about birth control and abortion. But none of that transfered the magical power from women to men, so a cultural solution emerged instead. Make birth dirty, make sex a sin, make women dirty, weak sinners, lower than men because of their magic power.

Now all you have to do to maintain male superiority is make sure they are not tainted by anything remotely effete or feminine. Punish homosexuality. Raise little boys to be not-girls. Ridicule boys --and men-- who cry, or who are unathletic, or who like pink. It's a small price to pay for a place at the top of the social order.

Why have women put up with this? Many reasons, including a need to protect their offspring, their own survival and this complicated force called "hegemony", which results in acceptance of the dominant culture even when it works against you. (Kind of a cultural Stockholm syndrome.) But all is not lost; there are men and women, mothers and fathers, who believe that all humans have magical powers of love, imagination and creativity, and that humanity will benefit when every baby is valued for its potential to love, imagine and create, not its role in human reproduction.

Peace. (Steps off soapbox, returns to her index cards.)

  "Pink or Blue? Which is intended for boys and which for girls? This question comes from one of our readers this month, and the discussion may be of interest to others. There has been a great diversity of opinion on this subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the poy and blue for the girls. the reason is that pink being a more decided and stringer color, is more suitable for the boy' while blue, which is more delicate and dainty is prettier for the girl”

Infants’ Department, June 1918 The first time I encountered these words, paging through a heavy, bound issue of Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department, nearly thirty years ago, I stopped and re-read it several times, at least once under my breath. I was following up a minor sideline in a project on babies’ clothing during the Progressive Era -- the seemingly trivial question “when were pink and blue introduced as gendered colors?” At that point, the white rabbit darted into its hole and I dove in after it. Years later, I am back to tell the very complicated tale of how American baby and toddler clothing went from completely devoid of sexual hints to almost completely separated into “his” and hers” camps.