by Gilson Penny

Created on: November 14, 2007

Choosing gender-neutral gifts isn't as difficult as our target marketing society makes it out to be. Three sure-fire methods, used separately or together, will lead you to unique and enjoyable gifts without resorting to bland politically correct choices.

Three very useful ways to approach this are to 1) Re-package your gifts, 2) Look for non-gender-specific options within a potentially segregated category, and 3) Look to subjects that are inherently not gender targeted.

Most research shows that the vast majority of video games are clearly targeted toward boys, and the vast majority of home crafts are clearly targeted toward girls. Video game advertising and packaging is dark, active, and even violent. Home goods are light, chipper, and packaged in warm and pastel colors. You can either avoid these deeply targeted items, dig deep into the choices available within them, or repackage them to eliminate the stereotype and maximize the subject.

My nephew loves to work with clay, but every home pottery wheel I could find was in a pink box. I resolved this by buying a pink-boxed pottery wheel, and repackaging it myself in a basket that included the wheel, extra clay, and a book on throwing pots. This eliminated the stereotype, and gave added depth to the gift.

Young children are the toughest, because the gender targeted ads are geared toward them and toward the new parents. By the time kids are in the tween stage (9-12 years), they are well segregated by the marketers. The best way to avoid gender stereotyping in the early years is to put together gift baskets that can open their minds to any and all areas, without labeling them as pink or blue. If you succeed here, they can make their own choices by the time they are tweens. If you haven't caught them early, or aren't sure, the gift basket plan works well to present material in a non-gender-specific way. Oddly enough, you can even use the marketing industry's methods against them, by wrapping your items in the "wrong" color.

To avoid highly targeted topics, start by thinking about the subjects in school that are ambiguous in this area. Fine art and crafts, or science (astronomy, biology, environmental science), can go either way. Think about what the child shows interest in, or what you think they have the capacity to gain an interest in, and branch out from there.

Art posters, artistic style posters of musical artists, art supplies (which may range from paint to clay to fabric to Adobe Photoshop computer programs), digital

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>