How To Become A Boy Toy

I'k a Girl and I Want the Boy Toy

One adult female explores the Happy Meal gender gap.

By Elly Vila Dominicis (Digital Strategy Consultant)

Every afternoon, my mom diligently picked me upwardly afterwards schoolhouse and asked me what I wanted to eat. Chicken McNuggets was e'er the answer, merely "Craven MacNuggah" was what came out of my undeveloped five-yr-old mouth.

We routinely went through the McDonald'due south bulldoze-through, craning our necks and straining our optics to scan the menu even though we always ordered the same thing every day — a Happy Meal for me with Chicken MacNuggah, french fries, and a Sprite.

"Boy or girl?" the drive-through loudspeaker would yell.

A quick, expectant glance from my mom looked back at me from the rearview mirror.

A simple knowing nod in response from me.

"Boy," she assured the loudspeaker.

Equally nosotros drove up to the window, I would involuntarily scrunch down into my seat while the cashier handed my mom the Happy Repast. It was every bit if I felt a deep sense of guilt about asking for something that wasn't meant for me, and if the cashier saw me dorsum at that place with my ponytail and plaid schoolhouse skirt, she would definitely and most angrily snatch the illicit Happy Meal back.

I'd excitedly open the box, simultaneously stuffing a fry into my mouth with one hand, and blindly searching for the toy bag with my other hand, trying to discern its shape with my tiny fingers in anticipation for the random reward.

This routine lasted well into high school, where I passed the tradition on to my little sister. Even though I had graduated to McChickens, we'd even so whisper to my mom "Say 'boy,' say 'boy!'" when asked the big question about my sister's Happy Meal, standing to hide our shame in the backseat when nosotros pulled upwardly to the window.

Racing cars. Action figures of heroes we loved. These were the toys that survived the toy box genocide that happened every couple of years. These were the toys that lived to meet another day on my pinkish '90s bedroom carpeting.

Some days, I was curious, or I just didn't experience like pretending, so we'd inquire for a daughter toy. This unremarkably concluded in disappointment. We'd open up the bag excitedly, only to detect ourselves staring deeply into the dead eyes of a doll with crispy blonde pilus. The dolls were ignored or discarded most immediately, but weeks later I'd feel a pinch on my butt from a hard, pointy doll arm jutting from between the couch cushions — a painful reminder of whom I was expected to be.

A Stroll Down Retention Lane

After disparaging McDonald'south toys, I decided to use the Cyberspace fourth dimension auto to confirm that they were, in fact, just equally terrible equally I remembered.

1998: The doll stands propose that these were for displaying, not for playing.

This is 1998's pretty straightforward collection of toys for boys and girls. Barbies for the ladies, Hot Wheels for the dudes. Eatin' Fun Kelly might be the to the lowest degree fun toy I've e'er had the displeasure of finding at the bottom of my Happy Meal.

2011: Exist CUTE OR BE WORTHLESS.

Over a decade afterward, McDonald's toy designers keep to innovate new ways of making the girls toys suck. Tin can in that location be a more drastic dichotomy than choosing between a superhero and a stamp? A stamp that comes with its own keychain, so that you can conveniently stamp things on the go… you know, in case yous need to practice that.

2013: I guess I'll hang this keychain of a shoe on my haversack and that's that.

2013's options were particularly painful. Asking for a male child toy seemed to exist vastly rewarding. The pretend plots you could brand up with these toys appear to be endless. Yous've got two vehicular choices, a vesture antiquity, and three varied figurines for any type of harebrained situation that crazy Batman could go into.

For girls, your options were limited to iii ugly shoes you could clip onto your haversack, two of which were the same damn shoe in different colors. Thanks for the endeavor, actually.

I was inspired to write this after learning that McDonald'due south is offering Take chances Time toys this week. Being an gorging collector of minor figurines and a big fan of the show, I was excited to see the options available.

I did some quick Googling only to come across this bullshit:

I haven't had a Happy Repast in over a decade, withal, this instantly took me dorsum to the Backseat of Shame. If y'all said "boy," you were rewarded with your favorite characters from Adventure Time (minus the female person characters, of course). If you said "girl," you got a monkey with an oddly vagina-shaped oral cavity, its likeness plastered on highly practical items such equally stickers, purses, and bracelets.

Thankfully, these toys have generated a fair bit of well-deserved controversy. Adventure Fourth dimension is widely loved past adults, who now have fifty-fifty more reason to discover the outdated practice of grouping toys past gender at McDonald'south.

On the bright side, there are going to be a lot of little girls that take this opportunity to refuse to let others define which toy is for them, and instead, will speak up to become the toy they want. I'm not going to say that crappy girl toys prepared me for the real-life gender split up, just it gave me ane of my get-go platforms to speak up and not let others tell me what I should want.

And so I stormed into McDonald'southward for the kickoff fourth dimension in a long time to lodge a Happy Meal in person. Because I'm an adult. And I'm a girl. And I desire the goddamn boy toy.

This mail originally appeared on Medium.

Source: https://switchthefuture.com/2014/07/17/im-girl-want-boy-toy/

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