Easy Bake Oven... Uh Oh

In McGraw’s article, why feminine technologies matter (make a link), she talks about certain artifacts being “feminine because they are either used by or predominantly associated with female people.” Well the artifact I chose to fit into this description is the Easy Bake Oven. In 1963 the first Easy Bake Oven was created by Kenner Products (which is now a part of Hasbro). This oven allows little girls to practice their measurement skills, mixing skills, and more obviously their baking skills. This is reinforcing the Victorian view of women stay home and bake.  

I admit I had an easy bake oven when I was younger and did not know what this reinforcing to me. The funny thing is they now make easy bake oven where you can cook food. Why I find this funny is because if I look back on it, the easy bake oven made me love baking, but I am a horrible cook! Maybe if they had that option when I was 10 I would have fallen in love with cooking or actually new how to cook.

If you compare this 1990 video (the one on the top) to this 2011 video (the one on the bottom) they are very similar points. The points made are that it is easy, fast, and fun! However, if you have ever made real bake goods it may be fun, but that is about it. This is the message they are trying to sell to girls. You will also notice that both commercials have little girls in them, completely leaving out boys who may like to use the product, but cannot because they fear they will be made of fun because it is labeled as a girl toy.

 

This can also be seen in this Google Adword (which is an advertisement on Google search engine). As you can read the ad is targeted towards girls with “Baking Games for Girls.” 

However, there may be some hope this article was released saying Hasbro will now be making a boy version of the easy bake oven. Click here to read more http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/hasbro-easy-bake-oven-girls-boys-article-1.1222592

The inspiration came from a 13-year-old girl who was sad that her 4-year-old brother felt he could not use the oven because it was made for girls. Although, this brings up another issue on how the gender binary is set-up so that by age 3 children know what gender they are and how it is wrong to use things that look like they are made for girls or made for boys. At least it is a step in the right directions.

As McGraw said technology is socially constructed which I tend to agree with. I mean it had to take a 13-year-old girl to get a massive company to see how they were discriminating against sex after developing their product more than 45 years ago. Now all we need is for the commercials to include boys and maybe we will see more changes in other products in years to come.