Shows & Tickets 
Chicago Venue Info 
Classes & Education 
Second City Works 
Second City Network 
Our Legacy 
It’s all fun and games until somebody loses a biologically mandated sexual EYE-dentification. Amazon (a site named after feminist warriors, so I’m not surprised) removed its “boy” and “girl” labels on toy products, making all toys available to whatever child “wants” them.
Well, I’m Sorry, but this Operation Boggles my mind. Guess Who is here to Clue you in on the latest Risk to our children? Here’s why this liberal Monopoly on Life is a Twister of Trouble.
Toys are already too progressive
Toys have been on a slippery slope to democratic debauchery every since they introduced the first pantsless Troll doll. Back in my day, girls' dolls only had two careers: shopaholic and wetting themselves. In 2015, Barbie has more professions than all my fake Tinder profiles combined. It used to be boy action figure teams only had one token female member to do the paperwork. Now, G.I. Joe has more female members than the senate.
It won’t be long til the Slinky decides it wants to start going UP stairs just to stick it to the establishment.
Shopping is more difficult
I’m a busy man. I don’t have time to learn my nieces' interests or ages. Yet every year, I’m expected to buy them each a Christmas gift. Once upon a time, I could hop onto Amazon and buy a gift that would show my brother that I at least had enough interest in his children to remember that they were girls. Without these labels, it looks like I’m going to have to find an actual girls' toy aisle, provided that Toys Я Us’s gender policies aren’t as backwards as its letter R.
Kids are playing wrong
I was once at a park talking to children I don’t know, as is my Tuesday afternoon routine, and I decided to complement a young girl on her Mrs. Potato Head’s ensemble.
“MISS Potato Head!” she corrected. “She hasn’t decided if she wants to get married or what color her ears are going to be.”
If that tart Ms. Pac-Man wants to continue fighting ghosts without a ring on her perfectly-spherical form, then that’s her business, but the Potato Heads are a family institution! It reminded me of when my neighbor Cindy made my Cyclops and Wolverine figures *kiss*... undoing years of carefully plotted Chris Claremont character work in X-Men comics.
These toys have names and restrictions so we know how to play with them. It’s not like you can just pick them up and start using your imagination.
Kids need limitations
When I was a kid, there was nothing I wanted more than a Talkboy, as featured in the cinema classic Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. I worked hard and finally saved up enough whining to get my parents to buy it for me. When I got to the store, however, the only thing they had left was a Talkgirl. It was pink! I knew it wasn’t for me. To this day, I have never known the joy of a handheld cassette tape recorder.
This setback only made me stronger, though. It taught me a valuable lesson about how labels are put in place to make sure that people are never too happy. The key is to just ignore the things we can’t change. I learned a valuable lesson about not getting all upset about minor things. Like patriarchy guidelines.
When life gave me my two bumbling burglars (in the form of gender labels), I hit them in the face with the bowling bowl of indifference.
It prepares them for society
These toys aren’t divided arbitrarily. NERF guns aren’t marketed to girls because evolution hasn’t given them the genes to appreciate suction-tipped airborne projectiles, and boys simply have no interest in Disney Princess merchandise. (Even if Elsa showed me what it was like to be truly free...if only for a moment).
If we ignore all these divisions and just let kids play with whatever they want, if we show kids that their gender won’t dictate how they are treated, if we allow future generations to be introduced to a world without labels...then they are going to be really disappointed when they grow up.
C.J. Tuor performs in Second City's Life Hacks at UP Comedy Club.
