As Black Friday sales marked the start of the Christmas shopping
chaos, many parents have been out and about finding those special gifts for
their kids. Not only is shopping at this time of year a little stressful, but
being able to locate exactly what you’re looking for in a store builds onto the
hassle.
Target has been working to create a more appropriate and
efficient labeling system for aisles in their stores. The signage adjustments
they have prioritized have been the toy and bedding aisles for children. Target’s
corporate office stated “Right now, our teams are working across the store to
identify areas where we can phase out gender-based signage to help strike a
better balance.” By taking this step Target feels as though suggesting children
products by gender is unnecessary.
When this plan of action was expressed by Target’s corporate
office, many parent’s felt as though making such a change was pointless. While others
were left with the thought that this was going to remove specific toys that adhered
to specific gender roles (dolls for girls, trucks for boys). But in actuality, all
the toys and bedding will remain the same. It is just the aisle signs that will
updated and the coloring of shelving paper in these sections that are expected
to change. By removing colors such as blue, yellow, pink, and green, Target
expects to remove any reference to gender when displaying these products.
By making these adjustments, Target is taking a large step
for gender neutrality in today’s society. These changes send the message that
pressuring our youth to abide to gender specific colors or even toys are unnecessary.
This step will help uncategorized boys and girls and group them to the
generalization of ‘kids’ or ‘children’. Hopefully this decision Target stands
behind will help persuade other stores to do the same. Surely if that is
possible, the future may hold a more gender neutral society at large.
The title of your blog post is very good.
ReplyDelete"Not only is shopping at this time of year a little stressful, but being able to locate exactly what you’re looking for in a store builds onto the hassle."
The correct grammar construct after a 'not only..." is 'but also.' And you missed a negation in the second clause. The problem is that the two points you're trying to make (shopping is stressful, finding what you want in a store is hard') do not fit into a "not only / but also" format. They aren't parallel enough. Given that the remainder of the post is about gender-neutral store design, I'm not sure why either point is a good opener. The blog post works just as well if you delete the entire first paragraph.
"Target has been working to create a more appropriate and efficient labeling system for aisles in their stores."
It isn't going to be more 'efficient', as the next paragraph goes on to explain. Whether it is 'appropriate' is exactly the matter under discussion. But since this is the first mention in the post, you could be more informative by saying something like, 'Target is rolling out a new gender-neutral store layout.'
"Right now, our teams are working..."
You should have given a link to https://corporate.target.com/article/2015/08/gender-based-signs-corporate .
"many parent’s felt as though making such a change was pointless"
Citation, please. And you don't need the apostrophe in 'parents'.
"These changes send the message that pressuring our youth to abide to gender specific colors or even toys are unnecessary."
The usual construct is, 'to abide by'. See http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/abide-to-vs-abide-by.2197159/ and http://sentence.yourdictionary.com/abide .
"This step will help uncategorized boys and girls and group them to the generalization of ‘kids’ or ‘children’."
I cannot figure out what this sentence means.
"...the future may hold a more gender neutral society at large."
Or this one.
This is an interesting topic. I wonder if Target was catching heat from people for having gender based signs or if they were merely looking to be at the forefront of stores trying to eliminate gender roles. Also, are they going to make the switch when it comes to adults? Instead of a mens and womens section will there just be a clothes section? I feel like this issue raises some questions.
ReplyDeleteI think its funny that we live in such a gendered society that colors such as blue, pink, green, etc. are considered 'gendered'. The classic example of this lunacy would probably be how we associate the colors blue and pink when it comes to infants. Prior to the 1950's, pink was the optimal color for boys and blue for girls. Now its flipped. It seems so trivial through a historical lens.
ReplyDelete