Monday Baby Blogging: Pirate Janey

Meet Pirate Janey. Janey is manufactured by Fisher-Price, and she comes in a little set with a turtle, a raft, and a treasure chest. Fisher-Price didn’t name her Janey; I suggested to Sydney that she could be named Pirate Jenny (after the classic Kurt Weill song), but Sydney either misheard or mispronounced, and so the pirate became Pirate Janey.

Anyhow, what’s special about Pirate Janey is this: She’s female. She’s the only female pirate toy I’ve found so far – and I’ve been looking for months. (I’m kind of pleased that she’s black, too).

Does it matter to Sydney? Maybe not. Sydney is at a stage where she latches onto pretty much any toy figures and uses them to enact little plays. Her imagination and storytelling skills are flourishing: She makes figures hide from each other, makes them fight, makes them kiss and make up. It’s very cool to watch.

A frequent theme is drowning and rescue; I don’t know where she picked this storyline up from, but her characters are forever falling overboard and being rescued by the other characters. None of them seem able to swim – not even the sea turtle.

So I don’t think Sydney needs a female pirate figure for her imagination to flourish. A better question is, does she need a female pirate figure to help imagine herself growing up to be the protagonist of her made-up storylines?

It certainly seems plausible that if the action figures kids play with are overwhelmingly male, then that will foster a male-centric view. Similarly, if all the action figures are white, that fosters a white-centric view.

How will this effect Sydney? I don’t know. Sydney’s an individual, after all. Maybe she’ll need female action figures, someday, to learn to reflexively imagine women having adventures and taking the lead part in stories. Or maybe she won’t – she currently has no problem seeing the genderless toys, like the sea turtle, as female. I prefer not to take the chance. Pirates hold a special fascination for Sydney (and about a gazillion other kids), and when she plays pirates I don’t want all of the figures to be white men. In 2006, it’s inexcusable that finding a girl pirate toy requires months of searching.