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Garish Monstrosities - OR - Why I Can't Bring Myself to Mind Plastic Toys
A close friend gave Felix a Christmas present that delights him. It is a large plastic pirate ship. I watch him playing with his swashbucklers with great pleasure myself, though in the back of my mind are the host of conversations I've had with people at various school tours and parenting things.
"I hate all of those horrible plastic toys. They're so ugly and I care a lot about the aesthetics of my home, so we only allow wooden toys."
"Plastic toys are unhealthy."
"One of the things I promised myself when I had kids was that I wouldn't compromise about those toys with those horrible colors. My environment is precious to me and those colors really offend me."
"I don't want to be one of those mothers who just allows anything in the house."
And I think about these conversational snippets and feel a bit abashed, and conscious of the ways in which I have not insisted on enough rigor in my son's life. I care about my environment, the way I live. I have sharp tastes in quite a number of areas.
But these are toys and I don't care.
Actually, it's more complicated than simply not caring. In the first place, I am grateful to anyone who takes the time to select a present for the Felix, particularly one that entertains him, encourages imaginative play and makes him happy. It would be rude and hostile to turn up my nose.
And I also think that some aesthetic variation is healthy. Taste is individual, but it is shaped by exposure. I went through that hideous phase that so many adolescents go through, where only movies of the French New Wave and American pictures made before 1958 were acceptable. . . but what I moron I was because I hadn't seen enough Chinese, Iranian, Japanese and Canadian movies. And I learned to be less of a snob without throwing my sensibilities out the window.
Taste is also shaped by temptation and withholding- rebellion and indulgence. It's a fetishistic sort of enterprise. If I were to restrict all impure playthings, who's to say Felix wouldn't grow up to have appalling sensibilities and develop Liberace-type aesthetics so that visiting his abodes will make one dizzy and in need of anticonvulsants?
So in my case at least, it isn't that I don't think about relative ugliness and it isn't that I don't care. But I can always put my kid's toys in a box or a closet. There will be plenty of time for endless important rules, but the plastic & primary color issue is low on my list. And I can't possibly sneer when my kid is delicately offering his pirates pieces of his (yes, organic) breakfast cereal.
posted by Elise at 8:13 AM
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Laura K said...
Oh for crying out loud. Normally, I wouldn't make comments about other people's choices, but some toys are loved, loved, loved by children, and why shouldn't they have them? It's not as if those plastic toys are harmful to the child.
And if one is worried about the environment, nothing says you have to throw them away when the child outgrows them. There are plenty of shelters who would be ecstatic to receive them.
And, honestly, if you're worried about your decor, you shouldn't have had children in the first place. They're loud, they're messy and they're generally not good for the furniture.
12/23/2006 11:43 AM
Elise said...
But then again... neither are dogs or most adults.
12/23/2006 1:22 PM
said...
12/24/2006 7:23 AM
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Laura K said...
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