When One Gets To Counting
I've done a bit of counting, folks. I managed to finish this particular count very quickly. Did you know that we've only got one female set this year?
Now you do. Remember this: it is an important part of the entry.
One female set. One. That means we only really have one female character in all the story this year. Yeah, yeah, so there might be those 'book-exclusive' characters. Honestly, folks, does that really make much of a difference? Not everyone's going to know what goes on in the books (and chances are, you're gonna have to ask 'well, what exactly does she do?': it's not exactly going to be big or meaningful or vaguely memorable). Yeah, sure, and you can also claim there's more back in the village. Like that hasn't been used before. "You've got a whole village out of six: isn't that enough?"
Apparently, 'boys don't want to play with 'girl sets''. Apparently, the current belief is that boys will develop cooties sores and die or something if they're exposed to more than a bare minimum of femininity. Apparently, you have to market toys to one gender or the other, but certainly not both. Oh no. Boys and girls liking the same things? That'd be like cats and dogs playing together!
Apparently, a whole half of an age cohort doesn't count as a potential market in any way, shape or form.
There's more, gentle readers. One of the reasons given for making only one element female (and it's barely even a hard-and-fast rule anymore) is that 'it makes them special'. Speaking as an actual female, let me say that this isn't exactly a compliment. We're not 'special' just because our chromosomes landed a certain way. Being female just means we're female. We've got some crazies. We've got some geniuses. We've got some morons. We've got a lot of folks that, regardless of gender, you would describe as 'normal'. You know, regular people. Making femininity something 'special' sort of makes masculinity 'normal' by default, and I'm not exactly fond of that. We're talking about beings that are partly mechanical. The 'normal' should be the indeterminate.
We only get one or two female sets a year. Last year, two: this year, one. We just might get another one next year. Wow. I don't care for the whole 'it's a boy's line' excuse: do you honestly mean to tell me that young boys/girls (because 'girl's lines' suffer this same problem, I assure you) should be kept away from a proportion of female/male heroes that reflects the population they see every day?
I don't know what to say if you do.
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