Should School Supplies Be Gendered?

Recently, a woman named Nancy Smallwood passed by the storefront of Paperchase, a London stationer, and happened upon what she perceived to be a window display overrun with gender stereotypes. On the theme of back to school, girls wore aprons and used baking-themed stationary, while the boys were given "dangerous, exciting (and blue) shark themed stationary," wrote Smallwood, in a later complaint to the store's marketing director.

His response:

---

Thank you for your email. However you rather miss the point... we are more than aware of the gender stereotypes and were making an ironic point by using archive mail-order catalogue photos from the 1970s...
When we are trying to sell stationery (please note spelling) there are images that appeal to boys and images that appeal to girls - and we have had a very successful season with the designs that we chose. So presumably the majority of our customers approved of the products.

Yours sincerely
Robert Warden

Smallwood goes on ask whether girls are inherently predisposed to baking while boys get to go on adventures.

When doing back to school shopping, would you buy something for your kid that reinforced gender stereotypes?

Via Jezebel.