Head Scratchers

The New Gender-Neutral Easy-Bake Oven Isn’t So Neutral

The good news: Hasbro has heeded thirteen-year-old activist McKenna Pope’s call and will release a new gender-neutral version of its Easy-Bake oven and include boys in the product’s ads. The bad news: this “gender-neutral” Easy-Bake oven will be black, silver and blue and will accompany the current iteration that is mostly purple with pink accents.

Pope started her campaign for a gender-neutral oven after attempting to buy an Easy-Bake for her four-year-old brother and finding them only in “girly” colors. By creating one black and silver oven and another purple and pink, however, Hasbro has failed to make anything about the product gender-neutral; instead, the company has just stuck to the old binary and made the oven “tougher”, with “cooler colors”, and thus more appropriate for boys. They “manned it up.” Evidently, while it’s acceptable for a man to cook, it is entirely unheard of for a boy to play with something that is pink or purple. And, due to natural, biological reasons — you know, like glitter-incrusted double helixes and light receptors within the eye that burn when confronted with blues, greens, and metallics — girls can only use products that are purple or flowery.

Fine. In order to help Hasbro further masculinize the Easy-Bake oven, I’d like to suggest some new names for the product. Why not, right?

1. The Rugged Bake Oven

2. The Hard Burn Oven

3. Thor’s Lightning Kiln

4. The Fires of Mt. Doom

5. Cthulu’s Mouth

6. Diablo’s Inferno

7. Hot Metal Roaster

8. BBQ Box of Doom

9. Meat Smelter

10. The Cookerator

11. Machismoven

12. Thermally Insulated Chamber For The Heating of Ingestible Substances

[Photo via The Mary Sue]

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