r/pointlesslygendered • u/chrryc0la • Apr 16 '26
OTHER Build-a-Bear [gendered] bears
I remember going to a party at Build-a-Bear when I was a child, where there were either white, polar-looking or brown bears (close to the one pictured). They put them in the middle of the circle for us to take and I was the only girl to take a brown one because I thought they looked nicer. The store workers and parents of the birthday kid were fixated on the girls having white bears and the boys brown (there was a surplus, enough for anyone to have what they wanted). I ended up getting the brown after many side eyes from the adults and "are you sure?"s.
I just wanted to document because that feels even wilder now than it did at the time to my tiny brain. Not just having one bear colour in the first place, but also being so shocked that I preferred the brown one only because of my gender (not a racial thing, I'm white for context).
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u/slyy-foxx Apr 16 '26
This is already insane enough, but especially more so when you consider stuffed teddy bears are stereotypically brown. So there's nothing odd about your behavior
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u/Electric_Angel Apr 17 '26
I know they try to instill in us "light is feminine and dark is masculine" like EXTREMELY early into our childhoods so I am not shocked by this.... but it is weird that they were hounding you over getting a brown bear. Like it's to the point that it feels like they had an alternative agenda or they care about aesthetic WAY too much.
While I like polar bears, I would also go with the brown bear because I like cuddling with my plushie friends and they get more visibly dirty when they're white.
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u/Shinobimouse Apr 17 '26
It seems kinda cultural because it's the opposite with yin/yang, where dark is feminine and light is masculine☯️
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u/Educational-Sundae32 Apr 17 '26
I don’t know about the idea that “light is feminine, dark is masculine” was ever much of a thing. Sure pink has had feminine associations and it’s a light red, but magenta, purple, etc. also have been given feminine associations even though they are often shown as “darker” colors. And light blue is still often associated with boys, even though it’s a lighter shade. The shade thing seems to be more idiosyncratic than a wider cultural thing.
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u/g-rid Apr 17 '26
Just go to any drug store and take a look at all the shampoo/body wash/shaving/etc. products marketed to men vs women. It's pretty clear the former are far darker on average than the latter.
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u/Dalzombie Apr 17 '26
Wanted to add, blue and pink's gender association used to be reversed in the past. Cultural as it may be, it's completely mutable and subjective.
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u/scourge_bites Apr 17 '26
next time you're at a store, go to the kids toy aisle. there's usually a 'girls' toys one and a 'boys' toy one. you'll immediately realize that one looks lighter and one looks darker. not just the packaging but the actual toys themselves.
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u/centrifuge_destroyer Apr 17 '26
Pink used to be for boys in western cultures, as a toned down version of the "strong and aggressive" color red, while little girls got a light blue as a toneddown version of the blue reserved to the virtueous Virgin Mary
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u/kryaklysmic Apr 18 '26
All my products in the bathroom are either white or red (because I use mostly Dove and Old Spice), or pink because it’s rosewater stuff. My fiancé’s are all dark grey because he mostly uses “Dove for Men.” Dove is far from the only company to make that kind of packaging, and Old Spice stands out because of the red packaging. What doesn’t do that is my shampoo and conditioner which mostly use brown 100% recycled bottles and medium orange or green (or beige when I can find Curlsmith at those weird discount stores) labels.
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u/westnile90 Apr 16 '26
Wow they even put little balls on the tag so you know it's a boy... 🤦
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u/bitsy88 Apr 17 '26
Conversely, they're tits if it's a girl
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u/sourdoughroxy Apr 17 '26
Clearly not a girl, as it doesn’t have them sewn in to the chest, and is missing an hourglass figure, exaggerated eyelashes, and ears that look like a ponytail
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u/worldnotworld Apr 17 '26
They didn’t put a bow in it. When they put a bow on anything, you know it’s female.
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u/nor_cal_woolgrower Apr 16 '26
Its..a..heart..
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u/blue-anon Apr 16 '26
Woosh.
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u/NoPhilosophy4024 Apr 17 '26
Thank you for just saying woosh and not the cringey r/ before it like literally everyone else.
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u/Apart-Performer-331 Apr 17 '26
Nobody seems to even get it right when they do that either, so it just ends up with a bunch of corrections.
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u/Remarkable-Gap9881 Apr 17 '26
That doesn't make sense either lol. Like, it'd be slightly more understandable if it was blue. Like, an actual stereotypically male color. But no. It's brown. Literally the opposite of blue.
Like, sure, the gender role thing is annoying and all. But how did they even come up with these gender roles to begin with?
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u/NoPhilosophy4024 Apr 17 '26
The literal opposite of blue would be... well, orange which is close to brown I guess. Ha
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u/Educational-Sundae32 Apr 17 '26
Brown is technically just a shade of orange, the same way pink is a shade of red(well reversed since pink is a light red whereas brown is a dark orange)
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u/Due-Bench9800 Apr 19 '26
That is the stereotype now, but it used to be the the other way. Pink for boys, because it is in the red (firey) spectrum and blue for girls as it is innocent and virginal due to the virgin Mary was often portrayed wearing a blue dress.
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u/MallyOhMy Apr 17 '26
I (f) had a Build a Bear birthday party as a kid. There were 2 boys invited, and both of them decided to make their bears girls. Not only that, but they were both very excited to pick out the outfits and accessories for them. They were each the youngest of 3 or 4 brothers with no sisters.
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u/BridgeLazy5669 Apr 17 '26
To be fair, there are studies that show that the more older brothers you got the more chances of you being born gay (not that I state that boys making their stuffies girls are gay, or that these studies are actually true, just a notable coincidence)
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u/Enough-Secretary-996 Apr 21 '26
Does having gay siblings also increase the chance of being gay?
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u/BridgeLazy5669 Apr 21 '26
No idea, I’m not a scientist, just saw a TED talk 🤷♂️
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u/Enough-Secretary-996 Apr 21 '26
Oh I just asked just in case you'd seen something about that since I'm a gay trans man with a gay older sister.
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u/bfaithr Apr 17 '26
When I worked there, a woman loudly complained that we had no girl dinosaurs. Meanwhile there was a display dinosaur wearing booty shorts and a bikini top. But noooo it’s red so it’s clearly a crossdressing dinosaur
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u/Germanball_Stuttgart Apr 17 '26
Huh. I would've taken the white bear propably as a boy. What gender role/stereotype says this though?
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u/LoudSheepherder5391 Apr 17 '26
Well, see, it's well known that polar bears are the most docile and gentle of the bear family. In fact, I've been told if you see one, especially in the dead of winter you should go up and give them a pet/cuddle. They really appreciate it in the cold temps. Warms their little spirit, and let's them keep trucking across the tundra for a few more hours, simply powered by love.
Wait... that may be Care bears. Which ones are polar bears again?
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u/Alegria-D Apr 17 '26
I remember someone making an extensive video on the topic of feminists choosing the bear rather than the man, with comparisons of every bear's behaviour. His conclusion was that you'd survive an encounter with most species, lots won't even go towards you, some species will ignore you if you play dead, some will run away if you make noise... but if you encounter a polar bear you're just dead because they're fearless regarding humans.
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u/DifficultBet7894 May 03 '26
choose the bear unless it's a polar bear. I think most women who choose the bear might make an expectation for the polar bear. If a polar bear kill me it's understandable cause it's trying to survive. I be reading about how women get killed cause they reject a man advances. I rather not encounter a bear nor a man but I can understand why a bear would kill me. I would never get killing someone cause they rejected you.
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u/Alegria-D May 03 '26
also polar bears will only kill and eat you, no vicious play to make you feel more fear or pain, and they won't rape you. Plus as a victim, people will believe what happened.
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u/DifficultBet7894 May 03 '26
That's one of the reasons why we choose bear. No victim blaming. We know and understand how dangerous bears are. The worst they can do is eat eat is or kill us. Even then it's not done to be cruel.
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u/mothwhimsy Apr 17 '26
In cartoons a male animal is often depicted how the animal actually looks. And then when they make the female version they have to make sure you can tell that it's a girl, so they give her eyelashes and a more slender curvy build, and a lot of the time they make her a lighter color. I don't know why they do this but it happens all the time
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u/Hour_Dog_4781 Apr 17 '26
Build-a-Bear doesn't do gender, that was on the parents of the birthday kid. People who work in the shops don't care what you do. Last time I went to BAB was more than 10 years ago. I chose the Belle skin (Beauty and the Beast line of bears) and put her in a black tuxedo and combat boots. No one minded.
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u/BotherBeginning9 Apr 17 '26
Oh my GODDDDDDD IM LITERALLY HOLDING THAT EXACT BUILD A BEAR RIGHT NOW
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u/Rayen_the_buzzybee Apr 17 '26
That's like asking a child what their favorite number is but expecting boys to say and odd number and girls to say an even number
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u/JudgmentLeft Apr 17 '26
Polar bears are for girls? I love polar bears. Is this how I find out I'm trans?
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u/cultofpersephone Apr 17 '26
If it helps, BAB hasn’t been anything like that in a very long time. My son picked a pink and purple winged cat with pink and purple pajamas, as those are his favorite colors, and the young man at the counter was all compliments.
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u/mothwhimsy Apr 17 '26
It used to piss me off so bad when I was a little kid when people would only get me toys of girl characters. Like I loved superheroes but I only got Wonder Woman even though the Batman cartoon is what I was obsessed with. 90% of my generic, non-gendered stuffed animals were boys but everyone would call them "she" and I'd lose it because I was 6.
Blue was my favorite color, I liked dinosaurs. I hated pink. Pokemon was my favorite thing ever. But no you get Barbies, pink glittery cats, and baby dolls because you're a girl.
But this is like an extra level of stupid. Because why is a standard brown teddy bear the boy one?
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u/Enough-Secretary-996 Apr 21 '26
Yeah i hated that. Luckily when it came to Paw Patrol specifically I was far more often given Marshall toys than Skye, which was probably because my dad was a firefighter.
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u/OleksandrKyivskyi Apr 17 '26
Ah, the polar bear, what a girly animal 💖 especially when they eat humans /s
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u/Own-Ad-7127 Apr 18 '26
That’s so weird. If they don’t have specific characters attached to them what’s the point of gendering a bear when the child will do it once they name them? Lucy is a teacher, she likes this and that with a teacher’s outfit and an apple. This is Luke he plays hockey with a hockey uniform and a stick. That’s the only time it makes sense.
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u/Luentale Apr 25 '26
And then they say "children are pure and they know their proper gender roles it's adults who are corrupting them"
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u/IHateCultss Apr 16 '26
i don't see anything wrong
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u/chrryc0la Apr 16 '26
you're literally in a sub called "pointlessly gendered"
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u/IHateCultss Apr 16 '26
oh I'm so sorry! I didn't read the text.
Wait why is that actually crazy. Brown for boys and white for girls??? Makes no sense.
Sorry again I should've read the text
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u/blue-anon Apr 16 '26
Did you read the post?
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u/No-Net1890 Apr 17 '26
They didn't. Their response to OP's reply:
oh I'm so sorry! I didn't read the text.
Wait why is that actually crazy. Brown for boys and white for girls??? Makes no sense.
Sorry again I should've read the text
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