The relationship between gender identity and the commodity
Products are important in the external appearance of one's gender identity, which is usually expressed through clothing, hairstyle and voice.
Aaron Ahuvia wrote an article titled "Beyond the Extended Self: Loved Objects and Consumers’ Identity Narratives." The hieroglyphic, or status, of an object help to construct the “’self,’ ‘sense of self,’ and ‘identity’ for how a person subjectively perceives who he or she is."
For example...
Children are assigned a gender at birth, typically the gender correlating with their sex. Therefore, the imprinted gender biases from laborers onto products like toys reinforce that assignment.
This concept is not foreign – it has been decided that toys for girls are typically colored with pinks, purples and pastels, whereas toys for boys are deep shades of blue and green. A consumer could not find a Barbie doll displayed next to monster trucks and Nerf guns. This divide is significant because “consumers use key possessions to extend, expand, and strengthen their sense of self,” therefore the objects that we surround ourselves with help to construct our identity such as gender identity.
