Gen One of My Little Pony was fantastic because it understood little girls enjoyed playing dress-up and braiding hair but would then turn around and use those prettied-up little horsies to play out some of the most vicious high stakes storylines ever conceived.
everyone I know raised as a little girl and given only supposedly “girl appropriate” toys acted out the darkest most brutal shit with them, I swear to god, every time I played at girl’s houses when I was a kid they got out their barbies or ponies or polly pockets and weaved a tale that typically had at least two murders, a suicide pact and a satanic ritual.
Wait… so… people raised as boys didn’t roleplay horses enslaving humans/blood sacrifices to the gods/trojan war style epics over lost loves? Weird.
I love how many comments this exploded with about the grotesque horrific shit kids acted out with their barbie dolls and horsies. But no, the thing is, toys and cartoons “for boys” never focused much on realistic emotional strife, especially not back when I was younger. Heartbreak and betrayal and lost love were all designated “feminine” territory for some reason, so the kids placed in the “boy toy” camp were just focusing on action, action, action with little pepperings of interpersonal drama, like, Lord Skullfucker’s gonna blow up the sun any day now but it turns out he’s Commando Dragonlaser’s long lost brother, so Commando Dragonlaser is only going to tear out Skullfucker’s kidneys with his bare fists after a fleeting, manly moment of regret. Kids shoehorned into the “girl stuff” slot, on the other hand, are just given plastic housewives in plastic mcmansions and little happy kitties to work with, and the expectation from adults is that they’re going to act out sweet, saccharine stories about baking a cake for the boys when they get home from a day at the office. Unfortunately for those adults, all types of children are equally likely to crave stories full of shocking twists and thrilling peril, including death, and all kids have wild-ass imaginations with no filter, so while the story of Lord Skullfucker is “technically” more brutal, on paper, the drama kids come up with when they’ve only got the horsies and barbies to work with are more believable and visceral.
Obviously this is just my personal view from my personal experience as one person who had both girls and boys as childhood friends, but it seems to be backed up by other people’s stories almost every time the subject comes up.
I remember reading a very eloquent post a while ago about how teenage girls will go on to read and write really dark, fucked up fan fiction about their favorite cartoon characters and it was analogized to having a paper shredder in their heads. Everything aimed at girls is saccharine and sweet while women and girls are faced with the reality of misogynistic violence that becomes more and more visible as they grow from children to teens. Play as children and fan fiction as teens and adults gives them the outlet for their thoughts and desires that come out when they’re shoving cartoons through the mental paper shredder.















