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Politics of the Airplane Toy: Inspired by Barthes and a Bit of my Childhood

Ever since a kid starts to see around him, the peculiar gift of flight in nature that only a few species possess, he would've dreamed of flying like them. And when he figures out, to his great dismay, that he and many others like him are not cut out for the job, it is at that juncture where his mother would let him know, so as to alleviate the despair, what the Wright brothers had accomplished for him. Finally, by chance, when he gets to see the real spectacle taking place several thousand feet above him, that is ignition enough for his most important childhood dream: to fly, or technically speaking, to become a pilot.

All parents want their children to make it to the top, and by top they mean above everyone else. From grade one to day one at work, they nag in front of their kids to make them more competent so that they can brag in front of everyone else. The airplane toy is a tool, in that sense. The kid who is not old enough to know what ambition is, is being initiated into the adult world (where the ultimate objective is to fly over everyone else) through the metaphor of the airplane. The kid takes it into a literal level where he wants to become a pilot. Usually they leave it once something else wins their fascination, but some purse it elegantly.

Even those people living in underdeveloped circumstances, with poverty written all over them, wants their children to have an airplane toy. For them, it is not to make the children dream about flying above others. For them, it is just a get-away plane. It is not about the heights anymore. They just want their kids to know that there is a better world out there and that they can access it with a little bit of hard work and of course, with a little bit of luck. The airplane toy is therefore not so simple as it may seem. It carries within itself an interesting mixture of fun and ambition, potent enough to alter lives.

It is interesting to note that boys are given this toy more often (hence the purposeful use of the pronoun ‘he' in this essay) than girls. No direct comment is necessary to show the gender favouritism at work here. It is as if girl children are encouraged not to grow wings altogether. It is no wonder that earlier the boys who played with planes ended up being pilots, with the power of flight in their hands and those little girls with their cute Barbie dolls grew up to be hostesses in the plane, where their beauty was a key card, not their intellect, not their skills. But things are changing now.

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