"You can't play with He-man, he's not for girls!" This phrase still echoes in my mind as I reminisce about my childhood playtime. As I reached for a He-man action figure from the toy box, I was handed a Barbie doll or a My Little Pony figurine. At that time, I was too young to realize the great chasm that gender had created for such a simple task as playing with toys. However, looking back, it becomes clear that gender, itself, plays a key role in the everyday lives of boys and girls. In Barrie Thorne's book, Gender Play, this role is depicted in various ways through participant observation, or ethnography. By researching the ways that children play an active role in "doing" gender, analyzing the neutralization of this socialized role, and displaying the effects that education, primarily those with a classroom setting, has on gender, Thorne provides ample support of the notion that gender is a social construction.
             From my experiences with the He-man doll, one can deduce a certain boundary line for activities between girls and boys. Barrie Thorne provides explanations of these boundaries by analyzing the ways that children play an active role in creating them. By having shared interests, or "behavioral compatibility", girls and boys contribute to the "act of gender". Although there is not overwhelming support, "boys find it more rewarding to interact and play with boys, and girls to interact and play with girls...girls more often gravitate to housekeeping corners and doll-play, and boys to the area with large blocks and toy cars..."(Thorne 57). This example explains the division between boys and girls as one of shared interests. Because girls enjoy the same activities as other girls, and boys enjoy the same activities as other boys, a boundary for gender is marked. In choosing to play with a He-man doll, I crossed this boundary. However, in defining why chi...