These are adds for the same beauty salon toy set, but from different christmas catalogs. The top is what you would typically be depicted, only girls, for a beauty salon kit from a standard traditional toy catalog in most countries. It was taken from a Denmark catalog.
Then below there is the same ad, but instead of a girl with a hair dryer, there is a boy and also, he is wearing a hair dresser belt. This was the first time that this company had a change to gender neutral ads. The catalog is from Sweden, where the country has recently made a big shift to making things gender neutral.
I believe if the bottom ad were to be shown in America, that it would become a giant controversy, especially for Tea Partiers and Right Winged Republicans. I feel that they would say it is promoting children to be "gay" and since they view that as something negative, they might view it as an attack on their morals, that it goes against the norms set by the Bible... This a would have a hard time being printed in America.
Sweden has added the pronoun, 'hen', which is a combination of their 'he' and 'she', to its country's national encyclopedia and will also spend close to $340 million this year on promoting the equality of gender in the workforce. So, Sweden is definitely pushing in the direction of snuffing out gender stereotyping, wether it's a push in the right direction is up to you.
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