When the video “Nerf for Girls Was Beyond Ridiculous” popped up on my YouTube feed, a wave of nostalgia hit me, and I instantly clicked. I owned a crossbow and a gun from the Nerf Rebelle line, on top of the collection of Nerf guns I inherited from my brothers. Nerf Rebelle was a line of Nerf Guns featuring the girly colors of pink, purple, blue, and white, and cute gimmicks especially made for girls. There were guns that converted into purses, walkie-talkies that doubled as friendship bracelets, and guns that featured a bedazzling kit.
At the age of 10, I was not super concerned with the patriarchal or capitalist implications of the girls’ Nerf guns. I just knew I loved archery, and the Courage Crossbow was pretty. Now that I’m older, I can’t believe Nerf got away with releasing such a demeaning line in the 2010s. I mean, seriously, a gun that folds into a purse?
Why did Nerf even need a girls’ line in the first place? Weren’t Nerf guns for ALL kids? Nerf actually created the need for a dedicated line by excluding girls from the marketing for decades. Ads featured almost exclusively boys. The products were gendered by Nerf themselves when they removed girls from the advertising.
But Nerf saw a financial opportunity when movies like The Hunger Games and Divergent featuring female protagonists were doing so well. The influence of The Hunger Games is clear with products like the Heartbreaker Bow and Guardian Crossbow embracing the archery aesthetic.
The other major marketing strategy employed by Nerf was feminizing guns. They did this by decorating guns with typically feminine colors and patterns and, as I mentioned earlier, adding fun, girly features.
Here are my favorite items with girly features from the collection:
- Guns with charm bracelet chains
- Secret message darts
- Customizable guns with peg charms
- The purse gun
Nerf created an artificial gender divide by excluding girls, and then, to bring girls back in, this is what they came up with? The most stereotypical portrayal of young women as gossiping, crafty, materialistic girls obsessed with pink.
The advertising of this line was also very… interesting. The ads for the Rebelle guns were mostly filmed outside and featured one of three activities. Target practice, walking as a team, or advancing with guns as a team. They also never had actual gunfire between participants. This is in contrast to other Nerf ads at the time that took place in warehouses with tactical missions and actual gunfire between participants. Boys can do intense tactical missions, but girls must remain timid and collaborative. It is clear that Nerf didn’t see a world where girls and boys would be playing with the same guns at the same time. Nerf imagined a girl shooting her purse gun at a target in the woods while her brothers used their “real Nerf guns” in combat with one another.
The conclusion of the aforementioned video is that this was a necessary step to bring girls back to Nerf. This is where the creator, slow start, loses me. Nerf created artificial demand for a “girls line” because they refused to include girls in their standard products and advertising. And to fix it, instead of just incorporating girls into the existing lines, they created a whole separate line that embraced a timid, weak idea of girls.
Girls should’ve been allowed to use the “boys” Nerf guns, and the only reason they weren’t is that our culture fears assertive, confident, powerful women. Nerf forced patriarchal feminine ideals of delicacy, innocence, and timidness onto guns, something inherently violent and confrontational.
Thankfully, in 2016, Nerf abandoned this line. Girls and boys are now side by side in ads. Unfortunately, there are fewer girls than boys in recent ads, and girls are still not featured shooting the guns. I don’t know if this is intentional by Nerf, or if they just conveniently can’t see a girl shooting a gun as realistic and marketable.
To the Nerf executives out there, let the girls shoot the damn guns!