Gender

     In Japan most of the elementary school students use randoseru, which is a kind of school bag, although some private school students use designated school bags. Of course I used a randoseru when I was an elementary school student, but I don’t have any picture now, so I attached two pictures from google. Boys use black randoseru and girls use red ones in general. I thought it was quite natural, so I hadn't realized that many companies, such as AEON, Ito-yokado and so on, have recently started selling colorful randoseru. If you go to the randoseru corner, you can see various colors of randoseru, not only black and red but also blue, yellow,pink, orange…..maaaaaaany colors!!! So I thought the idea that black randoserus for boys and red ones for girls might be based on gender bias. In fact, when I was an elementary school student, one of my friends used a light purple randoseru. At first boys teased her about her color of randoseru. They said things like she used a purple randoseru in spite of a girl, for example. I remembered such memories when I went to AEON and saw a lot of randoserus last weekend.

pictures: http://www.google.co.jp/search?tbm=isch&hl=ja&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=506&q=%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%82%BB%E3%83%AB&btnG=%E7%94%BB%E5%83%8F%E6%A4%9C%E7%B4%A2&gbv=2&oq=%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%82%BB%E3%83%AB&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=0l0l0l6007l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0