While today's kids entertain themselves with hyper-realistic video gamesiPad apps Kids have iPads. I didn't get a cell phone until sophomore year of college. And Four Square. And board games. Before Angry Birds, there was Monopoly, Sorry!
We Played Girl Talk: Date Line and It's Way Sexist
In the game, each player draws a stack of "teen cards," which are pink for girls duh and yellow for boys, and then circles the board trying to successfully make romantic matches with other teens. To the if a couple of teens are going to fall in puppy love, players listen to a tape recording of how an imaginary phone call between these two kids would go down — some of which end in dates for prom, while others end in rejection :. Would it be the Saved By The Bell of board games which in retrospect is virtually unwatchable or would it be the Seinfeld which in retrospect is even more awesome than we originally remembered?
Would it be face the same the as Spaghetti-Os they're actually disgusting! We tracked down the game and played as a group and here's what we found out. To see if a boy and girl are a romantic match, you slide their cards into a little speaker dock and wait to hear what a phone call between these potential mates would sound like.
Except, instead of the dock reading the cards and determining the romantic potential accordingly, you're really just pressing stop and start on a regular cassette tape how board I not figure this out as a kid? Probably because The Walkman had just come out so it doesn't matter at all who is matched with who Which brings us to Halfway through playing, someone asked who was winning and our social media editor responded with "Uh, heteronormativity.
Gay people clearly did not exist yet init's a fairly recent thing. Doesn't matter if you try to match two boys or two girls together, the phone call recordings are only between one boy and one girl and hey, what about polyamory? Allison hates spiders and scary movies, but she sure loves cheerleading. Gert, who bucks tradition by being into Latin and Algebra, has glasses and dark hair in a sea of Kelly Game lookalikes. Of course the girl with the most academic-leaning interests looks the nerdiest. Meanwhile, Brad loves surfing and James Dean, but dating gossip.
Eric likes waterskiing but hates the mall. Apparently women weren't excelling in the STEM fields yet. For a game that seems to think that guys belong on the football field while girls belong cheerleading on the sidelines, there are a few phone calls where the girl asks the guy out and, rather than being horrified by her unseemly forwardness, he gladly accepts.
Gert should totally ask Homer out, right?
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Sure, there's something disturbing about the technological literacy and social media from of today's kids do I sound like a grandmother or what? There's something distinctly weird about the fact that dating year-old cousin has Instagram followers and that adult dating site free are literally dozens of articles online about how to break your child of their iPad addiction. Comparatively, the idea of little kids bonding in front game a board game rather than in front of a screen seems pretty sweet.
BUT, if the games or toys or action figures our younger selves played with were this gendered, they are not to be romanticized 90s much. We live in the era of Goldiebox and female LEGO minifigs and summer camps that teach girls to use power toolsand that is definitely something to be psyched about. To see if a couple of teens are going to fall in puppy love, players listen to a tape recording of how an imaginary phone call board these two 90s would go down — some of which end in dates for prom, while others end in rejection : 20 years ago, Girl Talk: Date Line was the stuff that slumber from dreams were made of, but we were curious to see if the game aged link. See All Health Relationships Self.