I just posted a link to Jonathan Liu’s phenomenal list of the best toys of all time that included a stick, a box, string, and dirt.

Then someone on that Twitter thing showed me this and I was undone.

Seems these days girls don’t have to get their science in the kitchen. Science for girls is now…in the bathroom. Baking is so 1950s. In 2012 we exfoliate.

How long will it take before girls get their science in the lab, like the so-called boys’ science kits offer?

Science kits are great gifts, even though almost all science can be done with regular household ingredients and a grownup who can read. But apparently girls can’t be interested in science unless it’s Barbied. And they can’t forget what’s important: being “pretty.” Ugh. Read Peggy Orenstein’s post on these horrifying “spa science” and mani/pedi appeals to girls that seek to either trick them into doing that abhorrent-and-boyish-activity known as science or dumb it down enough that “even girls” can find it fun.

Yuck. Hope any child in your life interested in science gets the chemistry and physics set, not the one branded for their early objectification.