#potato head

80s stuff i•tip jar

*ahem*

One could argue that Potato Head’s interchangeable features and accessories – the selling point of the toy – are fundamentally opposed to rigid binaries of gender. The very crux of Potato Head’s existence is to encourage personal aesthetic experimentation, completely disregarding the false gendered contexts of inanimate objects. Disembodied moustaches and tiny purses are strewn across the floor, the signified removed from the signifier, a Dadaist collage of images reduced to utter meaninglessness. It is a striking visual of the absurdity of cisnormativity, and the performativity and mutability of gender.

Throughout a child’s play, the hats, perma-lipsticked smiles, and bare ears are gleefully placed and replaced, the child perhaps pausing to consider the whole before resuming. By the end, we are a faced with something of a Ship of Theseus dilemma: which Potato Head is the Mr, and which is the Mrs? How can we tell which one came from which box? Furthermore, does it matter? Stripped of any defining features, the plastic ovoid is neutral. It invites the child to create the label themselves rather than relying on some inherent truth supposedly held within the Potato’s hollow interior.

The Potato Head toy is, and has always been, a postmodern playground for gender fuckery. Removing pronouns isn’t part of some liberal conspiracy, but rather an acknowledgment of Potato Head’s reality. It’s referring to Achilles and Patroclus as lovers rather than ‘very dear friends’. It’s Boston Marriages being reconsidered as romantic rather than a simple economic move. It’s not a rewriting of history or warping of facts, but an affirmation of truth.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.