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Eighth-grader petitions Hasbro to market Easy-Bake Ovens to boys

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What to get a little boy for Christmas that isn’t the usual toy car set, video game or sports item? One fresh-faced activist suggests an Easy-Bake Oven.

McKenna, 13, is petitioning toy maker Hasbro to stop marketing the kitchen set only to young girls, asking for images of boys to also be placed on Easy-Bake boxes.

The Garfield, N.J., eighth-grader, moved to action by her 4-year-old brother’s attempts to cook on top of a lamp’s light bulb, has already scored nearly 18,000 signatures on her petition on Change.org.

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On the petition, McKenna writes that she found the lack of packaging or promotional materials featuring boys to be “quite appalling.” The girlie purple and pink colors used on Easy-Bake Ovens didn’t help either.

“I feel that this sends a clear message: women cook, men work,” she wrote. “I want my brother to know that it’s not ‘wrong’ for him to want to be a chef.”

As McKenna points out, many of the top figures in the culinary industry are men -- behemoths such as Emeril Lagasse, Gordon Ramsay, Wolfgang Puck and many more. On Hasbro’s website, the Easy-Bake brand is included under Cooking & Baking Games for Girls.

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To really pound her point home, McKenna uploaded an adorable video where she goads her brother into explaining the trouble with wanting an Easy-Bake Oven (he also hopes for a dinosaur).

“Only girls play with it,” he says, while attempting to bake cookies.

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