The first time Donald Trump opined about how many dolls a little girl should have, it seemed he was speaking off the cuff, as he often does, about a subject he knows nothing about. During one of his fake "Cabinet meetings" — which are better described as mandatory praise provision from his underlings — Trump defended his trade-destroying tariffs by lecturing parents about not spoiling their daughters.
"Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know?" argued the billionaire who flies on a private jet to play in rigged golf games at one of his many estates most weekends.
The doll thing is evidently a preplanned talking point, because Trump keeps returning to the subject. "I don't think a beautiful baby girl that's 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls," Trump told Kristen Welker of NBC News, revealing that this father of five is unaware that 11-year-olds aren't babies. He repeated the talking point, showcasing his total lack of understanding of how children age, the next day to reporters. "All I’m saying is that a young lady, a 10-year-old-girl, 9-year-old girl, 15-year-old-girl, doesn’t need 37 dolls," he said, not knowing that high schoolers don't usually play with dolls. "She could be very happy with two or three or four or five," asserted this self-appointed expert in child psychology.
Now Trump's Cabinet members are picking up the claim that the problem isn't rising prices, but parents who need to be sterner with whiny little girls.
Bessent says that little girls who are sad about having fewer dolls should just have it explained to them that they will have a better life for it
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 6, 2025 at 7:15 PM
However poor his execution, it seems obvious that Trump is working off instructions, likely given by his ever-present aide/manager Stephen Miller, to keep the focus on dolls and maybe "pencils," which he brought up with Welker. Either way, the telling detail is that the only children Trump will talk about are girls. Boys aren't mentioned. Neither are toys more stereotypically associated with boys, like Legos or toy trucks. This is likely not an accident, but part of a larger effort to sell the otherwise indefensible tariffs to the MAGA base by invoking the same misogynist resentment that helped Trump get elected.
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A little over a month ago, Trump superfans on X started arguing that the tariffs were the key to restoring male dominance. They falsely claim that tariffs will drive women out of the workforce and force them to get married to survive. The argument wasn't made using customary tactics like reason or evidence, so much as incoherent rage at women with desk jobs. One silly video of some women dancing for a moment in their office drew special rage and claims that tariffs are needed to destroy this unsightly display of female joy.
Fox News picked it up, and tried to argue that tariffs will restore the patriarchal gender order by bringing back manly manufacturing jobs, while destroying "email jobs" that are primarily held by women in MAGA fantasy version of reality. The opposite, however, is what's happening: Trump's trade war is shutting down American factories that need foreign-sourced materials, as well as devastating other "manly" blue-collar jobs like truck driving and farming. But the gender resentments Trump taps into were never about facts, but about giving Trump's male supporters a scapegoat for all their self-inflicted woes: women. Or, with the "doll" gambit, girls. Guardian columnist Moira Donegan joked about this on Bluesky, "As we all know, the only workers who ever produce anything are men, and all women are exclusively parasitic consumers (men do not consume). This is how the economy works in the right wing symbolic order. "
The "doll" talk, like the anger at the dancing video, dials into the same tired, sexist stereotype: that women and girls are inherently frivolous. The narrative in the manosphere is that young women have too much self-esteem, due to allegedly being spoiled by parents and educators who allowed them to believe their gender should be no limit on their ambitions. When parents and teachers tell girls they're worth something, the argument goes, they grow up to be egotistical "cat ladies," too busy pursuing their own goals to settle into their proper role as an uncomplaining helpmeet for a man. The image of "too many" dolls taps right into this ugly worldview that overly indulged girls are growing into "selfish" women who think they're too good to settle for Mr. Tweeting Incel.
The White House leans heavily on the unjustified grievances of the Elon Musk fanboys of X to develop their talking points, but it's not at all certain this is a smart strategy. Last month's go-round of trying to spin tariffs as a restoration project for American male dominance did little to raise public trust in the trade war, with polls showing large and growing majorities of Americans oppose the tariffs. It would be nice if it were because Americans have embraced gender equality, but truthfully, most don't seem to be picking up on the gender grievance behind all this "doll" talk. All they hear is Trump admitting prices are going up — and most people are smart enough to know it won't be limited to dolls.
The narrative in the manosphere is that young women have too much self-esteem, due to allegedly being spoiled by parents and educators who allowed them to believe their gender should be no limit on their ambitions.
Tariffs are especially threatening to parents of young children, because they will raise the price of daily necessities that are already too expensive. As USA Today documented, prices on diapers, clothes, car seats, and strollers are expected to rise dramatically, as these are either manufactured in countries hit with high tariffs or the American manufacturers import supplies from overseas. Trump may not be able to tell the difference between a baby and a 6th-grader, but most Americans understand kids grow quickly and need new clothes. Forget those tradwife fantasies that women can be strong-armed into making clothes for kids — the price of fabric is already high and will be rising with tariffs, too.
The "doll" talk may have been intended to provoke gender resentments, but it's mostly just a reminder that Trump doesn't care about the economic struggles of young parents. That's especially aggravating in light of the reports that the White House is entertaining condescending policy pitches aimed at "persuading" women to have more children. Proposals include giving mothers of big families "medals" for child-bearing or even paying new moms a $5,000 baby bonus. None of this will work, of course. Five grand is not enough to cover health and child care costs for a baby, much less all the stuff that needs to be bought, most of which will be more expensive from this trade war. Trump just sounds like he's even more out of touch with the daily lives of ordinary people.
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