Inside Toyland, written by Christine L. Williams, is a look at toy stores and issues of race, class, and gender. Williams worked about six weeks at two toy stores, Diamond Toys and Toy Warehouse, enough time to be able to detect patterns in store operations and interactions between workers and customers. He wanted to try to describe and analyze the rules that govern giant toy stores. His main goal was to understand how shopping was socially organized and how it could be transformed to improve the lives of workers. Over the course of the 20th century, toy stores became larger and contributed to suburbanization and deregulation. Specialty toy stores existed, but they sold primarily to adults, not children. Men worked in toy stores until the situation changed and became feminized, co-ed, part-time, and temporary. When box stores came and took over the country, toy stores began to target children and offer larger selections at low prices. Retail stores have become powerful in shifting power from manufacturers to retailers. Now, retail giants determine what to sell and at what price they will sell it. One of the first things Williams noticed in the store were the workers themselves, the gender and race of the people, and the hierarchy of positions in both stores. In both toy stores, at the top were the managers, then management, supervisors, associates, security, and cleaning staff. At Toy Warehouse, the directors and management were all white males except Olive and one African American woman, and the partners were both men and women, all of different races. Men worked primarily in the back room and women were the cashiers. The security guards at the Toy Warehouse, black men and c...... middle of paper ...... made money off the people where I had worked. According to Williams, a renewed commitment to the values ​​of the citizen consumer is needed to make changes in the retail sector. He said the political economy of shopping must change and that the retail sector must be reined in by new legislation that guarantees workers' rights to living wages, healthcare and equal opportunities. I think what he says is true. The entire retail system needs to be revamped to take workers into account, and until consumers start realizing this and demanding changes, nothing will change. I learned a lot from this book. I learned a lot about why some stores are structured the way they are, and how race, class, and gender are deeply ingrained in everything in the world and everything we do. There is nothing we do that doesn't involve at least one of these aspects.