DD is pink and princessy and cares about hair etc and is only 5

LRD how old are you? I'm 37 and we just didn't have 'pink' for girls, it wasn't really an option. I played with cars, my Dad built me a garage too. I loved Sindy, had the car, house, horse etc. I didn't watch a lot of TV, merchandise wasn't yet considered a good money maker......

Hardgoing said, "I am less concerned about what my five year old wears than what I see 13 year olds wearing. I think the need to look 'sexy' from a young age is something quite unique to Britain, I see lots of teenagers from abroad kicking about in jeans and a t-shirt, and the UK teenagers wearing some really strange tight 'sexy' clothing."

Actually, I think there is a very strong connection between the marketing of gender-specific products for younger girls and even girl babies and the marketing of sexualised clothing, products and services to pre-teen and early teen girls.

Toys targeted at say pre-school school girls tend to be either in the "princess lifestyle" mould (i.e. be pretty, be decorative, be a lady of leisure, don't be too active, assertive or get dirty,) or in the "little mother" mould (e.g. dolls to care for, tea sets so they can serve other people, cleaning toys so they can take care of the home, etc.) Although I can remember toys of the latter group being pretty dominant even when I was wee in the 60's, I certainly don't remember the hard sell "princess-ification." And, while pink yes is only a colour, marketeers have closely linked it with this kind of message, so there is an association between the two that is pervasive.

When girls get slightly older, the toys, clothing and products start to morph - Barbies with impossibly large busts, long legs and thin waists, Bratz and Monster High type dolls with heavy make up, sexually provocative clothing and "back stories" related to shopping, being popular particularly with the boys, tending to hair, clothes and make up, etc. The message subtly transforms that being attractive means sexually appealing, with plenty of examples to follow and products to help with this (e.g. child specific make up sets, pamper parties, etc.)

If a girl / young woman has already absorbed the message that to be acceptable as a girl you have to be thin, shaved, made up, show off flesh, be passive, etc., before she even his puberty, it's quite possible she'll continue to perpetuate that "theme" through her choice of clothes, studies and career and dynamics in relationships. It's not impossible to counter it, but flipping hard.

It's damned hard to shield children from these all-pervasive messages. As someone else above said, even if you try your damnedest to encourage your child to be themselves and not buy into the negative gender stereotypes, there will be grandparents, neighbours, friends, school mates, etc. who have no such qualms. Often the girl who doesn't follow the herd can be targeted for bullying, even at a very, very young age.

pomme - No I dont mean you need to not do anything with your looks it just shouldnt be the only focus for a child. I want her to think like me, and know she is pretty but not because she puts loads of effort in but just
because she is. Its not about not looking feminine both me and her are the natural 'barbie' type looking girls as such but that doesnt mean I dont want to play outside and have fun, or spend ages doing her hair and make up.

Also I mean extreme cases I dont want my DD to grow up not being able to climb trees, get her clothes dirty get messy etc. I see it in my line of work a lot. I have had parents say ther girl must stay inside as they dont want her to get dirty. I do Forest Schools and we have had parents shout out their girls for getting muddy and we have been told not to do it next time. We have had cases in the past where a mum didnt want her 2 year old on the decking as 'she is only a little girl and might fall over' and get messy. We have had 3 year olds in small heeled knee high boots, totally ridiculous sandals, mini skirts they cant move in. Its very common place if you worked in the early years a long time.

Lenin - that was strange, you replied before I posted!

Thanks though. I get what you're saying - I guess you just have to try and find what works.

Good for him (and you).

Please understand I'm not belittling that achievement, but I wonder if it's easier for boys to think of things in a gender-neutral way as society sees being male as the default and female as the alternative version a lot of the time? Maybe this doesn't come up when you're 5, though?!

But how do you get to that point, where you are resisting a gender identity (ie., defining a part of yourself against it?), but not doing so consciously? I think the resisting femininity threads were really good for this. Whether it is something a child can be expected to do, I just don't know.

What worries me, you see, is that I very much grew up with the whole 'resist pink girliness' message. I knew quite clearly that many people considered pink to be for girls, and that my parents expected something 'better' of me. Not a great message, obviously! My parents didn't do it on purpose, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to avoid giving that message.

Looking at the threads on being a 'housewife' or about the value of childcare, I think we can see the same problems. Women shouldn't feel ashamed to be SAHMs, that work should be properly valued. But instead, resisting teh stereotype that it is feminine to be a SAHM, women just end up feeling they've failed. It's not fair.

Here, in case anyone doesn't see it:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/1290714-I-am-too-pretty-to-do-my-homework-so-my-brother-has-to-do-it-for-me

It's depressing as a product but the comments are predictably quite cheering.

True. Have you seen the thread on active convos in chat atm? It's some puke-making stuff directed at girls, too.

I don't follow the comparison to porn culture, btw.

Porn is inherently harmful to women (and men). Pink is a symbol, and not inherently anything to do with gender, nor harmful.

I think it does, though.

I think if you make the resistance to a symbol so important, children will pick up on that, and part of their gender identity will be to do with resistance to a symbol. It's a negative imagine of having their gender identity constructed by identifying with that symbol - whereas what would I think be better (if we could work out how to do it) would be making it so children did not feel they had to conform to any gender identity at all, positive or negative.

(Btw, above, I should have said I see the point I think tethers is making. If I'm reading you wrongly, I apologize.)

Sorry, cross-post. What I meant is:

We have a here-and-now problem, which is that our society chooses to use pink sparkles to symbolize femininity.

And we have a long-term problem, that our society has long believed that there is such a thing as 'femininity' and that this is a helpful concept - as opposed to believing in female-ness, which is a matter of biology.

If by approaching the first problem, you end up replacing it with another socially-constructed idea of 'how to act as a woman/girl', you may make things better short-term (eg., it is good that women now don't feel being a doctor is un-feminine necessarily), but you might not be tackling the long-term issue, which is that we do't really want any social construct of what it is to be a woman, we want to say femaleness is biology and no more, no less.

Whether that's possible, I don't know ... so it makes sense in RL to try to look at both problems and do what you can.

Given that the overriding social contract of femininity vs masculinity is so strong, and our children will be exposed to this eventually, are we not in danger of creating a 'sub-class' of women/girls in their minds by actively resisting pink?

Only if we actively resist ALL gender stereotyping male/female would this work.

Hmm... Just working through this for myself...

So we're pretty much agreeing?

As I said, I think what is important is letting little girls (and little boys) know that what makes them a girl or a boy is physical, not social. I think we can agree?

The issue with 'resisting' pink as a symbol is, how do you then avoid little girls getting the message that being a girl is to do, not with their biology, but with the fact that they are the ones who must resist pink sparkles? It's not as if children won't notice what adults are trying to get them to do - so I think they will know that, for their parents, this resistance of pink is an important and gendered issue.

I do think it is really tricky, and I don't know how you get it 'right' (if there is such a thing), but I see tethers' point on this one.