This birthday party really got me thinking. . .

Totally agree Milo and Math, that's what I meant earlier about girls being able to wear boys' clothes but never the other way round. It is seen as unacceptable to put a boy in anything remotely pink or frilly, because these things are seen as feminine and therefore demeaning.

However, having just come back from a baby shower where mixed sex twins are expected, it was rather heartening to see only one overtly blue/pink set of gifts, the rest weren't totally neutral but getting there.

Maybe we could start by destigmatising the 'femininity'. I think the problem is not so much that it's seen as 'feminine' but that what is 'feminine' is stigmatised. I think that would be a liberating act for boys too.

Sometimes I wonder if the achievement gap between girls and boys in later stages of school has to do with the feminisation of activities such as reading and the sort of quieter pursuits that schools tend to encourage and reward, or a combination of that and the association of boys with riotous behaviour and impatience with intellectual pursuits.

I echo most of what has been said so far. I also have an almost 2 year old and she doesn't know whether she's a boy or a girl, though she does refer to herself as a boy fairly frequently (I think partly because it's easier to say than girl and also her cousins / friends at CMs are mainly boys so she probably hears the word more often.) She has some 'girls'' toys and some 'boys'' toys but is mostly into colouring and cleaning. Dh buys her quite a lot of boys' clothes because she generally refuses to wear a dress / skirt and boys' trousers fit better than girls' over her massive nappy.

Anyway I feel that we are not really helping our dds by choosing for them to avoid pink (and I do think it's our choosing with children under 3 or so). We are just creating another division, but between the girls rather than between the girls and the boys - 'lower orders' was actually used earlier in the discussion. I think a much better goal (although how we could work towards this I have no idea...) would be for us, as a society, to defeminise the pink toys and the 'girly' stuff. Why is it girly??

I don't really feel 100% comfortable knowing that I will steer my daughter away from pink glittery shit (and I know I will), when actually it will be (or should be) no reflection on her if that's what she likes. I don't want that to be all she's allowed to like and I don't want her to be looked down upon because of that choice. If everyone, boys and girls, could choose the pink, glittery shit and that not be associated with going on to be a low-achiever, I don't think I would worry about it all.

Not sure I have really articulated what I wanted to say ...

mathanxiety, I definitely understand what you're saying, I don't think I expressed myself very well there. I guess the thing is at age 2, most clothing choices are made by the parents, and it's just nice to see a little girl dressed in a more practical way. Particularly so when more often you hear mums shouting 'don't ruin your dress' and actively restricting their DDs because of the clothing they're wearing (which that child probably didn't choose in the first place!). For older children, I really don't judge it in the same way, I know kids are very active in choosing which clothes to buy. Though I do wonder how early one's personal sense of style is formed. Some of my earliest memories are of pretty dresses being itchy.

If it helps any, I also judge when mums of boys dress them in designer stuff and then restrict their play so they won't ruin their clothes!

bleurgh. I am having a "birthday tea" for my ds this month as am bloody skint. Just four of his mates. two hours tops. I have a piece of stamp-sized lawn they could 'rush around' I suppose. But wouldn't recommend it as it's a mud bath after rain.

Right, Messy. That's what I was wondering. Where do we draw the line, so to speak?

I totally agree with the sentiments expressed that we don't want girls to see traditional "femininity" as something to be avoided and feel that they must align themselves with the "masculine" to be smart. I have seen this happen many times.

But considering the force with which pinkification is shoved down our girls' throats how do we know when they are choosing it because they genuinely want to or when they are succumbing to the huge tide of pressure (to the detriment of their other talents and interests)?

Ahhh...Mountain Dew. I love it so. It's citrus-y but no overly so...it just tastes like Mountain Dew! No other description. :) If I feel a headache coming on a can of it plus ibuprofen or Excedrin Migraine will usually chase it away. It's got more caffeine than you can shake a stick at.

I sort of see what you're saying, Math. I feel a bit..uneasy when it's frowned on to enjoy the "traditional" gender roles and...accoutrements, I guess? That makes no sense at all, I don't know how to say what I mean!

Just that I don't think there's anything wrong with liking pink or princesses, and sometimes when people go overboard with saying that pink and princesses are bad or wrong, it feels like they're saying that we must embrace stereotypically "masculine" things in order to be smart or strong. You can be head-to-toe glittery pink and still be smart and strong in my book! :)

I think the problems come in when people think that girls must like pink princesses, even when it's not their style, or boys must eschew them even when they'd love nothing more than to put on a purple feather boa and dance around.

Keeping the tangent going, Cyber Candy has A & W and Barqs (and Mt Dew, but sadly not IBC Root beer, another favourite, or the delightful Diet Chocolate Fudge)

Ah yes, drank that back in the days before pinkification. (sigh)

Diet Mountain Dew at more than £1 a can!

It is citrusy/lime/orangey flavoured and has caffeine in it, so a bit like your coffee and OJ all in one. DS likes the 'throwback' version with real sugar as opposed to corn syrup and fructose.

Rootbeer always reminded me of toothpaste and weirdly enough I am not the only Irish person who thinks that.

I feel there is something a little wrong with the scenario you described there Yank. Something along the lines of pity that a girl has to appear boylike (or in the way society has come to accept/demand boys look) to be seen in a positive light or that anyone would make assumptions about what sort of person a girl might be if she had long hair or wore a skirt or painted her nails. My own DDs have never really had anything princessy/Disneyesque but they have worn pink clothes and shoes, shirts and dresses, wear their hair long, ride bikes that are pink or purple and we have an entire bathroom shelf devoted to nail polish. They are also excellent students, especially when it comes to maths and science, and they play organised sports.

Growing up in Ireland in the 70s and 80s I always noticed a tendency on the part of bright women to eschew makeup and attention to appearance, and a general assumption that if a girl was good looking or paid attention to her appearance then she was probably an airhead. Not quite the madonna/whore dichotomy but an inability to see women as multifaceted individual beings all the same. Girls were considered airheads and not taken seriously intellectually if they chose the path of 'looking good' and dismissed as unattractive if they chose the path of swottiness. Either way girls (and women) were looking at themselves and were being judged by boys and men according to the criteria of the male eye. The relentless focus on appearance and its concomitant value-judging continues when we notice that a girl has short hair or wears blue socks. It's the focus and the judging that are disproportionately applied to girls and women that is wrong, not the colour or the style of the clothing imo.

There was definitely a choice to be made by teenage girls; the idea that you could be either smart or 'pretty' but never both was quite strong and was reinforced by school dress and appearance codes as well as by mothers who grew up in an Ireland where codes for women's and girls' behaviour and appearance were akin to those of the Middle East.

KRITIQ, they have A&W Root Beer in the Chinese supermarket in Manchester! It was an unexpected treat. They also have regular Mountain Dew, but not diet. Regular is too sweet for me, always has been.

Trills, Mountain Dew, I think the marketing describes it as 'lemon lime' flavour.

CheerfulYank, offer very much appreciated, but I've just had some brought over by my friend, and I think I've eaten my sodium allowance for the year!

Back to the issue at hand, there is one mum I know here whose DD is just a bit older than DS, and I really like her style. They're always riding bikes, I've never seen her DD in a dress/skirt, her hair is cut short. She does wear some pink, but nowhere near as much as the other girls. She was even wearing some Thomas The Tank Engine socks one day (DS greatly admired them). The mum seems to go against the grain and I really like to see that. It inspires me! I wonder if she MNs.

Mountain Dew? Sort of luminous yellow lemonadey fizzy drink. I think they even have a diet version now. Oh, I never could stand it. Give me A & W Rootbeer for that frosty mug taste any day! :)

(Another transplanted midwesterner!)

I thought Mountain Dew was whiskey.

What flavour is Mountain Dew? OR does it have its own indescribable flavour like coke?

DD1 did a service project in a Kentucky county and was horrified at the MD in baby bottles and toddler cups and the state of the teeth.

!
i'll tell dd1.
she'll be thrilled.

Very bizarre!

"Mountain Dew Mouth" is an actual term used to describe the terrible condition of the teeth in some children living in poverty in the Appalachian region. :(

the orthodontist gave dd1 mountain dew t'other day, on the pretext that it was hallowe'en and presumably ok to rot your teeth one day a year. bizarre.

I've noticed that madwoman ....the more hiker-y and outdoorsy the families are, the less pink/sparkle/glitter diva nonsense seems to happen.

Again, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with pink or sparkles or princesses or fairytales...but when it starts to affect (effect? argh!) how a little girl sees herself and her place in the world, it becomes a very big problem indeed.

Yank I can send you some Gardetto's if you want. They'll be under four pounds. You're on your own for the Diet Dew though! :o

it's very outdoorsy here, and there is definitely less 'should' about both activities and clothing. and the local ywca ran a brilliant workshop last weekend for y4-6 girls on body confidence, and showed them how photoshop and airbrushing are used in the media. all about promoting love who you are, and don't get into unrealistic aspirations.

it is easier here though - we have both male and female olympians in the community and it's very 'green' so a different sort of mindset...

although it means there are a whole other raft of 'essential' extra-curriculars for your kids to get into.

addams - read 'cinderella ate my daughter'. honestly. it'll answer any question about pinkery you ever had.

YankNCock and CheerfulYank, your names are morphing together in my head like a mental tongue twister.

We have a spare room! It's yours for a couple bags of gardettos and some diet mountain dew.

Same thing with the tshirts here, though mostly I see girlie sickly sweet sentiments and then 'I'm a little rotten bastard' for boys

an