Am I wrong to let my daughter enjoy being girly then?

coupon it seems like it is denigrating the wearing of dresses, and being proud that your daughter doesn't like them.

People never write that their dd would never dream of wearing trousers and was always covered in glitter. Or at least not without a subsequent sentence to "make upfor it" about how their daughter does like riding her bike or playing with star wars Lego. But people don't feel a need to do it the other way round, and round out the character of the dress-hating mud-lover by emphasising how much they like playing with dolls.

their DD would never dream of wearing a dress and is always covered in mud

Why do you take that as a promotion of one thing above another? Isn't it just a description?

I have no problem with pretty things and frills; it's slogan tshirts which associate boys with naughtiness and girls with prettiness, or being spoilt, etc, that I find a problem.

I have just realised that I and both dds are wearing flowery dresses/skirts, and indeed very often do. I have never thought of me or them as 'girly girls' though; the phrase just wouldn't occur to me!

Errol, yes, it is good to celebrate multi-faceted tastes. I think I am just objecting to the "but" and feel it should be "and".

maybe I am just over-sensitive because my dd has never shown any enthusiasm for climbing anything

Haven't read the whole thread but couldn't agree with you more OP. As I have said before on MN I was brought up in the 1970s by a mother fully Spare-Ribbed up who sneered at everything girly and glamorous. As a result it took me ages to admit to myself let alone anyone else that I liked clothes and shoes and looking nice - and even the occasional bit of pink.

I have 2 DDs and both appropriate for their ages love girly stuff - I would draw the line at anything too old for them (subjective I know). I would hate to think I would ever suppress any aspect of them as individuals but equally don't force them down other routes.

It always rankles on threads when people bang on about how their DD would never dream of wearing a dress and is always covered in mud - cheering on traditionally 'boyish' behaviour over traditionally 'girly' behaviour always seems the most sexist thing of all.

Flea - yes, I was thinking - those descriptors might add up to two girls total!
And I think its one of the reason why people sometimes say the 'my DD likes tutus but plays football too' type thing - its not oppositional, or that one is better than the other, more that we're celebrating their multi-faceted tastes.

Yes, Yes 5Mad. We still have a culture that views it is degrading for a boy to wear his sister's hand me down pink coat or (as I saw on a recent thread) parents saying that they need to buy a new bouncy chair because the current one is not unisex and their new baby is the opposite gender. Pink is exclusively the domain of girls. And not in a 'it's so great and special' way - because if it was that parents of boys woudn't recoil in horror at the idea of their boy being touched by it.

there is nothing wrong with her liking pink and princess and sparkly, what is wrong is that they are seen as only girls things and thus inferior.

it should be ok for boys to like them as well!

I think what I mean is, it shouldn't be a 'choice' for girls - you can be girly, or you can be a tomboy. You can be sporty, or you can be bookish. Surely that's just one step on the way to you can be 'hot' or 'clever', a 'good' girl or a 'skank'?

The main characters are female friends who are all different: One is sporty and likes to compete, one is into sewing and fashion, one is shy and likes animals, one loves books and studying, one is well weird and one is a hard-working farmer. A range of strong, interesting female characters is good - but I wish they didn't have to be 'types' like that. DD is 5; sometimes she's shy, sometimes she's competitive, she loves reading but she loves climbing trees; like most real girls, she's not just one set of attributes and it bothers me that popular culture presents girls in that way.

By the way I think the cartoon MLP Friendship is magic is a good one for girls to watch. The main characters are female friends who are all different: One is sporty and likes to compete, one is into sewing and fashion, one is shy and likes animals, one loves books and studying, one is well weird and one is a hard-working farmer.

it is not the activities though, it's the whole package. If she is dreaming of a wedding and not having a career that will have a major impact on her life and life chances.
If she is spending hours in front of mirrors in due course rather than studying her school books she might well not have such a good life.
So do encourage the other side of things too and outside activities.
You can buy books which show women in jobs rather than as home makers and that kind of thing which worked very well for us.

I sometimes feel like the OP. I think it is because peopleoften type things like "my dd loves dolls and sparkly tiaras but she also likes climbing trees and rriding her bike" as though they were oppositional. It sometimes feels that if you say your dd likes girly things, then you have to quickly justify yourself and say all the rough and tumble things they like too.

If as an adult you said you preferred to wear skirts, and then hastily assured your listeners that you were a keen rock climber the would all be . But that seems to be the accepted script when talking about a child enjoying activities that are traditionally associated with girls. And it does give the strong impression that these activities are inferior

I think its fine to let her to play with gender stereotyped things, as long as you encourage her to broaden her tastes too.

My dd thinks all these MLP and barbie etc are lovely, but ive pulled her up on it if she starts talking about how some things are for girls and some things are for boys, and i try and subtly push towards more powerful girly things, like wonder woman and supergirl and Ive talked to her about how silly I think it is that SOME PEOPLE think girls only like pink, when when I was a little girl, we had toys in all sorts of rainbow colours, and girls and boys played with what they liked, and werent told that we could only like certain colours.

My mum was a spare rib feminist and always dressed me in dungarees, and I STILL remember when she refused to buy me the dainty shoes i was desperate for, and bought me a pair of monkey boots instead. Im taking a slightly more open minded approach, and letting my dd have a bit more choice, but encouraging her to think about it

My DDs like to dress up in pretty sparkly dresses. I figure it's a magpie attraction and that it's fine for girls to have this. I think boys have this desire to but that they are usually refused the opportunity to wear fabulous and decorated fabrics. I think that's a shame.

DDs (4.5 and 3) put on pretty dresses on Sunday and then went out in the garden to play with the large digger toys (On gravel) and collect snails. They insisted I put on a pretty dress to so I dug out an old one from my formal party days --long gone- and floated around the house all day. If anyone had knocked on the door I'd have felt daft but I'm sure I'll do it again

They have toys aimed at girls (pink dolls), boys (large diggers) and plenty of neutral puzzles, books, building blocks. I'm not going to encourage lego 'friends' and will probably start a 'city' collection. But I wouldn't refuse them 'friends' if they picked it out when I'm letting them pick something.

Pretty dresses are not the problem. It is the strange attitude that suggests that by wearing a dress you somehow are incapable of other activities. The solution is not to avoid pinkness. It's to allow pinkness and encourage everything else, and not allow stupidity to rule.

Yes, and if you look at it objectively it makes no sodding sense. A child's outfit probably costs much the same as another child's outfit (in the sense that, from a given retailer, a boy outfit, a dress, and leggings and a t-shirt probably add up to the same amount).

So why is it that dress = be careful, keep it clean, look pretty. I assume it goes back to women as decorative and girls wearing dresses 'acting female'. But it is enraging.

Not sure if the link will work, but this is Lego Friends, the 'girl' range. Essentially it is generic girl toys - dolls, shops, beauty parlours - made of lego. What happened to the building and imagining

That makes it so much worse Penguins. I wish they would just let toys be toys.

YY LadyofCannock.

MN feminists wouldn't be down on your DD for being a girly girl. I am a feminist and I have all kinds of sparkly joy in my life.

They would however be down on a society which promotes a certain way of being a young girl (ie pink and sparkly shit and passive role models) above all the other ways a young girl could be.

And your DD hasn't made her choices in a vacuum, or even just by looking to you. She has made them by looking at her peers' clothing and toys, the attitudes of other adults in her life, the marketing she sees around her in any shop she goes in, the roles she sees assigned to women and girls in books/TV/real life ...

In this debate I always remember this picture - basically its her picking pink thats the problem, it's if she's only provided with various pink/girly options. If she's picking the pink and fluffy options let her, take lots of photos to shame her with if she decides to be emo in a decades time....