Please could someone help me articulate an email to Asda regarding these pyjamas?

Just buy the red ones and teach your Dd she can wear whatever she wants. Whenever Dd and I go shopping we look at the pink section then the blue section.Wgen she was small I tried hard not to call it girls/boys. She's 10 now her favourite colour is blue and often choses clothes from both sides. She like sthe longer cut of shorts in the boys section and the colours, boys clothes te d to be thicker and have pockets. She is Harry Potter mad and there is always a larger selection in the boys side. Alternatively try Polarn Pyret in their sale a d when your Dd is bigger shops like Fat Face do good practical hard-wearing clothes in lots of colours.

Yeah just buy the red ones. You could still email them to let them know what you're doing and how the boys ones are erroneously named.

I am actually able to think about Syria and think about the socialization of boys and girls. I may be spectacularly clever though

@bd67th if it bothers you that much Just don't buy pink pyjamas. My girls love pink and so does my boy.

@bd67th it's not an argument, just an observation

On another note what's the bloody dinosaur obsession plaguing baby clothes at the moment im not mad keen on them and i doubt DS will be but every baby outfit has dinosaurs on or a dinosaur theme

Thinking about Syria, shooting etc and putting it all into perspective.

Syria: male violence, men fighting to decide where to place the boot on women's necks.

Pink pyjamas: conditioning girls to behave a certain way and hold a certain self-image, to their detriment.

In perspective, its all part of the same big picture. Your argument is used by MPAs to silence western women's objection to street harassment because women in India are dragged off buses, raped and murder. It's the same big picture of girls and women being conditioned into accepting less agency and freedom so that men can control us.

I have a 4 year old daughter who is very interested in science and engineering, every age appropriate toy or kit I see is marketed to boys, or if it happens to be aimed at girls its fairy/unicorn magic rather than science

Really? Galt toys specialise in this type of kit. Apart from 1 kit for perfume making which only had a girl on the box none of their kits were marketed in that way. The first results on Amazon were the same.

My objection is to the production of cheap, disposable Christmas tat. I doubt very much that children who want Christmas pyjamas will still be wearing them at Easter.

@Acunningruse tbh I think in the grand scheme of life this particular thread over a pair of pjs is quite ridiculous.

Thinking about Syria, shooting etc and putting it all into perspective.

Neurotrash www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883 explains it well.

I couldn't get annoyed at the PJs (but why do the red ones need a dinosaur and alien?). However this divide of boys and girls items is at a tipping point and as a society we need to make a stand. Before puberty there is no reason girls and boys clothes need to be different, other than the consumers will buy into it, and as long as it's being bought the stores will carry on. An email to Asda won't do anything and I think they've proved they don't really care. The debate isn't about pink dresses or digger T-shirt's, it's so much bigger but as long as the consumer continues to buy in to the gender delusion it won't change.

I have a 4 year old daughter who is very interested in science and engineering, every age appropriate toy or kit I see is marketed to boys, or if it happens to be aimed at girls its fairy/unicorn magic rather than science. Why is it ok to market a science kit at boys called science but to market at girls it has to be 'magic' and a watered down version. I refuse to buy the 'girls' sets, how can we encourage girls to take up STEM subjects or have anyone believe in true equality if we are allowing this kind of message at primary age?

I know the family who started Mamas and Papas, and used to socialise with them often. Their best selling item for several years was a pink ruffled dress. Mrs M&P used to say that she hated it, but people just kept on buying it.

I agree OP and dislike this about ASDA. Polarn O Pyret is a great brand for having awesome unisex kids’ pjs. The cut and quality, they fit for a long time because the sleeves and legs roll up and I can hand them down. They’re more expensive but it’s worth investing in more ethical brands and clothes that aren’t throwaway.

In a work capacity, I recently was involved in a focus group of parents with babies approx 6 months to 18 months old. They were looking at some potential new products and the prototypes were quite heavily "gendered" ie, the stereotypical boy/girl colours and tropes. The feedback was very much that more neutral options would be preferred so I am hopeful that things may begin to go back to how they used to be, with clothes,toys and other products in neutral or primary colours.

In my professional capacity, I speak to brands quite frequently about this, and most of them do get it but ultimately they are there to make profit and there is a core demographic that does buy into these things. It is the case that a very "middle class" brand will do better with neutral offerings whereas most supermarkets for example will see far higher sales with the heavily gendered items. Prams are quite a good example of this, the high end brands will almost always have black or grey as their top seller, a cheapy stroller at the £20 mark will almost always have the dinosaur print in shades of blue and green and the hot pink with flowers or bows as their top sellers.

As an aside, I don't think anyone is saying that pink items shouldn't be available, I have some pink stuff, alongside loads of other colours in my wardrobe, it's just that as a grown woman if I go to buy a shirt, I can choose navy,black,pink,blue etc whereas childrens clothing has a far more limited offering and the ideal scenario would be to keep all the colours and patterns, just get rid of the stupid labels designating which sex they are aimed at.

The assumption being reinforced is just that girls are different to boys the extent that they will like different things, Be that clothes or school subjects . It doesn’t matter what is used to signal that, it’s being signalled

By none sexist I don’t mean that we are not aware of sex, nor that it is hidden in some way. But it’s realm of significance is much less than it is today. The none sexist society would not assume a female brain. A none sexist society would treat women with the same respect as men. Lower voices would not signify intelligence. We would not use phyiscal proxy markers . WE would train girls and boys the same.i don’t know what it would fully look like because i don’t know how much our bioloGY affects our emotions

We won’t see it. I doubt it can happen without evolution , to more society focussed, less materially acquisitive

But we can see progress even if we seem to be in the middle of a conservative backlashes . You don’t get backlash without prohress

@NeurotrashWarrior. Better that people buy less tat than keep mindlessly consuming and hope for a scientific solution.

And pink clothes and female scientists are not mutually exclusive. I know countless female scientists who are also very "pink and girly" both now and growing up. I also loved pink as a child growing up and still do now and am grappling with complex legal aspects of tackling climate change after getting a first class BSc and a first class degree in law. Pink didn't addle my brain or mean I avoided science. My parents influences were way more important than material trappings.

I watch the big container ships full of cheap supermarket clothes come chugging past my beach pumping out vast amounts of climate changing pollutants and just wish people could grasp the enormous impact of constant mindless acquisition.

@Usernumbers1234 I don’t disagree, of course it’s society so that’s why I think it has to be called out whenever it’s seen.

They’ll allow you to buy the red ones, even if you’re accompanied by your girl baby. You could even buy the pink ones for a boy, had you a mind to...

You’re right nevertwerk and I wear my pink Xmas pjs all year :)

I do like Xmas pjs and get them for the dc, but not just for wearing at Christmas iyswim. It’s just a time when you get new ones which are then used as normal.

Because it supports and reinforces an implied difference in personality between boys and girls which woild not exist in a none sexist society.

I am not sure what the implied personality difference is with pink, if colours really aren't about that?

But I am interested in this non-sexist society idea. I have a lot of doubts that a non-sexist society would have no cultural signs or markers of sex, or customs related to sex. Sex and it's effects are too important to our experiences and the fact is, people are really really interested in it, mainly because a mammal species that isn't doesn't tend to survive.

Given that we are cultural creatures, we express our interests and thoughts and feelings through narrative and art and symbols, I don't think we would ever eliminate cultural markers about sex, which is to say, gender. Not without it being imposed in an authoritarian way.

My question then is, if that is true, what should that look like? How do we culturally express our sexed beings in a way that fills that need and desire but doesn't perpetuate negative ideas?

Well yes, damn good point Nevertwerked.

We need all the scientists we can get to sort it out mind you, not just the male ones.

Regarding toys.

Anthropologists have been able to track the success of a civilisation through the types of toys it had for the children.

The more complex and varying toys, the more successful the civilisation was at engineering, technology, societal structures, architecture etc.

So dividing toys for male and female really can have a major impact on how the sexes learn and what they are able to do as adults. And it's signalled to kids via pink.

You're not allowed pink if you're a boy (girls are lesser plus homophobic comments) you're only an acceptable girl if you like pink stuff (domesticity, beauty, fashion.)

I'd be more annoyed at the pressure to buy Christmas specific PJs in a climate emergency. We should all be avoiding buying this seasonal tat, not worrying whether it is pink or red.

These two tedx videos from that site probably explain the issue of pink v other colours, usually blue.

Not rtft but it's annoying as pink narrows choices for girls, as they then only ever want pink stuff.

Toys get labelled pink. The toys aren't particularly STEM like, more arts and home care and beauty, and then you find girls are falling behind in maths simply as the experiences they've had are less inclusive of STEM type activities. And vice versa for the boys.

As a mum of boys who is a teacher and one of girls growing up, I've been quite struck by the difference in toy range of friends with girls compared to my boys. We've all tried not to be stereotypical.

thegec.org/

Have a look at the video wall of the gender equality collective; I think there's one about the pink and blue issue.