The girls=nurses comment was as we left the female doctors surgery the other day ("Why did you see the nurse, mummy","That was a doctor, not a nurse","No, girls aren't doctors..."etc). No idea where it's come from, she's seen loads of female GPs and even the ancient Topsy and Tim books we have have lady docs.
When I think through my objections to the Barbie they are totally inconsistent which is one of the reasons I started the thread really. I'm not sure that playing with a "fashion doll" (as I saw them refered to in a catalogue the other day) which can be anything you want it to be necessarily encourages any more gender-stereotyping play than a baby doll. I have happily bought her the latter (though partly due to fact it came with a potty and we were starting to toilet train at the time, thought it might help). It is largely a knee-ject reaction. Some of my fondest memories from childhood were round at my friends house playing with her Sindy dolls (I had my own but other people's toys were always better!). Jaw 2 was on the other day and I was reminising about the time we acted out the scene with the kids and the boats at the end (no-one got chomped in our version but there was a lot of screaming). We mainly had Sindies - my friend had one Barbie but we didn't really bother with her as she seemed a bit 'in your face' compared to Sindy so perhaps it's that memory that is my primary motivation. I was a good bit older than four before I started playing with Sindy but I don't actually remember being too fussed about the clothes, it was more about the car and the horse!
Have also just sent DD1 (the 4 year old) off to a party with a Disney Princess doll as a present - why did I do that when I won't let DD have the Barbie?? I'm pretty confident from the Disney P themed gifts we've received from the girl whose party it is, there'll be no objection from the parents (in fact am sure she'll have an identical one already and therefore will be nonplussed - my DD is then likely to be very disappointed as she is so excited about giving it to her!). So have just made it ten times harder to turn round to DD and say, it's ok for her to have that but not you. The Princess and the Frog did have a kick-ass heroine though I don't like the heavy marketing that goes with the Dis P brand, esp now we're just getting to the pester-power stage.
I don't like the division between girls and boys toys spelled out in Boots, why do that? I was also bemused by the GLTC - I bought a funky little red kitchen for DD1 a couple of years ago, my brother saw it and wanted to buy the same model to his DS2 but by then GLTC was only offering it in baby pink. Now, DD1 and I had a chat about boys not being the only ones allowed to wear blue the other day so perhaps it was narrow-minded of my brother to buy a plain wooden oven instead but the GLTC must have known only offering it in pink would put off orders for boys (saw a red version is back on offer this year).
Anyway, long post and am supposed to be writing an essay so going to try to force myself to log out.