to think there should be some cool (rather than passive, wet princesses & fairies) fancy dress outfits for girls?

[GraceK]

I'm not a traditional feminist - mostly think that life in 21st century in the UK is pretty good for both men & women. But DD1 (aged 4.5) has been invited to a fancy dress party in a few weeks. She has never been that interested in fancy dress - can't see the point of getting dressed more than once a day so she only has a flamenco dress & a all-in-one giraffe costume. She has grown out of the flamenco dress & I think the giraffe will be too hot for partying in (its at soft play centre), so I went on Ebay to find a cheap (as won't get used much) outfit and all I could find was bloody Disney princesses, fairies, cheerleaders & (oooh - how radical) nurses!

I am very disappointed - where are the girl pirates, cow girls, police women, red indians (or native Americans if you prefer), insect frocks, cats or even female super heroes? God, it's all so boring & wet & impractical for a soft play party. She's old enough to want to dress as a girl character so I can't just go for a boy's pirate outfit but they are all so wet / passive.

Any suggestions for reasonable groovy costumes?

DDs pirate girl (her words) outfit was a stripy tshirt from H+M boys section and a pair of navy shorts with a bandana tied around her head.
Her last two schools made a big thing about halloween so she went as a cat. Black leggings, black long sleeved top and a head band with black paper stapled on for ears, the tail was made from cutting one leg off a pair of black tights, stuffing the remaining leg with newspaper and tieing it around her waist. Voila.

Sorry to be dull, wet etc but my 4 year old ONLY wants to dress up as mermaid/princess/fairy as that is what she is into and yes she has hundreds of books on the subject!

For her book week they have a space theme and she has to dress up as an astronaut or alien and is NOT happy about it.

Since she has started school it has struck me that because everything at school has to be suitable for boys and girls, for example reading books, they have NO books about girly stuff like princesses though tons about football, dinosaurs, etc, which ok girls might like, but a large majority will not. Means that my very good reader thinks all school reading books are boring, rather than getting her enthused about reading.

What's wrong with pink anyway? Girls are girls.... they don't have to like pink but why are they wet if they do?????

Vicki

DD has a batman suit which she wears everywhere at moment

As mummissinghermind says, her DD wears a batman suit. Surely, little kids of either gender can wear any outfit they want to? It's going to fit because boy/girl bodies aren't markedly different when they're young,