Aaaarrgghhh! I DON'T LIKE PINK!

[Yamyoid]

Aibu? Mil keeps buying stuff for dd, and it's all pink. I don't want to be ungrateful, and some of the clothes have been lovely, but she is an intelligent, liberal minded woman so what's with the pink obsession? I feel it's now a bit late to say, please stop buying pink stuff (this includes bedroom accessories). But the prospect of 10 more years of pink is depressing.

this is what I do:

in general conversation, drop in several points about hating pink, thusly:

"oh, I wish shops would stop selling girls' clothes in just pink - there are other colours!"
"DD really suits bright colours like red, dark purple and green, I wish I had more clothes in those colours"
"I saw a lovely turquoise dress the other day, so much better than all the pink you see around."
"i fucking hate pink."

ps; YANBU

boys don't have it any better at the moment - beige, khaki and grey for them!

YANBU

Yes, it's lovely to her presents, and yes you are lucky to have a lovely MIL, but you can still have a whinge about the pink nonsense.

If it helps, once dd got to about 8 yo she turned her back on pink and now hates pink.

Which is quite tricky cause pink is still the dominant colour for girls.

I told my mum to stop buying pink! So what? I just said I don't like the colour, it is vile and DDs look like plonkers in it (not actually a lie, it washes them out) so can you possibly find neutral things for them. She always complains now 'I really struggle to find other colours'

Toys wise is an irritant too. DDs always have to get the pink version of shit. Didn't she learn from me? I hated pink as a kid, ripped barbies head off barbie hating psychopath.

Just say it now otherwise you'll have to deal with it for years.. Nightmare.

craic

DD usually dresses in gender neutral colours.

today she has blue jeans, yellow/red socks, white vest, bright blue teeshirt and bright pink cardigan.

she dresses in all colours equally because we do not like her to be in pink all the fucking time.
sometimes she matches, sometimes she doesn't.

M&Co does lots of girls' clothes in other colours.
and Next.

How is pink "not even a colour, ffs"? . (if you really believe that, it shouldn't have the power to bother you, then, should it?)

Wow Trisha! Your link says it all really. I do feel quite strongly about the pink stereotyping issue and had thought mil would be on the same wavelength.

Thank you for the supportive comments. I AM grateful for the gifts and dd does wear the pink stuff mixed with other colours, except the really pastelly things go to charity. My dcs are lucky to have a generous granny who spoils them, and I am very appreciative of that.

I like the idea of saying another colour suits her, and if that happens to be within something mil has bought, then that makes it even better. As someone said, I can't expect her to be a mind reader.

I know clothes are trivial, but I don't have much money for them, so gifts of clothes are very welcomed and worn. Hence, my issue. And despite it being a trivial matter, I see lots of lovely girls' clothes which aren't pink and wonder why mil is blind to them!

Any way, the thing that annoyed me this morning was the bedroom accessories, it was a step too far, but I'll accept them gratefully. We've not decorated yet so when she sees the bright non pink colours she might realise!

And ds does have a pink T shirt and a pink car. When he was younger, pink was his favourite colour.

"I fucking hate pink"... that one will probably happen unintentionally when I don't realise she's in earshot.

It's a shade not a colour.

It has no power to bother me but I don't like it and I bin any pink stuff I get given for that reason. Or dye it or spray it

I have girls and boys,I also have several bags of mixed vests and baby grows that live in my loft all in size order some are pink blue green red orange or other colours I'm very tight.

So all baby's have used all clothes since about 1993 I don't much care as long as they are clean and fit.

I find it so hard buying clothes for DD. Boys have much more choice.
No they don't - girls can choose from the whole kids range. My DD rejected pale/bubblegum pinks (and anything with silly logos/Hannah Montana/High school musical back then) so she happily chose clothes from the other side of the shop - nice blues, greens and (in next) even plain bright fuschia

I think you have to try quite hard to find girls clothes that aren't pink - especially at the baby/toddler age.

I'd just be grateful for the free clothes myself.

You might get a dd like mine and my sister's who as soon as they could speak declared a deep dislike of all things pink. It then becomes a nightmare trying to find clothes and toys that aren't pink. Many lovely dresses we had to give away as she wouldn't wear them.

I've seen many a pair of trainers reduced to half price - but my dd won't let them near her feet as they all have flashes of the dreaded pink.

When she started school she changed her stance slightly - largely because pink was the favourite colour of many of her friends. It's "not that she hates pink, it's just not her favourite colour". But she still won't wear it.

It isn't a non-issue. It would be a non-issue if girls got the odd pink flowery cardie and boys got the odd T-shirt with trucks on but on the whole kids of both sexes got a variety of clothes, toys and room stuff. In fact it's part of the whole massive edifice of the hyperpinkification of girlhood, whereby stuff for girls is overwhelmingly pink and flowery and frilly and delicate and to do with relationships and domestic stuff and appearance; meanwhile, the boy stuff is robust and outdoorsy with machines and monsters and fierce animals and science and tools and weapons. As adults, women get to earn less and do more childcare and housework and have more body-image issues; meanwhile, men get to have more problems with depression and violent behaviour. Perhaps these things are related. Perhaps they are not. Personally I think it stretches coincidence a bit.

The above thoughts don't mean, "I don't see why I should be thankful that we have clothes to put on our backs in the first place," or, "if someone gives me something a bit gender-stereotyped, I refuse to thank them and insult them instead," or, "I enjoy complaining about this stuff on the Internet, but don't bother to put my principles into practice."

(Also, for the avoidance of any possible doubt, and to save anyone the effort of typing out a reply based on the phrase "swivel-eyed loon," when I say "massive edifice" I don't mean "orchestrated conspiracy".)

Spot on, HL.
Anyone else who agrees, who hasn't yet found the 'Let Toys be Toys' campaign, you might want to search for it (being without 'threads i'm on' at the mo I don't know where it is)

YANBU.

hahahaha so it isn't the big companies pushing pink for girls and blue for boys, or the vast swathes of the population that couldn't even envisage dressing a boy in pink that are reinforcing the stereotyping....oh no it is the people complaining that stereotyping is limiting their DC's experience of life that are doing the damage.

Do please get real!

Also craic it isn't that pink = girls and girls = bad. It pink = girls is a stereotype and stereotyping = bad.

Assuming girls prefer pink, assuming girls like flowers and butterflies, assuming that girls prefer ballet to football..completely ignoring the actual preferences of said girls...or maybe going so far as to force conformity on them...it's all just as bad as stereotyping all gay men as into musicals and fashion, or stereotyping all Albanians as thieves (random but it came up in the office today). Stereotypically girls are on average shorter/lighter than boys so why not buy smaller clothes for the girls in your life...oh wait it would be dumb to buy clothes before finding out what actual size your specific candidate is....so why not go the extra step and find out what colour they would actually specifically like too?

So in conclusion...don't just lazily assume you can guess what a girl in your life is into. There is far more difference between individual girls than there is difference between the average boy and the average girl.

It's really not hard to find high street clothes that aren't pink! It just isn't! 90% of it is pink or lilac so it looks like everything is pink when you walk into shops but the other 10% offers more than enough clothes for the average small child :). There might not be as much, but it's out there. Somebody has mentioned M&Co and Next already - they're both great. Tesco and M&S do nice colours often too although can be a bit 'flowery'. And one or two gorgeous tops from Polarn O Pyret (available online now) go a long way to colouring and de-gendering your child's wardrobe! They wash brilliantly so you can get a lot of wear and pass them down to siblings so are worth the investment.

A lot if it is still flowery/girly and I don't dress my DD in skirts/dressed much as i think they are less practical for rough and tumble toddlering like climbing and running so buy her trousers from the boys ranges or leggings. She still looks like a girl

I buy a lot of neutral stuff for DS so it can be passed down to DD so can confirm that nice non-blue stuff exists for boys too!

Would be happy to contribute to a thread of best non-gendered high street clothes if anyone on here thought that would be a useful thing to start. A 'fuck this pink and blue shit, we want colour!' thread perhaps :)

5mad and icb, you speak a lot of sense

This is something which has grated me for years

Ooh i found the thread again! Mnet woyldnt let me in 'threads i am on' the trauma!!

Anyone interestef in the genderfication of childrens stuff esp toys please come and find us on the 'let toys be toys' threads and also on fb and twitter.

I agree with icb and helen and this is an issue and ignoring it wont make it go away. By debating it and talking about it we are raising awareness and perhaps some people will start to question it themselves and stop and think when shopping for children. reinforcing these outadated steretypes whether that be with clother ir accessories or toys is not good for our children.

Oh, don't get rid of blue 'boys' clothes - lots of girls love blue of all shades. Next is good for (what I consider to be) ungendered t-shirts and jumpers which for some reason are put on the 'boys' side. It helps if you've got a child who doesn't give a stuff which aisle they're choosing from or which page of the catalog. Teach your kids (esp girls) that they can choose anything.

OP yanbu. We didn't tell anyone the sex of our baby in the hope we could avoid gender stereotyping - it didn't really work as people got even more obsessed about it.

What did work though was us setting up green as the baby's 'favourite colour' - almost to the point of a family joke. The nursery is white with green stuff and most of the clothes I bought in advance were white or green. So my DM, DSis etc started getting green stuff too!

Since our lovely baby boy was born 6 weeks ago, we have been deluged with blue. I am astonished - if he had been a girl I would have expected a load of pink but I didn't realise how fixated people seem to be on the pink-blue thing as a whole. And yes I do feel very ungrateful because it's wonderful that people care enough to give us gifts, but every package of pale blue makes my heart sink. We are so used to seeing him in white or bright colours that the pale blue just looks odd on him (yes, I know he is a 6wk old baby!).

My immediate family though still get him white or brightly coloured stuff though so he will have a good selection and the blues will of course get used. Just seems a shame to be so restrictive. The pink issue is such a multilayered one though - little girls can wear blue as well because emulating masculinity is seen as a positive, whereas little boys wearing pink is much less acceptable because they are dressing as the lesser sex. You can say this is over thinking but unfortunately it isn't.

I wish it was a 'non-issue' if I dressed DS in pink occasionally as well as all his lovely brights - we do have a few bits with pink/purple/flowers on though!

let toys be toys
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