Girls' and boys' yogurts from Muller - AIBU to be a bit WTF??

[nicecupofteaplease]

Here they are - the product you never knew you needed. I sort of understand how toys have become sexually stereotyped but food products. Really? It's utterly ridiculous. Isn't it? Or should I only be feeding my daughter yogurts suitable for a girl? All these years she has been making do with unisex yogurt. I feel I have let her down.

According to Muller, boys like monkeys, space, pirates and cars, and girls like flowers, popstars, superstars and fashion - and it's only right that these interests are reflected in the dairy products they consume. My DD likes climbing trees, I am confused about which yogurt I should choose.

I get the 'girl' ones for ds (4) when they are on half price offer. He thinks they are delicious.

Crowler I'm not oversimplifying it, you are! Your argument is to not let stuff like this into the home, then argue about it once the children come across it in the big bad world.

My argument (which you are trying so so hard to belittle BTW) is to say that stuff like this exists. And unless you do not want your children to interact with society in any way, you need to acknowledge it, acknowledge and accept that your children will be seduced by it, but give them the values to put it into perspective, which I think is where the thoughtful and discerning person bit comes in.

Can't we give our kids the ability to 'put things into perspective' and decide that our persoectuve is thst it's just not bloody good enough to live in a world that wants you in a little pink box?

I'd suggest this thread is full of people doing exactly what you say you're giving your daughters the ability to do in questioning this awful marketing strategy and you're the one trying to stop them by saying it doesn't matter? Maybe once we question stuff we can say 'This is shit - can it stop now please? .

Gendered fucking yoghurt, ffs.

Probably full of added sugar too.

This product brought to you by... the marketing people last seen working on the Bic 'for Her' range?

I'm sorry, but I don't see a world that wants my child in a little pink box. I see a world of opportunity for my child, even if she is at the moment (as a 5 yo) enjoying a pink phase. I see more for her. I can accept that she wants to wear pink whilst encouraging her to the top of a climbing wall or whatever.

Can't you see that it's you as parents who are putting them in a box by banning everything? Really you can let them eat the yoghurt, wear the clothes, play with the toy, kick the ball - without placing them in any box.

So Growlithe you don't go into large toy stores and see the gender segregation as a problem? Where even lego is now apparently for boys with lego 'lite' for girls in the pink rows, made specifically to be less challenging and creative, and sadly very successful for them.

Small children pick up on this sort of stuff despite parental influences, both my dd and my ds adopted the whole pink is for girls, girls will be nurses not doctors type crap from nursery and it took a good few years and a lot of heavy parental influence before they really questioned this viewpoint. Many of their friends just absorbed the lot. My children's views are seen as quite radical which is just nuts.

Does eating gender specific yoghurt affect children into adulthood? DS1 (14) would eat it whatever colour the packaging/shape the cereal was.

@ gender yogurt

OP your DD must only eat the girl yogurt, the boy yogurt would cause her to grow a penis! do you want to take that risk????

FWIW, DW bought some of the 'girls' one (as a way of enticing DD to eat yoghurts which she's not generally keen on) and DD thought they were disgusting....So back to gender-neutral stuff in this house.

By the way, we don't reinforce gender stereo-types in this household (and DD grew up wearing half of her brother's outgrown toddler clothes as a little one!), but sometimes one goes with the flow just for a bit of variety...

But the whole gender-stereotyping phenomenon, which to my mind has got worse in the past twenty years or so, no doubt has had an impact (albeit possibly subliminally) on this generation of young women who dress/make-up in a barbie-dollesque way, often at odds with their fierce intelligence - you need look no further than the women on recent series of The Apprentice.

I do agree that in the 60s, 70s clothes for girls and boys were less along the gender divide lines. I can remember wearing pink/lavender/purple shirts/trousers/jumpers and DW, recalling her favourite outfits as she grew up, mentioned a green dress, brown coat and her favourite: a yellow roll-neck jumper and long red/black tartan skirt! I think 'in those day's' the children's clothes reflected the adult colour trends whereas that no longer seems to be the case.

It's lazy and destructive but for every one of us who doesn't buy into this, there will be parents who do and think it's entirely acceptable.

nooka we have a lot of lego. We have basic lego, quite a few lego city things including a plane, a lego Buzz Lightyear and a lego friends (not lego lite) set. They have all been made up in their sets once and then pulled apart and put in the same box. So lego friends is just called lego in our house. Although I've got to say we had a 10yo boy over playing with it the other day who really liked the interesting window pieces that had started off as lego friends.

The Smyths toy shop by us does have an aisle full of dolls and an aisle full of spidermen and shooting things. But it also has a preschool aisle, a board games aisle, a lego aisle, an outdoor games aisle, a bike and scooter aisle. Its things grouped together for convenience really isn't it.

As for doctors and nurses, all the GPs in our practice are women. The one time one of mine were in hospital she was seen by a woman consultant. She has a dress up doctors white coat and a doctors case. She has no concept of doctors being male only at all, because they aren't.

Growlithe, I think you've made up your mind and I know that the same is true for me. I'll just leave it at this - I haven't "banned" products that have been marketed to a single gender in my house (what in the hell would I buy for Christmas?).

Rather, I try to protect my kids from this enterprise by denying marketers access to them. This seems a lot easier for me now that my kids are older now and don't watch little kid TV anymore/don't shop very much (I can leave them home alone).

It's a lot harder to protect toddlers from these kinds of pervasive messages. I feel for likeminded parents with young kids, as bad as it was during my kids' toddler years (circa 2003-2009) it's gotten far worse - for example, we now have gender-specific Lego's. I am incensed every time I see "Lego Friends".

Some have also said on this thread that yet another "larger problem" with gender-specific yogurt is with food marketed directly to kids, I couldn't agree more. Another modern invention of marketing.

Crowler you can't protect your kids from this kind of thing forever. My approach is to acknowledge it and talk about it with my DDs (especially the 10 yo). So when they come across it as young adults they can see it for what it is.

So with the Lego Friends, they liked having a set but its now in the box with the other lego and they can see that it would be very boring to have a whole box of pink lego.

I think you're on a different planet.

I don't see gender-specific childhoods as something kids will need to tackle as "young adults". The proverbial horse will have bolted by then.

If you've bought Lego Friends (seemingly not under duress, even?), there's no point in discussing this with you.

But I don't understand how you can say you'll talk about it 'so they can see it for what it Is' when all anyone on this thread is doing is seeing it for what it is and your impulse is to ridicule and deny what they say?

So when they question this will you be proud and supportive of that or react as you have to everyone on this thread who's done just that?

It's all very well to say that one's children truly believe themselves to be equal but if you're not prepared to stand up to pernicious external influences that want to make girls pink and pretty then...

I'm so sorry you're being bullied. Let's go to the store and buy some pirate yogurt for tomorrow, that will show the world once and for all that you are a boy.

Can I ask you a basic honest question? What is wrong with a little girl who is pink and pretty as long as that is not all she is?

"They're just saying blue for adventure, pink for glamour"

Yes, and The World has already established that Pink is for Girls (ask any Infant School child). So the work is done.

Exactly.^^

The problem with this endless all pervasive gender stereotyping, is that it is very clearly telling children right from birth how they should be, and that, put simply boys "do" (adventurous is an active word) and girls "be" Glamourous is a passive word.

It's not "just" a yogurt. It's everywhere, on everything. And no, it wasn't like this in the 80's. I wore many of my older brothers hand me downs, and I don't remember particularly standing out from other girls. I also had some pretty dresses, but in all sorts of colours-yellow, green (yes burgundy!)
It is really sad how limiting the choices are now, and how even very very young children feel they have to conform, because they always just want to fit in.

You didn't experience 'glamour' in the 80s? Are you sure you were there?

Does it matter if girls like pink things? It's a colour-that's all. As is blue.

As I said I must be out of date or it has passed me by, with it not being a major problem in the Sparkling household where the DSs can choose whatever they like colour wise, and when they were little toywise.

nothing wrong with any child liking pink. everything wrong with the fact it is seen only as a girls colour! and that boys shouldnt like it. this gender stereotyping damages our boys just as much as girls.