To be annoyed at Grandma's Xmas gift: preening kit for a 3 yr old girl?

[mamamiaow]

Just heard that MIL has bought a Hello Kitty dressing table set for my 3 year old daughter complete with hair straighteners, hairdryer etc. I am angry and upset that my husband said this was ok. I'd rather she spent the money on some books or colouring stuff, not some overpriced plastic tat so my daughter can sit in front of the mirror and preen herself. WTF?

I hate all of this 'pink' shit. I've been going on about the Let Toys Be Toys campaign for months and husband thinks these kinds of gifts are ok for our daughter?!

I read the Girl Guides Girls Attitudes report earlier this week and its findings depress me. Girls anxious about how they look, wearing make up and going on diets when they are 8, judged on their appearance rather than ability...

I think toys like this Hello Kitty thing just perpetuate these problems. I don't want my daughter to have this shit when she's 3. She'll get to all this preening stuff soon enough, without it being rammed down her throat.

I don't think I'll be able to put on a smile and say thanks at Xmas. It goes against all my feminist sensibilities. Husband just thinks let his mum buy what she likes. Should I just put up with it this time and say something to MIL in the New Year? Or just shut up and hope daughter gets bored of it very quickly?

Oh don't get me wrong I think she is stuck with the toy because her DH did agree to it. I was discussing the wider issue and why she doesn;t like it and it has been a real eye-opener to me about how many grown women don;t see they problem with the overwhelming message we send girls that you have to be pink and pretty and sparkly to be a girl.

And I have a boy - it still concerns me.

When I was little, I had:

A Polly Pocket makeup case that I adored. It was purple with pink hearts, and was scented.

I had multitudes, hordes even, of my little ponies - in all their glittery, pastel glory.

I had the pink Lego stable set for girls and loved it to bits (and I played with my brothers standard Lego too).

I had Barbies aplenty and fell in love with their dresses. At one point I was convinced I was going to be a designer.

I had a plastic kitchen, which most of the time was used to make potions in the garden.

I remember all these things with tremendour fondness, I really do.

And yet, I'm still going off to the US to take my doctorate next year.

I don't think a Hello Kitty dresser will hurt her much!

If it is any reassurance to OP, my daughter when aged 2 used to parade around my Mum"s garden path dressed only in a transparent pink ballet skirt and some pink plastic princess shoes. DH predicted a career as a porno star. Now aged 14 she is feminist, looking forward to her professional career, and wears pretty basic teenage garb. No eating disorders or angst about her looks.

I do think there is an element of hard wiring to the preening thing. My Mum and my sister are vain but I am not at all. Dd1 also doesn't give a monkeys what she looks like.

My experience is that young boys (say under 6) love pink and sparkly but they learn very quickly that pink and pretty and caring about how you look is for girls and boys need to be into sport and science.

I'm amazed how some posters seem to think that the prolifery of pink is just how things are, and if all toys were made in gender neutral colours, no one would buy them.

As a kid growing up in the 70s I can assure you that toys were FAR more gender neutral in both range and colour, than they are now (and it didn't stop us wanting them). Have a look at this: msmagazine.com/blog/2013/06/05/kids-toys-more-gendered-than-ever/

It's a worrying trend that is both damaging and insidious, so in that way I fully understand OP's dismay - I just happen to think it might not be worth a cat's-bum-face and bad manners, when it is being received.

Perhaps the MIL needs educating - but whether she should do the 'educating' would really depend on the type of relationship OP has with her MIL (probably a losing battle). DH needs to be told though.

IMO the comparison between boys playing with toy toolkits and girls playing with toy make up is not valid. As in 'if boys can play with tool kits why can't girls play with preening sets'.

Toolkits are used for doing stuff, making things, pretending to be a mechanic etc but all external to the child. Encouraging such play isn't likely to lead to anything at all, well maybe learning a trade!
Preening kits are not, they are encouraging girls to consider how they look earlier than needed - we know there is a problem with anorexia, poor body image etc.

An obsession with tools can be very annoying if you are the partner of someone with such an interest but is not damaging to physical or mental health.

I must be really old because I just don't see the problem with this at all. My dsis and I had similar toys as children - hair straighteners didn't exist, but rollers. Hair dryer etc. I now don't own any makeup, have a hair dryer I never use and I have never been one for "beautifying" myself. My sister is the same.

Ds1 got a similar set when he was 3/4 and he and ds2 played with it for several years. Now at 18 & 16 they no longer play with it but don't appear to have developed any long term problems from it. Ds3 (7) plays with brushes, combs and my hair dryer. He doesn't have a set but if he got one as a gift I wouldn't be bothered.

It's only a toy.

My 3 year old DD would be over the moon with this present! Yes she loves everything pink, loves playing princesses, fairies & hairdressers, what is wrong with that!? She is 3 for god sake! What she plays now is not going to determine what she's going to be when she's older or do her any harm, she is just having fun through imaginative role play (which btw is how children learn). She also loves playing doctors and with her cars, animals and garage,I think you are creating a problem over nothing and feel you would be very rude to not accept this lovely present!

It's not just 'only' a toy though, toys are how young people learn about the world. In isolation, one toy doesn't matter much, which is why I don't see a massive deal in this case. More generally though, I honestly fail to see how any intelligent individual can look at, say, the Argos catalogue, and fail to see a problem. The message to anybody looking through it is that makeup, housework, craft and dolls are for girls, and space, adventure, exploration, DIY and cars are for boys. If you think that you or your children are somehow automatically immune to this astonishingly narrow definition of gender, peddled in every advert and every toy marketing gimmick they encounter, I think you are deluded. It does take some active effort to ensure that our kids, both male and female, keep thinking of the world as their oyster. The pathetic numbers of girls entering science and engineering professions suggest that we're largely failing.

I think the thing is, no matter what, the OP's DD is not a child who is likely to grow up believing that the only thing which matters is her looks. Clearly, the OP is not going to encourage her DD to sit and preen at this table. Instead, it will have a bit of fuss and blather and then quite probably end up becoming a drawing desk, or somewhere to stack other toys.

It doesn't invalidate how problematic it is that girls up and down the country are being sold the idea that they must look pretty, and be thin, and care about how they look, and all those grossly sexist problems which surround our children, but in this one instance, the OP is well equipped to ensure her daughter grows up with a more balanced world view, and in that sense, this particular gift will probably not cause any harm, and so I think making it into a huge fuss achieves very little other than to alienate the MIL and DH and potentially make it harder to angle for more gender-neutral gifts in future.

In my opinion, it is hugely important that we can distinguish between the wider problem which needs confronting, and battling, and dismantling, and individual situations with their own contexts. I think the problem here is that the gift is being lost in the wider picture. The wider picture is bad, yes. But the gift, in this case, isn't so bad. (My experience is that children almost always use toys outside their intended use anyway, so the likelihood the DD will spend much time "preening" seems pretty thin to me.)

As a kid growing up in the 70s - me too sherry (well 60's and 70's) there was nothing like this much pink sparkly girl stuff. I can;t believe they've even started making pink lego

well - Lifeofpo - beauty comes from within really doesn't it.....

Just sayin.

I don't think anyone has said we should ban all pink and glittery shit.

I don't mind pink. I don't mind preening. Today I've painted my nails pink and sparkly and am at hairdresser having hair dyed and cut and eyebrows waxed.

What I object to is the limiting of girls to this colour, and to obsessing about what they look like.

I saw an ad for a girls school recently praise the uniform tunics that 'hid a multitude of sins'. Tunics for primary school girls. What the actual fuck is that about?!

My sister bought my dd (2) the me to you dressing table set for her 2nd birthday and I was appalled but bit my tongue...dd took no interest in it whatsoever... Well apart from the hair dryer which she uses as a gun to shoot her big brother with that's my girl.

I saw an ad for a girls school recently praise the uniform tunics that 'hid a multitude of sins'. Tunics for primary school girls. What the actual fuck is that about?!

Please name and shame the utter fuckheads who used that in their ad.

Words fail.

Babies are born with an in built preference for faces.

We select our breeding partners, partially on fitness to reproduce - overhang or evolution.

Some of the comments suggest we should be deprogramming hundreds of years of evolution.

I don't think glitter existed for most of human evolution, and there wasn't all this pink shit in the 70s.

Perhaps we have adapted to these new pink, glittery conditions in a generation or two. Amazing.

Yes, please do name and shame that school. Completely unbelievable.

And screenshot the ad if it's online.

This picture on Pinkstinks' FB illustrates it rather well:

Girls Liking Pink is Not the Problem... The problem is when pink becomes the more and more common, until it's everywhere - which is where we're at now. Many don't even remember a time when toys came in all ranges of colours, for girls and boys. They accept it and don't miss it because they're simply used to it from an early age.

Individually it's 'harmless' - but as a part of a wider culture of division - it's not so harmless. Girls get the colour of confection and consumables, sweets, candy. Boys get the bold primary colours - more often, the rest of the rainbow. How long before living up to 'prettiness' becomes the ONLY choice, like the various shades of pink in the illustration? What seems like an attractive option actually takes children down a path that ultimately limits them.

This is what I discuss with my girls - who are aged 6 and 4 - if they're old enough to express choice they are old enough to begin to think about their choices. I talk to them about why they may like pink, and how it's good to like all the colours of the rainbow, because it's about keeping options and choices open.

Amazing how easily it is to share opinions with a snapshot on a public forum, eh po ?

Mamamiaow
I felt this way when my DD was 3yr old. Despite the pink and glittery shit that my mum and MIL bought, DD is now a v cool 11yr old who is thinking of buying her first pair of Doc Martens

Just out of interest, how does preferring one brand of footwear over another make your DD a "cooler" or better person? Would she suddenly become less intelligent, less kind or less funny or whatever if her favourite shoes were pink, sparkly ballet pumps instead? Are her personal achievements less valid somehow if she does her hair and make-up first? Your comment is no less superficial than that of anybody else who values appearance over substance.

Y'know for a bunch of people claiming to be feminists opposed to the limits forced on young girls by society, there are some pretty dodgy value judgements being flung about on here.