"We are waiting to see what we have before choosing the colour for the babies room"

[FlipFlippingFlippers]

This is not an anti pink thread but seriously?! For what its worth I am female and I like pink. And blue. And green. And yellow. You get the idea. It just bugs me that people give colours gender. I do have a pink hating, dinosaur loving dd so I might be a bit more sensitive to this.

sun I wouldn't be able to as I'm in skinny jeans all the fecking time

Argh, meant to say the more complicated fun stuff

Ah no mefisto the world needs fewer cars and more rabbit hutches, flowers and butterflies [grins] Think how much nicer it would be? I actually think we should be marketing the rabbit hutches to our boys.................

Not sure about cupcake stands though

Ratfans . How about lego wind farms or houses with solar panels and ground source heat pumps?

hmmm some people here can't spot the difference between being happy that something has happened and forcing it to happen. I am happy that my child is often mistaken for a boy because I would like people to interact with her in a gender neutral way. I didn't set out to make her mistakable for a boy...she just apparently is. I recently got bollocked in a supermarket for being so liberal I had let my 'son' wear a skirt...

I quite like to have conversations like the one I had while renting a bike recently:

Salesperson: Do you need a helmet for the child?
Me: Yes please:
Salesperson: er....er..is it a girl or a boy
Me: Why do you want to know?
Salesperson: We have helmets for boys and helmets for girls.
Me: Really? Are boys heads a different shape to girls?
Salesperson: No...its the same helmet but one has princesses on and the other one has pirates.
Me: How will knowing the gender of my child tell you whether my child would prefer the princesses or the pirates?
Salesperson: errrr.....
Me: I mean wouldn't if be more efficient just to ask my child which one is preferred? It would also avoid treating people differently based purely on gender while disregarding their true personal preferences...for which the technical term is sexism.

I relish less the conversations with children. Like this one in a swimming pool (DD was wearing an apparently controversial blue and green swim suit)

6yo kid: Is that a girl or a boy?
Me: Why do you want to know?
6yo kid: Because I don't like playing with boys.
Me: Why not?
6yo: They do stupid things.
Me: Well has my toddler done anything stupid?
6yo: No.
Me: Then you can play okay?
6yo: Not if its a boy, I hate boys. Girls should wear pink so you can tell who to play with.

YAbu.
Pink for girls, blue for boys.
Or the other way round, or white, or green.....
It's exciting to think of these small things when you're having a baby. And important to not get too hung up about it.

yeah I am probably just 'too hung up about it" regarding women getting paid less, promoted less and getting worse progress reviews purely based on gender in my field too...

Either it does harm to artificially exaggerate gender differences or it doesn't.

IT DOES btw...in case you are confused.

Lol icebeing

As a matter of interest, how many of you buy lady razors?

Its the same thing.

Plus you will be charged for the privilege of being a lady too.

I don't buy lady razors! I don't shave my legs at all. When I shave my pits once the hair their has started to smell manky and pick up yeastI use mens Bic disposables

Does anyone else here go full bush? I decided to do it because I bath with my 2yo son and didn't want him to think a bald minge was the norm on a full grown woman

RedToothbrush gender coding is certainly lucrative, isn't it.

I like your style, IceBeing

Dd is only 8 months, and is often confused for a baby boy when she wears blue (fear not gender conformists, she also wears pink, I don't discriminate).

People get very apologetic when I correct their misconception, which I don't always bother to do - no idea why they think I'd be offended, as far as I'm concerned dd's sex is about as relevant to her identity right now as the colour of her eyes. No big deal either way.

I'm confused when people say they don't"let" their dc look at girls sections of shops or wear girl's clothes. I encourage my dd to choose what she likes. If this happens to be a pink frilly cake/dress/toy then so be it! Equally if it's blue. Or mixed. I'm happy that she's had a choice. fwiw my dd is probably quite traditionally girly. But when her boy cousins are here she plays great with them. Almost as soon as her girl cousins appear they group off naturally into boy girl groups. No one has forced them. It just happens.
we're decorating her room soon. She's asked for a pink one. Although I must admit I've been trying to come up with something different.

dash have you tried shampoo when that happens?

The only time my pits smell bad is for the 2 weeks directly after I have given in to the conformity monster and shaved them. (even I can't persuade myself to wear a cocktail dress with bushy armpits....yet...)

The rest of the time they get shampooed when I wash my hair (every other day or after sport) - and smell fantastically less bad then any combination of shaving + deodorant / antiperspirant I have ever tried.

You are all railing against the tide like King Canute, I'm afraid

Ah well we should stop worrying about equal pay, equal representation on company boards, in the Houses of Parliament too then.. just railing against the tide...

I have Icebeing and it doesn't work for me.

Shaving the offending hair seems to be the best solution. Then they smell ok again for approx. 2 months (longer in winter).

Once the hair gets long- I seem to pick up yeast deposits that don't come off with any kind of product. So I just whip it all off and start fresh

tmi but you did ask

I think if your daughter or son asks for blue or pink specifically, you should ask them why.

If they come back with an answer which is sexist in nature, you'd be wish to correct their view and refuse to allow them either colour and get them to chose again.

If they simply say they like the colour, then fine. If they like the colour because its what girls/boys do then it needs challenging.

The colour is not the problem. Its the logic and marketing behind it that is.

just has anyone on here said that? Or did you mean people in RL you know who don't "let" their DD's choose?

Massively more people don't let their DS's choose. Its an everyday occurrence to hear parents telling their Ds's to put down X, Y and Z because its for girls.

So do you find it more okay for the parent of a boy to stop their child choosing a pink glittery princess rucksack than the parent of a girl? Again there is a word for finding different behaviour more acceptable based purely on gender while disregarding the actual preferences of the children in question. That word is sexism.

I personally "steer away from" by the means of being slightly more enthusiastic when DD picks something non-pink, non-glittery, and non-princessy than when she does. In fact I simply enthuse more about things I like than things I don't....which covers both princesses and pink. Or by pointing out practicalities - like the pink glittery one is more poorly made and won't last as long....or the pink-glittery sandels will be useless for playing football in the garden.

So far DD very much prefers animal based items to non-animal based items but seems neutral on colour (red, blue, purple and pink have all been cited as favourite colours in the last week).

Most people just say ' Congratulations on your new baby'.

Icebeing - my 9 year old DD is always being mistaken for a boy, too. She has long hair, so I guess it must be because she doesn't wear girly/pink clothes. Of course, as with women's clothes, clothes marketed at girls tend to be far worse quality / no pockets / more expensive / crappy fairy pictures etc. The shoes are atrocious. So we do buy a lot of clothes marketed to boys (but equally suitable for girls). She's happy (doesn't like pink).

dash fair play to you - we are all different!

Men appear to be able to sport massive non-smelly armpit bushes at will...but then they do genuinely have different hormones to adult women....but my suspicion is that most women would have less armpit issues if they let it grow....it is antibacterial antiperspirant as designed by nature after all!

tortoise that is SO true...the clothes thing...tbh I am only just getting that now!

I have been trying to stop buying cheap tat clothing and get things that will last longer...but all I have found is more expensive tat clothing that still only survives a handful of washes.

Yet DH goes clothes shopping maybe once a year....

It not like I can wear mens clothing with my massive boobs either....

Not confused icebeing. But thanks for being rude because I miss that when I'm not at work.

Of course gender differences are important. I didn't say you were too hung up about that. I just think that ppl should be allowed the short lived joy of decorating their baby's nursery in the way that they want to. Because what's important, IMHO, is that they are looking forward to the beautiful business of a new baby.
Fwiw, I we chose neutral colours for both ds and dd. That was my mine and DHs choice.

well likewise I was not suggesting it was you that was confused personally ...just that people might be.

Certainly a lot of people around RL here are.

I find pre birth and early years gender stereotyping the absolute worst. For the rest of the time you can pretend that it just so happened that your DD loves ballet and small furry creatures and pink etc. but before they are born and in their first year absolutely every thing you see is pure stereotyping. The majority of babies born today will get no chance to form their own ideas about preferences before having the stereotyped ones forced on them. That makes me very unhappy indeed.