'Princess' birthday party?

[managedmis]

What exactly is this? Someone dressed as a princess teaching kids how to be likewise?

At 3 my DD told me I got the name of 'Dottie' the engineer wrong, because Dottie is a girls name and girl's can't be engineers.

Now my DD didn't go to nursery, and has a SAHD and a mum who works full time as a scientist. She also didn't watch TV with adverts.

Are you going to also assert that children are born innately understand that women can't be engineers? Or is there some possibly way in which a 3 yo came to understand that part of genderstereotyping outside of her family unit?

M3lon

tellme did you know that historically pink was the preferred colour for boys and blue for girls? How do you explain that colour preference is innate and built in, when its changed in the last 100 years?

green why oh why oh why do I open these threads....

I need help!

I mean..yes of COURSE girls are innately attracted to unicorns! the preferrence dates back to that point in our evolution as a species when unicorns roamed freely in the forests of the UK and girls who were attracted to them would get to stroke their horns which in turn boosted their fertility. We are all the decendents of those unicorn-phillic girls. Boys, on the other hand, would suffer depressed testosterone from contact with unicorns and hence we are all the descendents of unicorn-phobic boys.

We can learn two important things from the innate sex based preference for and against unicorns. Firstly the unicorn gene must be carried on the sex chromosomes and secondly that people on the internet are ignorant as fuck about gender stereotyping and the affects of peer pressure and advertising in particular....

It also amuses me the ‘pink’ is a phase .... something little girls grow out of.....

Boys don’t grow out of blue do they?

How could you really not know what a princess party was? Really? Or was it a thread to rile people up that girls should like princesses and pink?

FWIW when younger dd had a princess party. I suspect the guests that year were all girls - she went to an all girls school and locally brownies which was all girls.

However it was just one such party. Other years her parties involved: disco, bouncy castle/inflatables, Victorian afternoon tea at a working farm, climbing and bouldering, fairy tale theme, laser quest, theme park, etc - some girls only and some mixed.

Likewise she went to a whole load of different party themes.

tbh I think the science shows that pink is the favourite colour of almost all babies independent of gender. As with most gender stereotyping problems, it more that we DONT dress boys in pink unicorn glitter baby grows than that we DO dress girls in them.

I mean imagine we raised a generation of boys who thought the most important thing about their personaility was how kind and considerate of others they were? Imagine if ALL our kids got the my little pony dogma shoved down their throats, instead of only the XX ones?....Imagine a world without DV....

so are you saying @M3lon that no girls ever likes pink, they are all forced to like pink due to advertising? becauses statistically that cant be true can it? some girls must like pink by the law of averages.
likewise some girls hate pink but by your reasoning they have been bombarded with pink messages so as robots would choose pink, yet they haven't, some days DD favourite colour is blue, others its purple.
if girls didnt like pink then manufacturers would never have started marketing pink. I'm not saying advertising is good, there is a lot wrong with the messages given out but I do think that some girls like pink regardless.
it would be interesting to take a child that lived in a tribe be presented with option of pink and sparkly and not pink and sparkly and see what they would choose.

And for what's it worth, my dd who adored her princess party and spent a good couple of years only wanting to wear dresses and loved pink and sparkles soon moved on. She's now almost 18 and spends most of her life in jeans, tees and docs or trainers. Even when going out it's normally jeans and too, with a dress reserved for special occasions. Mind you she still likes to watch the princess films and all things Disney, etc.

Just because she liked sparkly princess dresses when she was around 5, doesn't mean that was her whole life.

It's also worth noting that lots of little boys enjoy pink, sparkles, cuteness, Disney musicals, etc. The boys in our reception classes often like to put on a princess dress or tiara.

pink is the colour CURRENTLY being forces on girls and off boys by marketing people. Its not always been that way around. Strangely (or not if you read the science) children adapt to the colour they are currently being told they should like, rather than maintaining a preference regardless of marketing whims....

As I said in my previous post, pink/organe is preferred by most kids and 'innate' colour preference isn't gendered.

You've been denying your boys their preferred colour (and probably hair length), rather than forcing it onto your girls....

I hang out with a lot of home education groups. You'd often struggle to pick our the boys from the girls most times. This is partially because everyone is wearing clothes that are geared to tree climbing not looking pretty, but more noticably because the boys are as into the pink/purple/glitter/nail varnish/long hair as the girls.

School has, in my opinion, a profound effect in terms of consolidating gender stereotypes and making it almost impossible for young boys in particular to be express themselves as anything other than crew cut, boisterous, brave, etc. and to shun anything that appears to be even vaguely feminine stereotyped.

or are you saying she has never seen other children outside your family playing? She's never seen a neighbour on a pink bike? She never went to nursery or school and never interacted with others also subjected to stereotyping? She never watches TV or internet content that shows children playing with pink bikes? She's never been in a shop before and so seen which children are looking at which products, and which children are shown on the boxes of which products?

Up until she learnt to walk at about 14-15 months, no. Not really. Her family was boys. Her cousins were boys. We were new in a rural area so she didn't have "friends" as such. I didn't bring her to play groups at that age so she didn't really see girls playing with girls toys. She wouldn't have been anywhere to see girls riding pink fluffy bikes. Television wasn't really an issue at that age. (Lightening McQueen was on a loop!)

Of course in the 11 years since she has learnt to walk and started watching tell she of course has been bombarded with it. But up until that point - not particularly.

Although I'm sure people here will try to convince me that they know better about what my child saw and did in the first 14 months of her life than I do!!

Why did you post this as if you didn't know what the party was highly likely to involve?

You could have just posted asking if other people have an issue with princess themed parties but the way you went about it and then said it was "just as you suspected" seems really sneery.

If you have an opinion strong enough to start a thread about it then just state the opinion and have an actual discussion 🤷🏻‍♀️

it would be interesting to take a child that lived in a tribe be presented with option of pink and sparkly and not pink and sparkly and see what they would choose

It would be more interesting if science kits came in blue green yellow red orange and purple and let the kids chose.

I hang out with a lot of home education groups. You'd often struggle to pick our the boys from the girls most times. This is partially because everyone is wearing clothes that are geared to tree climbing not looking pretty, but more noticably because the boys are as into the pink/purple/glitter/nail varnish/long hair as the girls.

This has been my experience too. So many people said 'Wait till he gets to school - he'll want his hair cut within the first few weeks' about my son's now waist-length hair as though being forced to conform was an inevitability, which I imagine it would have been. And I don't recall ANYONE commenting on it at a home ed group (apart from the odd complement).

School has, in my opinion, a profound effect in terms of consolidating gender stereotypes and making it almost impossible for young boys in particular to be express themselves as anything other than crew cut, boisterous, brave, etc. and to shun anything that appears to be even vaguely feminine stereotyped.

Kids who go to school sometimes ask my son if he's home educated because they recognise him as 'not-conforming' in a way that they usually only see in other non-school-going friends.

tellme did you know that historically pink was the preferred colour for boys and blue for girls?

Maybe my daughter isn't a girly girl after all!!!

So I saw this and thing that had girl and boy chimps and the girl chimps were more likely to play with the dolls and the boy chimps play with the cars.

I don't see why it would be such a terrible thing that girls are more likely to play with a doll and boys more likely to play with a car? It kinda makes sense from an evolutionary point. Maybe not pink, but does it really matter?

It’s phrases like ‘girly girl’ (a stupid fucking term btw and users of this tend to sound incredibly vapid and shallow) that are part of the problem with gender channeling children. Apparently, unless a girl/woman puts effort into her appearance with makeup, styled hair, fashionable clothes that make the wearer more beautiful and matches up to what a ‘girly girl’ is, you’re judged to be a tomboy/butch/scruff because society imposes a rule on all female kind: that we exist solely to be aesthetically pleasing. Unless females fit the ‘girly girl’ narrative, we are failing.

That’s the issue. Hth.

They are force fed pink from baby grows school shoes, must have sparkles must be impractical, all PJs are swimsuits are pink or have pink or unicorns - there’s no choice

Yep, just checked DDs swimming gear, one black costume and one blue. Just making sure I wasn’t going crazy. Oh and the pjs she took off this morning, black.

Where are you shopping? Maybe we can help you

Maybe not pink, but does it really matter?

Yes!

I have daughters, I want them to be able to fix the car, change a light bulb, understand science and engineering.

I also want my son to be loving and caring, to see housework as his responsibly the same as raising children are also his responsibility.

@GreenTulips, I'm not sure why anyone would be able or unable to do those things despite having a preference for the colour pink?

Also not sure why liking to play with a doll would affect your abilities at science?

Right you are, JustForTheTasteOfIt

I promise I'll do better next time

It would be more interesting if science kits came in blue green yellow red orange and purple and let the kids chose

We have tonnes of science kits that came in those colours - again its just a case of not picking up the first one you see. We also had science kits posted through the door and again they werent pink either

imamearcat have you heard of unconscious bias?

Part of my job as an academic is to understand exactly how gender stereotypes interfere with peoples confidence and career progress in science.

Its good to know there is no problem and its fine to code toys by gender and this has no impact on women in science...it will save me the one day a week I spend dealing with the fallout!

My DD had a princess party, because that’s what she wanted as she likes princesses. She also likes stereotypical boys things to. There isn’t anything wrong with a little girl liking pink and princesses and unicorns