Angry at M&S and their 'girls are here to spread positivity' clothing

[TheBlueOwl]

Looking for some sweatshirts for my 10 year old daughter on the M&S website. It was hard to find anything without a nauseating ‘positive/kindness' message/slogan. Had a look at the boys stuff and it seems they don’t have the burden of spreading positivity to the world via their clothing? What is this all about? It feels wrong or AIBU? Surely we’ve moved on from girls having to be sweetness and light? Do I need to learn applique and start some counter messaging? Get Fucked? Too strong? Any ideas?

Here are my findings:

Girls Tops:
Positive state of mind
Life is full of surprises
Always positive energy
Spread kindness
Amazing things will always happen
Super Love
Let the Sunshine In
Happiness Rocks
Better Together

Boys Tops:
Dead Cool
Gamer at Work
Just Roll With It
Turtley Amazing
Powered by Dino Might
Strong Together
Gamer
Goal

YANBU - I am equally unimpressed by the boy's slogans too. Why does everything need a message now?! Recently I bought a sweater online for DS, the back wasn't shown in the pictures and there was just a little smiley face on the front (not big, not central)...when it arrived I was horrified to see "The Next Big Thing" written all over the back!!

* It's not just M and S, it's virtually every single shop.*

^This. H&M sell very questionable shit clothes for girls

* I love the sound of the turtley amazing one.*

^Me too, I just bought it online

I agree OP.

I also agree that boys’ t shirts are often better quality cotton (or better quality generally) than girls’. Thicker - the girls’ ones are often very thin. But asnPP have said, the cut is different, and a lot of girls don’t want the straight up and down cut these days, even though it’s what my generation all wore as kids.

My dd is a teenager now so wears women’s clothes, but when she was an older pre teen, we got a lot from the “boys’” sections. Luckily she didn’t care about the cut but many do.

Love the turtley amazing one, but ds is too old for it sadly!

Awful isn't it

YANBU.

Most shops have now got the memo that you can’t just tell girls to be pretty any more, but this is the emotional equivalent: it’s girls’ job to make the world sunnier, through this endless, blanket positivity. To prettify the world in a slightly different way. Meanwhile boys can get on with liking specific stuff and doing fun things. They don’t have to like bloody everything.

Carbiesdream. With you on that. Also 'dont fucking ask me to smile' .
Or 'Ill be kind when you stop being a misogynist'

@Nowayhozay

YABU there are plenty of sweatshirts on their site without any slogans at all, plain ones, stripey ones, etc. You could buy her a boys one !

The fact that those other slogans are seen as ‘boys ones’ is part of the issue.

@BeaAggressiv

YANBU It perpetuates the stereotypes that women have to carry everything on their shoulders whilst being peppy, kind cheerleaders that don't hurt anyone's feelings and stay eternally positive!

Whilst boys just have to be cool an dplay computer games.

It's annoying as fuck.

I agree!

@BluerThanRobinsEggs

twitter.com/letclothesbe

There's a whole campaign on Twitter.

Great link.

I think there’s also a campaign entitled Let Toys be Toys, too - ?

It's a class thing and this always gets overlooked. I think it's really unreasonable that the higher up the market you go, the easier it is to avoid this kind of stuff. I always loved the Little Bird range in Mothercare but could never afford it. It was lovely bright rainbow colours, properly 'unisex'. Joules and JoJoMaman do lots of navy girls clothes and Boden do nice rainbow colours. But when you're stuck at the lower end of the market you have less choice and George, Matalan, Primark, Peacocks, etc all have the extremely gendered stuff. Am surprised by M&S tbh. Think of them as quite posh and that they'd be less unicorn-ey.

(Yes I know I could shop on ebay but even there these brands are more expensive than buying new cheaper brands. Plus there is a lag between buying and receiving.)

What I find worse than unicorns, be kind etc. are the awful camoflage / army / military stuff for boys. It makes me really sad to see little toddler boys dressed in war clothes 😪

My DS is allowed dinosaurs but not aggressive T-Rex, bared-teeth designs. Preferably those big leaf-eating ones 🦕 Ditto sharks. Cartoonish / friendly ones ones ok. More lifelike or with bared teeth not ok.

I read on here that girls clothes have prey animals / herbivores on them (rabbits, deer, horses, mice..) whereas boys have predator / carnivores and then I couldn't unsee it. Although girls clothes do have cats which are obviously hunters. And there was an owl craze a while back. Come to think of it I have never seen a boys item of clothing with a cat on it. Has anybody?? 🐱

My two girls have M&S sweatshirts that say Fearless and Unstoppable. But I guess they didn't sell that well, and therefore M&S haven't repeated them.

I’ve just gone through all the marks tops for boys and girls

And let’s just say you’ve been selective

You missed all the below in the girls section

Be cool
Be happy
Good vibes
Love yourself
Positive state of mind
Free yourself
Be fearless
Awesome energy

@trilbydoll

My two girls have M&S sweatshirts that say Fearless and Unstoppable. But I guess they didn't sell that well, and therefore M&S haven't repeated them.

Be fearless is currently online The op chose not to list in her cherry picking list

Well my gripe is about boys clothing - it's equally bad. the unrelenting muddy coloured, camouflage options or the stuff with Xbox or gamer plastered all over it. Talk about stereotyping or making boys feel they have to be into certain stuff to be 'cool'.

I would love children's clothing to be in a range of colours and be unisex

@MorningStarling

YABU. If people didn't but that shit then they'd stop selling it. You're focusing on the wrong area, you should target the people who buy it rather than the people who sell it, because there will always be some twat manufacturing shit like this if there's a market for it.

You're being a bit naive there - that's not how people shop. Typically (and there's some very, very longstanding research on this, an entire branch of decision-making theory) they pick and choose from the limited repertoire of what's available in front of them. What they don't do is mentally design their perfect design, then go out and scour a dozen or more shops for whichever product most closely corresponds to those parameters. So yes, what shops put in front of customers matters an awful lot, and OP is completely justified in being pissed off.

Can confirm Dunnes stores on this side of the ditch is full of the same.

I do sometimes buy DDs the least "gamer camo roarsome shark gonna rule the world" boy ones in dark or primary colours but presumably the marketing bods don't know I'm buying them for girls. So they carry on thinking everyone wants the pink glittery "Be kiiind, plaster on a smile and dickpander to the world so all your unicorns will shit rainbows" for their girls.

Also- a lot of clothes are bought as gifts. There is an understandable reluctance to buy the " wrong" gendered clothing for your tiny niece or colleague's new baby daughter unless you know her mum is keen on smashing the patriarchy. I did manage to buy my nephews some rainbow Little Bird hoodies from the boy section but that's as far as it goes.

I did cherry pick to demonstrate my point? The fact that there are less saccharine alternatives doesn't cancel out the fact that these slogans exist? It's their existence that troubles me? And the fact that the boys clothes are free of them?

YANBU.

I have a son, and I run into the same problems in reverse (though I think the implicit messaging is more damaging for young girls). Sometimes I'd like a happy slogan for him, and some more colourful clothes. Not everything has to be blue, grey or bloody camo patterned!

I have bought him things from the girl's section before, but this pink/blue divide is so irritating. Companies do it on purpose, imo. If things were more gender neutral, people with one of each would buy less clothes because they could just share them.

I can't bear it either - not really because of the gender stereotyping, more because I feel like it's quite inappropriate to put an opinion on a child who hasn't chosen that for themselves.

I had never really considered the camo thing for boys as I haven't been in the market, but, yes, that is grim.

I feel YANBU however my 5 year old DD loves that stuff. ‘Be happy’ with a glittery unicorn and a rainbow is all she wants to bloody wear. No point in me buying gender neutral clothes that she point blank refuses so she goes around looking like my little pony and frozen have collectively vomited on her but her choice 🤷🏼‍♀️.

Hadn't seen these, but doesn't seem right. I did buy my DD a lovely coat from there over the weekend though with dinosaurs on from the girls section. My DD loves dinosaurs and often don't find them in the girls sections.

"It's a class thing and this always gets overlooked. I think it's really unreasonable that the higher up the market you go, the easier it is to avoid this kind of stuff. I always loved the Little Bird range in Mothercare but could never afford it. It was lovely bright rainbow colours, properly 'unisex'. Joules and JoJoMaman do lots of navy girls clothes and Boden do nice rainbow colours. But when you're stuck at the lower end of the market you have less choice and George, Matalan, Primark, Peacocks, etc all have the extremely gendered stuff."

100% true.

YANBU. I started a similar thread that got deleted (not sure why!). I'm sick of seeing this utter rubbish and having to explain to DD why I won't buy it.