Teacher asked who chose the pink bottle....

[Caszekey]

Ok, so it's more aibu to allow / encourage this behaviour.
Fairly identifiable so here goes.
5 year olds twin boys, both have long hair like their Dad which I put up for school. Ones favourite colour is pink. Both adore Frozen so wanted the dress up dresses (Kristoff is a minor character). Last WBD they dressed as Goldilocks and Red Riding Hood (bear, wolves are minor characters). School have jokingly passed comment previously about pink bobbles etc but today I was asked, incidentally, if I chose the pink bottles or them, do I pick costumes etc.
I don't know if she's curious or implying I'm doing something wrong but it's got me second guessing

The choices are child led and I reckon they'll age out of them but I don't want to pull the "boys don't do that" line when girls have so much fun.

So aibu to allow them to pick so freely ? We've not yet encountered a request for a dress for general living, just they like to be Princesses!

Yeah, all those things are socialisation. You can know this because different human cultures attach different values and gender to them over time and place.

Oh interesting!

According to my teen, Lynx Summer Fresh is the new Lynx Africa.

The distinction is lost on me. The overpowering smell when they congregate remains the same.

Not read whole thread since this morning but wanted to flag up to the OP @Caszekeythat the website and campaign Let Toys be Toys and also Let Clothes be clothes started on mumsnet.

https://www.lettoysbetoys.org.uk/

My kids of both sexes liked / like :
Rugby / cricket / cooking / painting their toenails / Physics / gaming /Art / glitter paint / sailing / flowers / fighting with swords / dolls / playing with cars / go karting / climbing trees / wearing trousers / wearing dresses /ballet & tap dancing etc / perfume … Why on Earth wouldn’t men and women enjoy the ruddy things they find enjoyable things without being judged for doing so ?

Some of the posters on this thread are making me feel like I’ve wandered back into Edwardian times

When my youngest boy cried for a doll in a shop 20 odd yrs ago, we bought him it. Oh the looks we got. The horror on people's faces when he dropped it from pushchair(oh your wee girl dropped her doll) was hilarious when they looked at the wee bruiser in buggy.
Ps
He's now a great hulking hetro man

Just thinking that no-one would make the slightest fuss if these were girls choosing to wear male superhero costumes etc. They'd likely just be described as 'tomboyish' and there might be a little teasing, but nothing major.

As long as you make it v clear that your boys are boys and that this is just part of growing up. May be a phase or an indicator of future sexuality, who knows. But tbh, I would be worried about them being taunted, but that's the double standard, isn't it?

Answer the question honestly. If you feel the need to ask if it's a problem...?

If it's the boys' choice to have long hair and pink then so what. That's said, there's no point in being disgenuous, it's going to be a problem for some people which is a shame, and the boys may need to be made aware of this at some point.

Women and girls went through years of abuse to be able to wear trousers (and even now that's not a universal right - some school still make girls wear skirts).

It wasn't them wearing the trousers that was wrong, it was the abuse. And I am grateful to them for enduring it so I can spend my life in jeans.

It seems to me that if there are boys and men willing to push the bar for the male half of society in the same way those brave women did, we should support that, and not be such cowards about it.

What a ridiculous post. what exactly is wrong with boys liking pink or fairy tale characters?

OP you haven't done anything wrong, I think it's much healthier to let children follow their own interests instead of forcing them into meaningless gender stereotypes, there will be plenty of other people trying to do that as you can see from a few of the posts on here.

Caszkey, my dd at 5 loved to dress up as spiderman and the Hulk . Her favourite colour was green . She's 7 now and favourite colour is purple and wants to dress as hermione granger now . They're kids and change their favourite things all the time . My older Ds 17 has long hair , wears baggy jeans , converse and slipknot tshirts. Long hair isn't just for girls

I think it's fine to let the kids choose but considering the overwhelming gender bias in favour of male main characters in children's books, it does seem like a pretty big coincidence that they both wanted to be female characters. So I'd definitely be wondering if that choice had a stear from a parent with an agenda.

My youngest does this at the moment. He has been insistent on having pink trainers which i vetoed but I do let him dress as a princess and pretend at home when he wants to 😅 His justification was princess dresses are just so beautiful but kings and princes aren’t. I don’t think to much about it.

Sorry, anticlimactic update.

I asked her. She was just personally curious as it was both of them. I did point out how clingy and "what he wants I want" ATM. So nothing to do with checking my ideology or notifying me about bullying etc. just plain old curiosity

I've hardly accessed obscure literature. They like Goldilocks and Little Red. They like Billy Goats Gruff and 3 Little Pigs but less so.

You’re missing the point of gender critical. It means the opposite entirely - that wearing pink or blue, for example, does not determine your sex.

I’m definitely in favour of children dressing in whatever dressing up clothes they want, long hair isn’t just for girls etc. it’s a form of self expression and it’s all healthy. But the 3 bears are definitely not side characters in Goldilocks and the three bears. They’re in the title.

All that aside, your twins are 5 now but as they grow up they’ll be more influenced by what other kids choose to do. As long as no one is pushing them either way and they’re happy and content that’s what matters. They well go different directions to each other which is also perfectly healthy and normal.

My son’s primary school has 5 boys with long hair. It’s only a small school so most classes have one boy with long hair. I think increasingly it’s not such a big deal. Hair length and colour of a water bottle really have nothing to do with your sex.

As an ex teacher it probably wouldn't cross my mind yo question it but then everyday I saw young lads, who would never have been allowed to at home, dressing up in everything sparkly in our dressing up area.
A local school has twin boys, couple if yrs older than yours, at the xmas party one came in camouflage top and cargo trousers and the otger a sparkly dress.he has worn stuff like this for a while, not always, and as far as I'm aware the kids are OK with it and nothing is said.. He loved asking staff if they liked how sparkly his dress was, he was do proud of it!
There will be questions but as long as they know they can but font have to. I see no issue personally.

Under what circumstances do they dress like that, is it a special 'dressing up' day for something? Other than that I'd have thought they'd wear uniform.

World Book Day for those costumes specifically. Elsa and Anna dresses just general dress up at home

To that extent all parents have an agenda—don’t they? Christian parents who raise their children to be Christian. Sporty parents who insist their children are sporty? Parents who went to Eton who insist on that for their sons? Why so implicitly censorious of a presumed “agenda” that lets the children choose their own interests regardless of the po faced mumsnet crowd?

I have twin niece and nephew—they started out as identical twin girls but one chose ftm transition in their late teens and could not be happier now 8 years later. Same parents. Same school. Same friends. Same sports. Each chose what they liked and how to live it. I approve this agenda.

If you don’t like the comment talk to the the person who made it.
don’t just refer to as as jokey comment

This transphobic site probably isn’t the best place to ask such a genuine and nice question, as I can see from some of the replies you’ve already got.