To be fed up with every child product in the shops being pathetically girly or aggressively boyish?

[BroccoliSpears]

Every bloody thing you go to buy, you have to choose whether you want the 'girls' version (pink and yellow and gross) or the 'boys' version (blue and grey and gross).

My friend bought a pink potty for her dd 3 years ago, and has just gone and bought a blue potty for her ds now. WTF?

I'm not really bothered about my ds having supposedly girly things (the poor lad sleeps in pink flowery babygros often enough because we're not going to replace perfectly good dd hand-downs ), but mostly I just want to buy nice, normal coloured things. Stripey things, and spotty things.

I'm not suggesting that boys should wear dresses, or that they should all wear unisex mao suits, but why the feck do we need to have gender variation on knives and forks? On ready beds? I'm struggling to think of something where you don't have to choose whether to get the boys or girls version.

Why do we even have such strong gender variation in such young children?

And who got to decide that butterflys are for girls and buses are for boys? It's so random.

I wanted to buy my DCs a little digital camera.

Liked the VTEC kidizoom.

It came in three styles. Pink. Camoflage. And Blue.

Given that I strongly object to camoflage, it had to be blue so both my DD and DS1 could share it. But blue was much more expensive, and with a much longer delivery time.

What is it with fecking camoflage by the way? Am I the only person who objects to it?

unisex mao suits
fantastic
where can i get some?
DS had a khaki coloured babygro when he was a few weeks old, and his hair was all fluffy and standy-uppy....he looked like Kim Jong Il
agree re marketing
just charity shop or ebay stuff and give marketing wank the bird

Yes, yes and yes again. I've been meaning to start a thread on this for ages.

The clothes aren't quite the worst, though, it's the toys. The toys that ought to be utterly gender neutral, but come in pink and blue. I went to the ELC the other day to get a magnetic drawing thing for dd. They come in pink - with fairy stamps - or blue - with knights and animals. Grrrr.

So I went to John Lewis and bought a nice sensible purple and orange one. With ordinary stamps.

I meant to send ELC an email pointing out how their marketing didn't work, except I forgot. Maybe I'll do that...

pricey but fab colours (like JackieNo's links)

I work in the toy industry and its rife. Did you know all the major shops have buying divisions of boys toys and girls toys, with completely different buyers for both. Why the hell can't a toy just be a toy but it isn't, as a manufacturer you have to decide which gender and age to manufacture things for and target the correct buyers. Next time you buy a toy from Argos look at the label on the product, it will probably say BOYS/GIRLS toy. Oh and its not just the colours its the type of toys, you know pretend ironing boards/washing machines/hoovers that are pink and girly etc etc. Working in the toy industry sometimes feels like turning the clock back 50 years!

I launched a loud and pointed diatribe last year in my local M & Co.

Was with friend who is mother-of-girls, and was saying I refuse to buy clothes with writing on for my sons. She pointed out that her daughters are often in clothes with writing on - and look fine.

Then I dragged her around the boys' clothing section and then around the girls' clothing section.

Boys get

"Total trouble!"

"mummy's monster"

"trouble in trousers!"

"Little soldier" (I do not consider this to be a positive statement...)

"100% noisy!"

"Slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails"

"I commit knife crime against elderly ladies!" (ok, no, but you get my point)

Whereas girl's get

"Mummy's little helper"

"100% pretty"

"Little princess"

"Pretty in pink"

"daddy's angel"

"angel"

"I'm going to grow up over-compliant and neurotic about my appearance" (again, you get my point...)

The girl message aren't ideal .... but the boy's are just fucking horrible.

yes! ds (4) wanted to know why there weren't any boy dresses!

I know, there is a real anti boy message in clothing

god I hate the military ones the most. 'I want to grow up and commit atrocities in the middle east'

why tf would you want to label your boy like that??? is there some sort of pride in it??? (suppose little soldier would do that for some people...)

ds1's favourite t shirt (not bought by me) says 'daddy's little monster' !?

I veer for anything with aliens on it, fairly neutral I think. Or animals (though far too many 'cheeky monkeys' etc)

Someone bought my ds1 some dungarees with "100% trouble" embroidered onto them. I sat there and painstakingly unpicked the '1' and the first '0'. Dh laughed at me but I was proud of my little boy with his "0% trouble" label! Also not true, but you can hope, can't you.

I hunt for non-pink/blue toys but the relatives keep scuppering me and buying dd stuff in pink (have dd, ds1, ds2).

I saw such a stupid example of this yesterday ... I was on my way to work & went past a parked car, in the back of which was

one pink & sparkly
and
one blue vehicle-patterned

car seat

TELL me what is gendered about safety?

oh God i totally agree. the boys clothes are the worst - i still have DS (7 months) in babygros because at least they don't look like an army uniform. God knows what I'll do when he's too big for them.

And my DD (2.5) who we have never bought pink for now refuses to wear any other colour and rattles on about princesses, fairies and necklaces all day long

it was the pink pushchairs that flabberghasted me

do women only drive pink cars?

I was in Woolworths last week buying a globe for DS1. You know, one of those educational things that comes in blue and green, the colours of the earth.

They had a pink one

mrsbadger, that day may yet come..

one of my students (Jordan lookalike obviously with rich dad or boyfriend) drives a BRIGHT PINK open top car around campus....

don't have dds but if I did by god I would be hoping they have a massive reaction against pink by the age of 13.

Oh, and did you know that (just to press all of our buttons) you can buy pink camouflage waterproofs from Muddy Puddles. I'm still scratching my head as to whether its a step forwards, or a step backwards . . .
And why oh why no bright yellow or orange? I gave in and bought DD the bright pink ones (no, not the pink camo), simply because it was that or camo or navy, and just how are drivers going to see her walking or cycling in that?
For consolation, looking around in dd's school the reaction seems to set in by around age 8 for a large proportion of the girls. Sadly the boys are still stuck with the same options though (as are the men, come to think of it, DH still laments the demise of the New Romantics and the fact that all his frilly shirts have worn out & that long blond curls with silver ribbons are no longer top fashion for men . . .)

Me too I hate this, and agree with Balloonslayer, I totally totally object to camouflage stuff.

And to the loathsome the crap that gets written on both boys and girls clothes too. Recently saw a tiny baby in a pink babygro with the legend "Born to Shop"

Pink globe WTF?

I buy pink things for DS whenever I can get away with it, just out of sheer cussedness.

The sickly cast of pink over the girls' toy section is hideous to behold too, even in the most wooden-toy-ish of shops.

fruitful, that is GENIUS. I intend to do the same if I receive any thing similar for ds!

BabyDragon has a pink car seat.

Because the bright red one both DSs used has faded in the sun

Also have you noticed clothes manufacturers have to gender-ify really unisex clothing like jeans and dungarees - to make them have flowers on, or dinosaurs - just so you couldn't reuse them with a baby of the opposite sex - soooooo annoying!!

And then of course one comes on MN to read all the 'oh boys and girls are so very, very different I have no idea why' threads...

DD1 spent most of her first year in my nephew's cast-offs, with many affronted lookers-on saying 'but she's in blue'. Er, yes, and your point is?

Yup. Even the most innocuous pair of jeans has to have pink stitching, or a tractor motif.

It annoys me, but then I get cross with myself for caring - why shouldn't dd wear jeans with a tractor on them? Or ds wear jeans with pink stitching?

They're clever though, because even if you really don't want to reinforce gender differences in silly things like jeans, and even if you consider yourself pretty open minded about it all, the boys ones are SO boyish that you usually can't really enjoy putting a little girl in them, and vice versa.

I end up unsure if I'm cross with them or cross with myself.

yes, and try buying young girls a decent walking boot with which to go walking.
I said to the sales woman "I am NOT letting my girl walk up the Scottish Highlands in Lelli Kellies, I want Geox." "But those are boy's shoes!" she say, so I reply "can you guarantee that they used a male last to model that shoe and a female last to model the Lelli Kelli?" and she couldn't. So I packed it in and wnet to Millets and bought a proper pair of walking boots in BROWN although they did have pink ones but DD wanted brown. £35 for god's sake. Why is it assumed girls don't want decent shoes/boots in mainstream styles? Why did I have to go to a trek shop? If I'd had a boy I could have got nice boots.

Grrr!

DD had a lovely ORANGE babygrown when she was little that said "Granny Magnet" which was nice and gender neutral.

I did laugh when a very nice waiter in a Chinese restaurant came up to ds2 saying 'lovely little lady!!'

He was wearing a purple top from bright bots and everything else khaki. And has longish hair which seems to confuse the world

MI although I do notice boys seem to do a lot more shouting and running around I also think the old social construction thing has a lot to do with it, but then I would being a gender studies geek.

Oh God - I have been dying for a rant on this topic. Have been trying to buy some BPA free MAM bottles, but keep getting scuppered by the fact they come in pink and blue (and some other colours, but not easily available). Bottles? In gender-specific colours? Why? Why? WTF why? My child is not a child of the 1950s, my MOTHER was a child of the 1950s. And I bet it was not so bad as this then...