Expecting childrens 'dress up' to be unisex?

[MagsD]

DDs preschool has a week of dress up planned as 'people who help us'. I decided to check out Sainsburys range of dress up clothes and was disappointed that the doctors outfit is specifically labelled as 'BOYS' whilst the nurses outfit 'GIRLS'. Boys get the option of firefighters, spacemen etc whilst the girls get the pink hairdressers outfit.
Sainsburys reaction to this was yes, we are aware that doctors could be male or female, and are in negotiations with our suppliers to change the product. Really it is just a change of the swing tag. Weeks on it is still the same. I know she can wear it anyway but why would anyone go to the trouble of specifying it, is it unreasonable to expect that they are unisex?

when I had kids I was astonished at the sexism in childrens stuff in general

YANBU, it is unessessary labelling.
I also don't like the sign over Coco Pops, Sugar Puffs etc saying Childrens Cereals.

YANBU and don't get me started on the 20 rows of girls clothes and the small corner tucked behind the toilet rolls for boys clothes - all in dull colours. What's wrong with red, orange, green etc??? And pink - frigging everywhere for the girls - can they not wear blue/green/yellow - does their skin turn purple or something??
notso - oh good cereals are labelled now are they (my DC is a bit young for cereals). Great stuff - something else to rant about in a couple of months!!
See OP - you've got me started now!!

It's what motherhood seems to do to a girl rowingcah turns you into a moaning old grump.

I always stomp down the cereal aisle muttering miserably, trying to forget the fact that it's not that long ago I was pestering my Mum to buy us Lucky Charms for breakfast.

You're right. There was dress up at music class recently. We had 3 princesses, plus my DD as a flamenco dancer. Boys were: a pirate, a monkey, a doctor, a builder, batman.

The message that the only thing a girl could pretend to be is wife/daughter of a king is downright depressing.

Fortunately pre-schoolers can't (on the whole) read and therefore take no notice. DD's nursery have a well-used dressing up box and I quite frequently arrive to find princesses and racing drivers of random genders (yes, the boys do wear the princess dresses) running around.

Mind you, I am hoping they don't start going in for themed "dress-up days" - they have a generic one this week and DD is going in her princess dress ([sigh], I know - it's pink as well - but she hardly ever gets to wear it and I had no time/energy to come up with an alternative)

My son often wears princess dress up s at his friends houses! But yes, very unnecessary labelling for a shop.

my ds used to love dressing up as a fairy and 'swooooshing' his skirt... now hes cyberman or sonic.

Pinkstinks led the campaign to persuade Sainsbury's to change its labelling. The company has promised new labels will be in-store by July.

Pinkstinks always wants to hear of examples of this sort of thing so it can work to get them changed.

www.pinkstinks.co.uk/campaign.php