tomboys

[zenandtheartofbaking]

OK, it's probably not quite serious enough for the news section but ... I thought it was sort of timely after Christmas.

I don't know about you but we've been hit by an avalanche of gender specific toys. Plus, my dd, who I used to smugly believe had eluded gender stereotypes, has succumbed to the pink side and has spent the last couple of days channelling Sharpei, from "High School Musical".

Sigh.

here

I also find that a lot of "boys" games include fighting/killing etc this does disturb me as for example "animal" type games such as ds/xbox games seem to be stereotyped as "femine" and packaged to appeal more to girls.

Thank god we dont do computer games, so horrid gender stereotyping there has passed my chidlren by. I bet it is awful, given the exaggeration of most computer animations anyway.

In the 80s, velvet party frocks started to come back into fashion, though, didnt they? Dynasty, and Christian Lacroix glamour for little girls. I was very jealous. Its only now, when dd rejects perfectly good clothes because they arent pink enough, that I am getting slightly queasy about gender stereotyping.

It all got much bigger and flashier in the 1980s. The 1970s was sort of soft focus prettiness.

I was born in 1970 and remember my party dress from about the age of 6 very clearly. It was long and puff-sleeved, yellow with a butterfly print. Long dresses very much the thing mid seventies round our way.

I like your idea Nighbynight, that it rather jars against our own chilhoods. That would suggest a certain generational element - a reaction against the mores of the generation before. Which idea I have come across - starting as a re-analysis of "femininity" and perhaps now getting a bit too hyper.

The 70s fashion thing is interesting though. I definitely remember lots of radical chic in my own 70s childhood; my mum would lecture us on Czech-style socialism versus Year Zero and then round it all off with a good dose of Catholicism! And we wore jeans, T-shirts and dungarees and long, Edwardian/Kate Greenaway-inspired pinafores!

That would seem to go back to the idea of culture offering both the promise and the amelioration of all those radical movements, including feminism.

I'd completely forgotten my childhood clothing and certainly never thought about it!! Thanks for bringing it back!

DD 3 next month screams blue murder if you try to put tights and a skirt on her,her favourite pj's are Bob one s and tractors, we tried to put her in pink ones with cows on and you would have though they were coated in acid. For Christmas, we gave her a camera and she got a Bob workbench and various Tractor Ted goodies. Trying to keep at bay the pink barbies.

DPs parents bought 16 week old DS 2 different 'My Pretty Purse' play sets for xmas. I just know they will inundate us with pink princessy things over the next few years .

I still have to read that Tomboy article, will do it later.

I was a tomboy, but did like some "girls things"- dolls, prams etc. Although spent most of my time climbing trees and trying to outrun the boys.

I have 2 dds. My first (aged 5) is such a girly-girl that I despair. I feel she is drastically cutting her options by insisting on only liking girly things. eg she wants to be a "fashion designer", is obsessed with clothes and make-up (at 5!!!! aaargh!) and won't watch TV programmes/ films that she perceives as "boyish". I am always heaping scorn on barbie and her ilk, and trying to make dd be a bit more open-minded, but Dh and I (half) joke that she is destined to be a WAG when she grows up .

dd2 is a completely different kettle of fish. She is very independant, knows her own mind, and plays with dolls and train sets alike. She likes cartoons, and a wide variety of films/ books/ TV programmes, which I just feel has to be healthier than dd1s narrow scope.

I worry FAR more about dd1 than I do dd2. dd1 is smart as anything, and I really worry that unless she gets fed-up with this girly-girly world she wants to inhabit, she will stop herself reaching her potential and hugely limit her options in life.

My dd1 (5) is pretty much a tomboy. She has refused to wear dresses and skirts since she was 5, throws a tantrum if I try to get her to have her hair down. The most girly I can get it is in plaits she prefers it in 1 ponytail. I tell her she has fabulous hair (she really does she looks like Goldilocks, all gorgeous golden wavy hair) she keeps telling me her hair is not fabulous or beautiful and she wants short hair like daddy. No way am I getting all that gorgeous hair chopped off.

Her best friend is a boy, although she does tell me she is going to marry him. She refuses to play with girls apart from her sister. She hates pink. All the toys she asks for are typical boys toys but TBH I used to play with what would be deemed boys toys and I was one of the girliest girls going.

Very occasionally I will notice her secretly brushing her little sister's My Little Pony's hair, or rocking dd2's baby doll to sleep. But she's sure not to get caught as "I hate dolls they're yucky."

sorry that was refuses to wear dresses and skirts since she was 3.

Dragging this thread back to 1970s fashion, I remember Kate Greenaway style long party dresses with frilly hems. BUT they were never pink - I have fond memories of a cream and lawn green number - and obviously for special occasions only. My everyday clothes were practical. And mainly brown and orange, IIRC.

Well, I'm going to admit that this thread and the article has pissed me off completely. The whole 'tomboy' thing does. Why? Because there is a distinct subtext (in the article and on this board) that tomboy (read 'male') behaviour is something to be aspired to and perceived female behaviour (yuck, pink, glitter) is inferior.

Many posters here comment on the 'gendrification' (do you like my made up word?) of toys yet subscribe quite specifically gender characterised behaviour to their own children. "My DD is a tomboy because she likes to climb trees and doesn't like dolls ...". One poster described her little girl as 'strong minded' as an element of her tomboy characteristics. This doesn't make her a tomboy, this just makes her your unique, wonderful, complex little girl. Stop ascribing male behavioural characteristics to things you love about her.

I think society undervalues what we perceive to be typically female behaviour in children (especially in boys!!).

It makes me mad as hell I tell ya!

Oooh what a good post Smugaboo.

Smugaboo - I I think that was the point I was gesturing towards with my comment about the generational/reactive element in this - Natasha Walter, for example, published a book arguing that there was an element in 80s feminism that had more or less unconsciously devalued behaviours and characteristics traditionally coded as feminine and thus over-valued "masculine" ones. She suggested that more modern "feminisms" had reached a different accommodation of "femininity".

For myself, I think that there is now a slight change afoot, which combines with "celebrity" culture and a less critical attitude towards capitalism to produce a tendency towards a kind of "hyper-genderisation".

Part of it is, undoubtedly, the swings an roundabouts of fashion, and it's strange to realise, at the age of 40, that politics, too, has its element of fashion.

What struck me this Christmas was that, far from being able to choose from every position on the gender chessboard, and to use chilhood to engage in "serious play" with adult/gender roles, actually there was a v. strong cutural imperative to "choose" a particular, hyper-feminised, capitalist-inflected version of femininity. It was accompanied by the realisation that this force was decidedly an external one and that my own parenting ethos would be forced to negotiate some kind of oppositional pressure to counter it.

I also realised that I was going to be forced to think about all these things in an abstract way in order to practically parent on a day today basis. Which was a weird realisation.

As a child I longed for the things I loved doing to be seen as 'right' for me, and did imagine myself as a boy to better fit the range of camping, climbing, physical outdoor pursuits i loved.

Smugaboo- I think you have a good point. The problem with the pinkification of toys is that it perhaps pushes fun-for-everyone activities outside the pink boundaries into 'boyland' even further. I think the pink effect can deter girls from enjoying things like outdoor play - it isn't reflected. Look at what has happened to poor Dora! My neices were brought up on things pink and indoor, and the 10 yo coniders wellies too uncool to wear, they posess no rainproof gear and the day I took them for a pinic in a wood they declared to have been the only 'real' adventure they had ever had. BUT they couldn't climb trees as they refused to wear anything other than pink sparkly slip ons.

There will come a point where this sort of finickitiness will actually hamper a career choice or progress.

That is a good post, Smugaboo. I'm not sure if you were referring to my post when you said that one poster described her little girl as "strong-minded", as I did say that dd2 was very independant and knew her own mind. BUT I didn't ascribe that to being a tomboy- I meant she was less "sucked in" to the whole pink-princess world, unlike my dd1. dd2 is strong-minded ENOUGH to like things just because she likes them, whereas dd1 will dismiss things as "too boyish" without trying them- that is what makes me sad.