Responsibility to let girls be tom boys...

[Judy1234]

Do you dress your girls in pink? Expect them to be housewives? Given then a role model at home of mother home 24/7 doing dull domestic stuff, father hardly there? or do you encourage them in their adventurousness, let them ride, ski, fight, climb trees? Would you steer them away from a stereotyped party dress and read them stories where girls can be brave rather than simper?

........
From The Times
May 29, 2009
The pernicious pinkification of little girls
Find the link between (a) princess costumes (b) short hair and (c) the number of women graduates in maths and science
Antonia Senior

Where have all the pirate queens gone? Where are the cowgirls and the Supergirls? Today's fancy dress parties divide strictly on gender lines. The boys' side holds a handful of Batmans, a sprinkling of Spider-Mans, some soldiers and the odd cowboy. And on the girls' side, ten identikit princesses, swathed in pink, encrusted with fake crystals.

Is this, then, the summit of their ambition, the ultimate fantasy wish of modern girlhood - to be a princess? A role that can be inherited along with genetic mutations from generations of inbreeding. You can work for the role, it is true. Be pretty enough, my darling girl child, and mute enough, and bland enough, and you too could marry a prince. Because every girl's dream should be to lead a life of buffed and pedicured leisure, courtesy of a balding, chinless aristocrat, Whisper it, but the frog, as long as he's funny and kind, would have been the better bet.

There is an alternative to being a princess, a second costume beloved of today's girls. They shun the Ice Queens and the Elven warriors, ignore Artemis, the huntress, and Athena, the wise. Instead they celebrate the Fairy; three inches of cute, winged blondeness, dressed, inevitably, in pink.

This creeping pinkification of girlhood is ubiquitous. Toys and clothes have split down gender lines. It is impossible to buy a gender- neutral bike any more. Bikes come in blue, or in pink; as do baby walkers, and mini-keyboards, and any other toy that might once have been - imagine it! - purple or green.
Background

• Staff baffled by fuss over bed called Lolita

• Hollywood goes girly

• Katie Price: a feminist icon of our times?

• Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and his daughter Cecile

Girls' jeans come with butterflies and hearts stitched on every spare centimetre of fabric. T-shirts carry cute slogans - ?Cherry cute! Hello Kitty?. Swimming costumes are girdled with frills. Next time you are in the park, try to spot a prepubescent girl with short hair, or one wearing trousers. Long hair, dresses and pink; it's Amish meets Disney out there.

The triumph of this pink and cutesy ideal of girlhood is grim for more than aesthetic reasons. A report published this week by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) highlighted the differences between 15-year-old girls and boys' attitudes to learning. Even though girls graduate from senior school in greater numbers than boys across the OECD countries, girls lag behind in key areas. Boys outperform girls in maths in all but eight countries. In most OECD countries, girls and boys perform equally well in science. But in six countries, boys achieve significantly better results. Top of this list is the United Kingdom.

There is a correlation between attitudes to academic subjects and performance. In the UK, girls don't do numbers. And girls definitely don't do science. Angel Gurría, the OECD's secretary-general, argues that we are complacent about gender stereotyping and that the idea that boys don't do reading and girls don't do maths persists.

These girls will one day grow up. Even though the number of women at university is increasing rapidly, they are not narrowing the gap in science, maths and computer science. As graduates then, they leave the lucrative jobs in the City, in laboratories and in computers to the boys. Armed with liberal arts degrees - a useful accoutrement in the marriage market, like a little French and dancing once were - they may marry their prince after a few years pretending to have a career at an auction house. But happy ever after is a lie. Divorce statistics suggest he is likely to leave for a pinker, younger version.

The modern, Western world has emancipated women and made breadwinners out of them. Yet we are imprisoning our little girls in pink straitjackets, and then acting surprised later when their academic ambitions fail to outshine their accessories. Our girls' view of the world is pink-tinted partly because of the supply of cheap goods. When hand-me-downs ruled, parents would be more cautious. Now that clothes and toys are imported and cheap, it matters less if you buy all pink for your first-born, and replace it all with blue when a boy arrives. A T-shirt is expendable when it cost £5 in the shop, and pennies to make in a sweatshop employing the quick, cheap fingers of foreign children.

But the pinking process would not be happening without demand from the girls themselves and their parents. Put a gaggle of girls in a nursery and they will copy each other. Throw into the mix the culturally overbearing world of Disney, add a sprinkle of fashion fairy dust, and a roomful of princesses is born. For a vision of what this looks like, visit disney.go.com/princess/#/home. All the Disney princesses are there in a terrifying tableau of simpering, gurning girlishness. Why are all these princesses, the apotheoses of modern girlhood, clasping their hands together in front of them, in an expression of coy submissiveness?

If peer pressure is one driver of demand, the other must come from the parents. Perhaps this is a backlash against the Seventies, when boys called Orlando were forced to play with dolls, and girls wore trousers. Feminist theory has developed since then, recognising that there are differences between the sexes. But this seems to have mutated into an insistence that we emphasise the differences. If a girl old enough to choose begs to dress as a princess, it would be dogmatic to refuse. But why encourage this inanity in babies and toddlers too young to care?

The mothers of these girls, the careless inheritors of the equality hard won by their own mothers and grandmothers, are complicit in this pinking up of girlhood. Why? These women have themselves bestridden the world of work like colossi. Yet they are raising a generation of girls who, when confronted by a periodic table or a quadratic equation, are fit only to curl hair coyly round fingers, and say, in an affected lisp: ?Why are we bothering our pretty little heads about any of this??

how not who

It sounded as though your dd wanted to 'dress up' in something different to what you had lined up for her to dress up in.
What did she want?

So I should insist that she dresses up for a party should I?

Ideally she would wear jeans or a pair of her DB's old shorts and a t-shirt. I think that it shows a little respect to the bday person to make some effort so I try to encourage her to wear something special and have a bath . But I am not going to maker he paint her nails and straighten her hair like some of her friends do.

? Not sure what you mean.

I just know that I let mine choose what they want to wear if they are going to a friends party. Sometimes I'm a bit at their choices but as long as it's not too outrageous we try to accommodate what they want.

Apologies if I've got the wrong end of the stick.

Do you think that I'm saying you should make her do something that she didn't want to do?

Because that isn't what I meant, at all.

I'm beginning to think I have misunderstood something.

When I was a kid, I was a tomboy. But I liked pretty skirts and I had long hair, which I loved, until I was 11. I read blyron and 'jinty' magazine which had loads of cool role models for girls.

I don't agree that "little girls, whatever their upbringing, tend to veer towards pink flowery glittery pretty things".

Blyton

Ernest, thats interesting that you say theres more pink in the UK than in Germany. I thought it was bad enough here! especially as everyone has so much money relatively, and so few children.
Has Princess Lillifee reached the UK?

What is terrible in the UK, is that you cant get cheap, non-tarty clothes for girls over the age of about 8. I had to stop buying dd's clothes in Asda when she grew out of their baby range, becaues the mini-tart clothes in the next range up were so awful.
This, to my mind, is more damaging than Barbie pink for 5 year olds.

Custy and Edam - is there a good, readable working class history of Britain that I could get from Amazon?
I think I have debunked the princess myth by telling my children that hereditary "royal" families are just the ones who are greedier and more power-hungry than everyone else! They know that in their father's traditional culture, the "kings" and "queens" were elected.

What really annoys me is when people say things like 'girlie chats' and 'male bonding',surely we are all people and should try to a avoid the narrow definitions of gender,race, nationality and class, and accept ourselves and our sons and daughters for who we are not how we are seen or perceived to be.

This pinkification is a new phenomenum though, isn't it. I bet those of us born in the late 60s / early 70s have a different take on the matter.

I can honestly say that I didn't posess a single item of pink clothing until I was 18.

Little girls are attracted to pink because it's shoved down their throats from the age of two.

I was born in 1974 and was dressed in purple dresses with orange flowers and yellow tights. In the summer I would be permanently in towelling shorts and a grubby T-shirt. I had one summer dress. It was blue with little flowers on. I don't think I had anything pink.

And certainly didn't have a T-shirt bearing the legend: 'If you think I'm a bitch, you should meet my mother,' Which I saw on an 8-year-old the other day.

I'm confused too now juules

OK. DD would prefer to wear her brother's castoffs or jeans. She would also prefer not to brush her hair . I consider it rude to do that for a party so I make her wear something nice and look presentable.

The new dress was a red herring - I bought it for her because I liked it and hoped I'd get away with it as it isn't pink. However she wasn't altogether happy because it did have flowers But she's wearing it and looks gorgeous IMO.

But when she gets there I know from past experience that quite a few of the girls will be wearing ultra girly - not to say mini-tart clothing - and will have painted nails and put on make-up.

I like the fact that she would rather eat frogspawn than paint her nails etc. I am proud of her for that - rightly or wrongly - and worry that she will feel obliged to comply because the overwhelming zeitgeist amongst her peers is for ultra girly and increasingly so.

Hope that clears that up.

Xenia said "I may be the only person posting with children who have gone right through up to university stage". She isn't, and I have been fighting this battle for 23 years.

DD1 is 23. When she was born I had very strong opinions on the dressing of children and womens place in society. The first time I forced myself to put her in a pink dress at 16 mo I physically shook

I put her in dungarees and trousers and track suits. She wore red and navy. I refused all dresses for a while and then those she had were blue or red or green. Never frilly, never flowery. I would reject a plain pair of jeans that had a flower on the waistband. Mum made DD a christening robe and I was furious that the "finishing touch" was a pink rosebud on the waistband

All the other mums thought I was weird. What didn't dawn on me at the time was that nobody ever told me (or her) that she was pretty, or cute, or lovely.

She was followed by 3 brothers. The boys wore green and turquoise and purple. All my children had long hair. People complained to me all the time that boys should have short hair and that I dressed DD like a boy. People would buy her dolls, which she was never interested in. I bought her cars and lego she wasn't interested in either

DD decided she wanted to be a boy and demanded to have her long blonde hair cut short. She wouldn't do ballet but went to karate. She wouldn't dress up for a family wedding.

She turned into a "proper girl" at secondary school under the influence of her peers and went through a very girly phase at about 14-15. She was very good at science and I wanted her to study chemistry at uni but she did drama instead She isn't girly but likes to act helpless and dizzy, even though she's into martial arts.

DD2 is 2. Everything she has is pink and frilly from her vests to her pushchairs. She has dolls and teddies she carts round under one arm. She is the image of DD1, except her hair won't grow so is short, yet people tell her (and me) all the time that she is pretty and cute and lovely. It'll be interesting to see how like her sister (or not) she grows up to be.

Oh, got you now, Ormirian.
Good for you (and your dd) for supporting her with what she wants regardless of her peers.
I also would insist on a bath, nice clothes and brushed hair for a party

V. good question, Nighty but I'm sorry to say nothing leaps to mind. I've read about Peterloo and the cotton workers in various different books but was orginally told the stories by relatives.

this might help but it's a textbook, not a novel. (Actually think it was written by my godmother's late husband, must check with her whether it is his or just someone with the same name!)

Google Lancashire cotton strike and you'll find some interesting stuff, though.

...there really is a problem with stereotypes of girls and boys stuff.

DD is 5 and very active, we go on walking and active holidays.

Where did we find the boots and sandalls and shorts and stuff?
Boy's section...of course.
Girls sandals were all flimsy pink glitter tat, which would not have held up to a beach holiday on my DD's feet.

Girl's shorts were cut so short they would have ridden straight up her bum if climbing rocks on the beach. So she had nice half length boy's ones plus she loved the boy's swimming shorts...she ran out wearing it today over her old swimsuit saying "why are these trousers only for boys? They are great!"

She also has boy's section sunglasses and rucksack. You'd look bloody silly up a Scottish crag in Lelli Kellies, a "girls love princesses" bag and pink heart sun glasses.

It really pisses me off that girls are not seen as "active" in this way.

Oh and she went to a super heroes party...the boys were all dressed as Spiderman etc, any girls who had bothered to dress up were disney princesses (yawn). DD went as Supergirl. Of course, it was a boy's Superman T-shirt I found on ebay combined with an old skirt and a cape I made in a hurry...all the boys were well impressed and yelled "hey supergirl!"

And I also agree Dad's attitude is important. My dad always encouraged me to do what I wanted and I went into engineering and then IT and for years I was the only woman on shift.

I'm never quite sure why different struggles for freedom have to compete. Why do the struggles of the working class have to eclipse those of women? I rememer reading Meridien by Alice thingy (Colour Purple) and finding it so distressing that she was disrespectful of feminism simply because of the struggle for black equality.

One wrong doesn't make another right.

I don't recognise the world described in Xenia's OP.
I see lots of girl clothes that aren't pink or only a tiny bit pink.
I am more bothered that pink is so off-limits for boys, surely that can't be right, a whole colour with too many girl connotations for little boys to go near it. Stupid.

DD was a very pink 4yo who has outgrown it (so far, she's only 7).
I'm more worried about keeping her in touch with mainstream expectations.
I wear pink myself... but I am quite unconventional. DD will be her own person, but I don't want her to be bullied for it. More pink might be a good thing for her.

I recind (hoping that is right usage) my previous comment...only due to the fact that i have looked in my daughters wardrobe and realised how much clothing DD3 owns which is not pink. Even DD1 and 2 hardly own anything pink (they are 11). They enjoy (usually) maths and science, and DD2 requests a short haircut every few years.

There is also much more choice of what parents can buy for their kids now, so if someone dresses their DD always in pink they must have done it because they wanted to - not the media. Even the revolting High School Musical is geared more toward red than pink. And Dora (barf) Explorer is predominantly purple. And she's an explorer.

As for princesses - i like Princess Fiona best.
She kicks ass.

I guess my 8yo DD is somewhere inbetween. She loves pink, I have no idea where this obsession came from as I never dressed her in lots of pink as a baby or toddler at all. But now everything has to be pink, clothes, bike, scooter. She wouldn't have a pale blue bike that we saw in Halfords as she says "blue's for boys" (it was a girl's bike). She loves Hello Kitty and glitter hair bands, etc.

However she's also the biggest tomboy I know. Just had a week away where she was the kid on the campsite who climbed to the highest point in the tree where noone else would dare. She was jumping off the large rocks into the river when none else would. She's a great skier with no fear and I'm happy that she does this sort of stuff.

I'm not a yummy mummy and to be honest I can go a couple of days without brushing my hair. Any vanity over her appearance she does not get from me! But she has learnt it somewhere.

Interesting article, I wonder if there will be another next week discussing the plethora of boys' clothes with pirate slogans/dinosaurs/skull and crossbones, etc. Discussing the blueing culture and how not many boys are SAHD when they grow up or become nurses, etc.

Edam - actually, a (readable) textbook is what I was looking for. We aren't in the UK, so the children have to learn about UK history on their own. My own (rather rusty) history was rather of the kings, queens and battles variety, although we did cover Peterloo as part of the O level syllabus.

I also like the look of this:
www.amazon.co.uk/Making-English-Working-Penguin-History/dp/0140136037/ref=cm_lmf_tit_2_rdssss0

I have had lots of children over lots of years and they have varied but what I did notice with my daughters is that they tended towards peer pressure as teenagers but later. May be because they went to girls' schools only they were not into boys and very into horses so didn't have boyfriends until university (although I would not have objected had they had one younger) and when they got home frmo university they had changed yet again but it's felt like they came back to how they were brought up under our influence up to age 7 or 10 and although like I am they don't look too bad and can dress up rather well, their self worth, their esteem, their plans are about the mind, career, having fun, not obssession like looks.

I think the crunch time comes at my sort of age, 47 really when those women who have lived a life solely based on looks find what mattered to them is disappearing and there is little left.

Someone said what do you say if your little girl asks if she's pretty? The traditinoal English say is - pretty is as pretty does. You tell them we don't do vanity surely? or you say it's what is inside that matters and give them some examples of morally bad pretty people. One of the best things my mother did for me was never as a child go on about my looks (I do look a lot better than my siblings but I was completely unaware of that as a child and I was surprised when I was about 18 when they told me that - I never felt my looks mattered at all) My poor poor mother who looked like Jackie Kennedy in the 60s found she was lumbered with us two teenage girls whose teenage rebellion was to be entirely tom boyish and reject all interest in clothes and appearance I suppose on moral grounds when she'd probably have hoped to share in her love of clothes etc.