Pink Stinks

[randomama]

Reading about feminist books for 5 year olds in today's Guardian, it mentioned this "Pink Stinks" campaign. Which protests against the pinkification (OK, I made that word up) of girlhood.

I don't have any girls (yet) but as a girl, I LOVED pink, although my mum didn't indulge it (she was Clothkits all the way). I wanted to be Barbie or a Princess but have ended up writing a feminist PhD thesis. So in my experience a love of pink and princesses and a lifelong commitment to feminism have not been incompatible.

BUT my question is what do feminist or non feminist mothers of girls or indeed what do any of you think about the pinkification of girlhood and/or the campaign by Pink Stinks to stop it?

Cheers

hello! i love your post and guess what you haven't made up the term pinkification which perfectly sums up what has happened to girls stuff which i think has really intensified over th past 5-10 years. I am also an academic feminist whose mother tried to resist my desire for Barbies etc. I loved and still love pink but the sugary pinkification has really got to me recently and i am now 19 weeks pregnant with first child. I think that the problem comes when the pinkification doesn't get challenged by anyone that it become overwhleming. I reckon the ways in which our mum's resisted (in small ways, e.g. i wasn't allowed a Barbie and it was explained to me why but when my rebel auntie bought me one i was allowed to enjoy it) it means that we can have at least a critical approach to what it means to be a girl/woman and to question things which in my opinion is the greatest thing about being a feminist - having the tools to critique and to sometimes embrace stuff anyway. For example i LOVE britney and Cheryl and i totally get why they are massively problematic!

Really worried about having a girl and constantly having to fight the sexism and to resist the overwhelming feminzing of our girls : ( having said that it is just as hard and important to resist alot of the masculinties crap that comes with being a boy/man

I have a 2 1/2 year old boy and an 11 week old dd. got quite excited about girly stuff before dd was born and bought some pink stuff. That has now passed and I'm a bit sick of pink! Red, green, blue, brown, yellow, she looks gorgeous!

COngratulations on your pregnancy nickname and your new baby stealth!

Yeah a lot of my friends with daughters have bemoaned the fact that they can't buy hardly anything that isn't pink. It does seem incredibly limiting and worryingly pervasive.

Yeah sorry the term pinkification must have gone in under my radar. Just read back through the pink stink sites and they use it on there

I think you're right nickname that this is a relatively recent phenomenon, at least in terms of the scale things are at now. I also wonder if there is a connection between the recent resurgence in parenting manuals that mobilise pretty essentialist definitions of boyhood and girlhood, for example Steve Bidulph's 'Raising Boys', or the counterpart 'Raising Girls' is in any way connected to this excessive gendering of the consumption habits of the very young? Quite of few of my feminist identified mother-of-boys friends, who would balk at buying their daughter a Barbie doll have nevertheless recommended me Biddulph's Raising Boys, which I read and was like

yes a fellow academic who has two girls said that she really struggles to see what i happening with her daughters and just sees the essentialist nonsense being reinforced everywhere and says that if she didn't know better she would have ended up on the bandwagon too! for example her 4 year old had a visit to her soon to be new school with a load of other 4 year olds, my friend was dismayed to see that within half an hour ALL the girls were sat down reading books and/or playing with dolls and ALL the boys were doing construction stuff and runnning around. she is totoally fed up with other mum's and Dad using this as 'evidence' that "well girls and boys just are different aren't they?"

i read in an NCT booklet that in a typical chicken or egg scenario the extreme amount of pink clothes has come from 'the market' in the sense that the most affordable clothes are largely pink to guarantee a sale and i think its tru when you look at supermarkets and other more affordable plaxces that sell children's clothes is pretty full on. Even John Lewis (that supposed haven of the middle classes) has done albiet witha mix of other colours. the pressure to gender your child through colour is intense, even after stating to the sales lady that i was specifically not iterested in buying a gender specific pram she went on to tell me that i probably wouldn't the onbe with rabbit motifs on them because they were a bit boy-ey... what?!!!

sorry for the bad spelling in a rush to go and teach a class entitle "whose a afraid of Feminism" oooh the irony

Can't stand it. And someone will come along and say 'it's just a colour' but it isn't. It is much more than that now.

It's dreadful, and I hate it.

I have a girl who hates "girly" things and so we end up having to buy boys clothing and underwear because everything else is pink or has soppy characters.

When DD1 was small (she's now 13), ELC did items in lovely primary colours which were unisex and now it's either pink or blue.

Why aren't girls supposed to like Ben10 and dinosaurs. Why can't boys favour Dora over Diego.

I agree with the PinkStinks view that it isn't just pinkification for girls - its the genderisation (is that a word?) of all children's clothes and many toys. They have a Christmas campaign against the ELC habit of selling many of their toys in pink versions and blue versions. Can't we just have unisex clothes/toys/shoes? Clarks shoes are just as bad - there's nothing between the extremes. Even in GAP recently I was looking for some skinny trousers for a 15-month boy - had to buy leggings from the girls section because all the boys trousers were chunky jeans/cords/cargos.

How would MN feel about joining up with the PinkStinks campaign? We certainly have more public recognition at the moment, so could add great weight to it.

" have a girl who hates "girly" things and so we end up having to buy boys clothing and underwear because everything else is pink or has soppy characters."

Ditto. But I draw the line at undercrackers She wears jeans and her brothers' cast off t-shirts usually. Sometimes she will spy something she really likes that is meant for a girl but it is never ever pink or frilly. Bought her a stripy sweater dress from Gap and some leggings - just about the first dress she's worn willingly since she was 6.

Orm - my daughter wears Ben 10 boxer shorts some days and plain knickers the others, but it took us ages to find some that were acceptable.

I buy as much from the boys section as I do from the girls.

i don't see a specifically political agenda behind pinkification, it's a simple economic exercise in making toys un-passdownable between different sex siblings as far as i can see. when i only had 1 dd i bought mostly boys things so that i could pass them on, irrespective of the sex of any siblings. now i have 2 girls and i buy more "girly" things for dd1 as i know it will still be used.

i don't see a threat in it tbh. i'm reasonably confident in my ability to bring my girls up in a way that they believe they have equal rights with any other person and there's nothing they can't do based purely on gender, along hopefully with a deeper understanding of the less obvious pressures on women in our society. but i'm as happy for them to be fairies and princesses as firefighters, doctors, ladybirds and tigers.

i would say i was very lucky to have a feminist upbringing, i hope i can pass that on to my girls.

heartofgold - you are entirely right about the reason for pinkification, but I'm not sure I am so sanguine about its effects, on boys as much as for girls. I do try hard not to succumb to the tide of pink with my DD and have a fair few boys things, I find myself unable to pass on the girly things to her younger DS - it makes no sense, but I find myself reluctant to pass on e.g. the pink bowl for him to use. It does make me wonder whether the gender stereotyping is almost more deepseated for boys than for girls - there seems to be less and less common ground.

BTW the genderisation of clothing etc is profound even in non-pink items. For example, a pair of girl's jeans which might be perfectly plain will almost always be girlified with pink stitching. Or a plain T shirt will have slightly puffed sleeves, or a lacy edge. Just went through DDs old clothes to see what could be passed to DS and there couldn't have been more than a handful of items (probably from the boys dept) despite my best efforts...

Would you be as happy for your sons to dress as a fairy or a princess though?

And there is really so little choice. I wanted to get my DD a new dressing gown for Christmas morning. Choices were generally pink (bright bright pink in quite a few cases ) or white with pink trim, or navy. In the end I got her a small adult one in a lovely jade green colour. She'll just have to roll the sleeves up.

i hope that i absolutely would orm

but i do agree that there is probably narrower stereotyping for boys than girls, it might be easier for a parent to have pride in their tomboy than an "effeminate" boy. and while i would strongly hope that i could have that pride, i can't categorically speak from experience.

i also agree about the subtle genderisation of clothing too -one of the reasons i was drawn to make dd1's clothes as a toddler was that i couldn't get anything plain, or "girly" things in brown or green, colours that really suit her.

I heard on the radio yesterday that 25% of teenage girls experience physical abuse at the hands of boyfriends.

Where does this come from, in 2009, after decades of feminism?

Our society is still schooling girls to be gentle, passive, pretty and non-assertive. And if you look at some of the tiniest baby clothes in the stores, it starts pretty much at birth...."Daddy's little princess" on the babygros, as compared to "little monster" for the boys.

Why is this happening-are we going backwards?

I was looking forward to raising a little pirate queen, and getting some nice skull-and-crossbones babygros for her. However, it seems that I am to give birth to a little masculine oppressor. I am joking(mostly!) when I say I hope he turns out gay....!

I will just do my damnedest to make sure he turns out loving and sensitive- and very respectful to girls when he starts dating!

And, of course, it goes without saying that I'm avoiding blue baby clothes as much as possible, and dying lots of things green, yellow and purple.....and any little cars and tractors or references to being a monster are BANNED BANNED BANNED!

my dds had a lovely skull&bones babygrow that said - you will disapprove ss! - "tiny terror". in our sleep-deprived state we read it as "tiny trevor", which they were both known as in turn

That's a really important point heartofgold. But I dont't think that makes it non political. I believe capitalism itself is political and cannot be separated from patriarchy.

I think what peope are demonstrating here is true, that you CAN resist it reasonably easily at the level of how you choose to consume what is offered. I've been careful not to buy my son anything that I wouldn't feel confortable dressing a daughter in. Most of it is primary colours but there is a little bit of pink in there too. But I'm always shocked at how people respond to the fact that my son (2.5) has long hair, or wears skinny jeans with pink stitching, or pushes a (hideous) baby around in a (hideous) pink buggy that he demanded at the car boot sale. You would think he was covered in bruises by the way some people respond. It's so sad.

Therefore, no matter how much we may as individuals resist the excessive gendering of children in our own homes and our own purchases, it seems to me that there is something to be said for protesting it in a more publicly oriented way, which Pink Stinks seems to be doing.

On another point, (sorry I promise I'll shut up soon!) it's interesting how this merges with questions of sexuality as well. I remember a thread on another forum a couple of years ago from a woman whose partner wouldn't let her send her pre-school son - who LOVED dancing - to dance classes, because he thought it would make him gay (as if that would be a bad thing anyway. )

I really can't get het up over whether my DD likes the colour pink or not. She is free to chose for herself. Why wuld would I want to tell her, or to stop her, from having a preference.

Sorry, I clearly can't shut up. But yes, more on the gay thing. I have a friend who always explains my son's appearance away to parents we meet with the following statement "yes randomama wants her son to be gay". ????? THis is just because I had said in the past, when questioned about the way I dressed him and did I think he'd turn out gay, I'd said I wouldn't mind for a second if he was gay. so that has become randomama dresses her son like a girl cos she wants a gayboy.

Sorry, really embracing the emoticons today. It's as if I actively WANT to undermine my point! I don't. I'm just enjoying them.

Random - yesterday at the nursery christmas songs, one of our male friends said "I can't believe my son is up there in tights"

I just looked at him in disbelief and asked whether he thought the boy might catch some gayness from them.

My daughter regularly tells us that when she grows up she's going to be a big boy, as she wafts around in her space man outfit.

ah tbf random whilst i regard myself as a feminist i still don't really understand "patriarchy" and that's after spending a couple of years on a feminist web board.

Hula - it isn't about your daughter wanting to wear pink, it's about the assumption made that all girls should want pink things and all boys should want blue things.

My daughter doesn't like pink and it's really hard to find things for girls that aren't pink.

I have managed to find plenty of things that are not pink for little girls. Infact, at 7y, DD rarely wears pink Her best friend's little sister adored orange - her mum found several suitable clothes.

Granted there are lot of pnk stuff out there, but it doesn't take too long - IME - to find non pink too.

I hate pink and my DD likes cars, rockets and trains. But then I'm a 2nd generation feminist and probably more aware of such things than most. And my DS loves dolls and dancing (and is currently wearing a skirt) (and yes - some of my "inlaws" would probably think this will make him gay ) (I do offer DD the odd pink thing, but she prefers red and purple...)