Just say no to pink?

[Mollusk]

We've decided to find out the gender of our Feb 2013 baby - but I really want to avoid gender-stereotyped gifts. My mother and sister are big fans of the pink/glittery/princess oeuvre that my feminist instincts can't deal with - but if it's a girl, is it rude to say "We will be grateful for any gift, but please no pink?" Anyone else been in this situation?

I love this cartoon

There's nothing wrong with pink, there's everything wrong with nearly everything being marketed at and for girls coming in pink....

I'd just tell them something like 'we love nice bright colours - and it's so hard to find alternatives to pink for girls so if you do see cute things in other colours we'd love it if you could get those for us!'

A couple of years ago Next did a boys T shirt that said "Tough Enough to Wear Pink". They sold out in no time and were going for a bomb on eBay. DS didn't have one. He did have a plain fuchia pink t shirt though. Combined with longish blond hair on a 2 yo, he was constantly mistaken for a girl. He is a very boyish looking boy.

Have a look here for the history of how pink has come to symbolise girls - very recent really Pink. My mum (2DS, 2DD) said that pink marketing for girls didn't really exist in the 1970s (not that she'd know, I only ever had hand me downs grump, grump, grump....)

I was born in 1986 and AFAIK there are almost no pictures of me in pink. I know my mum made me a pink dress to look like sleeping beauty's. But there are loads of pictures of me in my favourite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pjs playing with Barbies.

I want my children to be like that. Wearing and playing with whatever they want. DS2 loves pink, cooking, cleaning etc. all 'girl' stuff. But he also lies trains and motorbikes and fireman sam. He's very happy and is often found in his fireman outfit while hoovering with his pink Hoover.

Lies should be loves.

Smile sweetly and dye it all. I hate pink and thought everyone in the whole WORLD knew it but I still got loads of pink stuff for DD. Some of it I changed if it was from M&S or Next or similar. But some of it I couldn't. So I bought some Dylon washing machine dye, put the whole lot in and hey presto!

My friend has said "If we're having a girl and anyone is kind enough to get an utfit, we LOVE bright colours....and we hate pink!" but she has said it with charm so nobody has taken offence.
Least of all me...my DDs have a few pink things but they are hand me downs. They live in leggings, jeans and t shirts!

they do have nice dresses but I go for quirky prints not florals as a rule and they tend to like bright colours not wishy washy ones.

I have decided to get round it by asking for nappies! We use real nappies and you can never have enough. They are cheaper than an outfit to. Why does everyone think they need to buy clothes anyway? When I buy for new parents I usually get something nice to spoil mum, like chocolate, or something practical, like bibs.

Also, when someone askes me want I'd like, I try to be specific. MIL asked the other day and I said that "we are doing well for baby grows and vests but she could do with some cardigans, I'm particularly after an orange one so if you spot one, give me a shout...."

I'm not against pink or blue, I'm against the insistance that it has to be pink or blue. I'm against the idea that girls are all sweetness and light while boys are little thugs. FWIW I had a DS first and I'm finding it easier to get nice girls stuff than nice boys stuff without spending ££££££. Boys stuff always comes with a logo along the lines of "I'm a little shit", or it's black.

When I've put DS in nice leggings (navy blue with yellow elephants) he got asked (3 times!) if he was in his pyjamas! I mean they asked him not me! When did it become ok for adults to poke fun at children for what they are wearing?!

I did make it clear about the pink to anyone who I could talk to about it and all the other pink stuff went to the charity shop or was returned (but the giver was heartily thanked of course). Any -gps- people who ignored us have gradually got the idea as dd is never in anything pink. Only taken 2 years...

But it's not just pink, is the vomitous symbols of womanhood (hearts, flowers, cooking utensils and little slogans) that you may need to filter too

We haven't found out the sex of our baby, and one of the benefits is it limits the time people will have to buy/make gendered clothes. I mean, fair enough returning supermarket pink/blues but I wouldn't want granny to spend ages knitting something pink and frilly that I couldn't bear to put baby in often.

I really want some practical clothes with some bright colours (which can include pink and blue for both sexes) which can be used for future babies too.

I think I made my mum a little over-nervous about what was acceptable after I had a heated discussion with my little sister over gender politics. Had to reassure her that I did like pink and blue, just not exclusively!

For example. I don't mind Lego making pink, purple and turquoise lego bricks, these are fantastic colours which can be a fun part of imaginative play. The thing thats damaging is gender seperating by colour. I fully intend to buy both the pink and blue packaged legos and to mix them all up.

I do think there is something we need to be careful of (with older children) in trying to avoid heavily gendered messages - we don't want our girls to think we are avoiding pink for the same reason that men and boys do - because they are associated with little girls. Its a balance of trying to protect them from limiting gender messages and not making them think that it is shameful to be a little girl.

I loved playing with plastic dinosaurs and plastic little dogs and dolls when I was little. I remember being told I couldn't have a blue bedroom when I was very small, it got decorated yellow. A number of years later (when in my dinosaur phase) my parents gave in and it got decorated with dinosaur wallpaper and green with jurassic park bedding.

As an adult, I still love animals and science as well as more traditionally feminine crafts. I share a blue bedroom with my DH. Our baby will also be sharing this room as we are in a one bedroomed flat. So we get some blue bedding to match.

I think I'll try and keep a rainbow of colours as my inspiration when buying for baby - even once we know what's under his/her nappy.

Third baby girl on the way here and to b honest the first thing I said was 'oh no more pink " and looking at photos my girls were very often in pink :/ but I have bought quite I bit of yellow/lemon items like dresses and sleep suits and I knit and I haven't knitted one pink thing :) I know I will get pink things I mean it's inevitable pink will be bought but then I don't like beige or tan it's too drab for a bubby girl I think so I like bright happy colours .

We didn't find out DS's sex before he was born, and we got a lot of greens, whites, yellows, and oranges (the sleepers with little duckies on them made him look SO sweet!) - now he's nearly 2 and clothing is rigidly gendered. Something relatively gender-neutral, like a green t-shirt, is nonetheless given puff-sleeves and a more fitted cut if it's for a girl, simpler short sleeves and a looser, boxier cut if for a boy. WHY? Toddlers are the SAME BLOOMING SHAPE!

As I am a cheapskate and hoped to re-use most clothes, for DC2, I was most annoyed. The cheaper shops are the more rigidly gendered in basic clothing, alas. Oh well, if this foetus is female, she's going to have a lot of fun, bright, slightly-dinosaur-focussed clothing.

I have no problem with pink as a choice for my (hypothetical) daughter, btw. I have problems, huuuge problems, with pink as the ONLY option for a girl. And something odd has happened - pink was a colour girls sometimes liked when I was young (80s) - now it's the colour that MEANS 'girl.' So much so that the absence of pink means 'not girl' - as in the example posted above, where a girl was wearing red, and everyone assumed she was a boy.

Too weird. Why do we care so much that we demand clothing signal, clearly, whether a child is a boy or a girl? Isn't it unnecessarily divisive?

Yes, but when I was a little girl long hair meant 'girl' so that, having short curly hair, if my mum put me in trousers I was always mistaken for a boy. I remember it very well.

My mum made me wear a blue balaclava in the winter I was mistaken for a boy ! My dp so embarrassing we could stop and tall to someone with a baby dressed in the pinkest of pink dresses and he would still ask is it a little boy?

when I was young (80s) - now it's the colour that MEANS 'girl.' So much so that the absence of pink means 'not girl'

I hate this. got asked on the playground the other day 'how old is your boy'. she wore a green non-frilly dress, hair in plaits...

I'm the same. So many people bought us pink and annoyingly pink really suits dd's colouring. But I found if I stuck to non pink in the stuff I bought then it balanced out as a pink t shirt looks ok if the trousers are green and the cardi blue and that kind of thing.

Mousy My boys have always been mistaken for girls. Not now they are older (5 and 3) but I remember being asked why DS1 was wearing a camouflage vest and camouflage trousers as it was a very strange outfit for a girl to wear. The woman was most shocked that 'she' was a 'he'.

we didn't find out the sex for the exact reason that I (DH doesn't really mind or have a clue)did not want to be inundated with fucking pink crap!!

We got lots of neutral stuff and vouchers

until after she was born, and then we were inundated with fucking pink crap!

I did make a huge fuss to close friends and relatives about how much I hated fucking pink crap before she was born, so those with sense steered clear.

i always worry about dd being seen in pink clothes by anyone who might buy her clothes - i don't mind pink (i wear it myself) but i think that it's bad bad bad for a baby to only have pink.

bad for their ocular development.

Lovemarmite - your mil is right - green looks fab on strawbs (i'm one, i love green)

when i was really young, everyone, boy or girl, had the same bowl-style slightly long hair cut. (born in 76)

i think it's not just the pink, but the fact that everything aimed at girls is different shades of pink, and also fluffy, frilly, delicate, hideous and girly .

it's hard to get clothes/stuff for boys in pink (of any shade), and it's equally hard to get non-frilly clothes for girls in other colours.

My family are aware that I dislike pink and pastels, but then I was a massive tomboy and am a bit of a goth now, so it's fairly obvious. DS was dressed in lots of brights, red, navy, stripey, dinosaurs, monsters and robots. Up until about 9 months I bought everything considering whether I would dress his potential little sister in it (and I absolutely would dress a girl in dinosaurs or robots, I want to wear dinosaurs and robots!). I like Little Green Radicals (in the sale, ebay or TK Maxx) for bright neutral stuff, also Bebe Cool, and some of the supermarkets come up with the odd really good item. DC2 is going to be a boy too, so I guess if we have a girl in future we will have plenty of colourful gender neutral stuff for her. I have seen a lot of girly things I liked recently though, red or dark purple dresses, polka dots, and TK Maxx had some lovely black and white party dresses.

good luck to my next kid if it's a boy, then - i've not got much after newborn that's not fucking frilly (even non-pink)

Next have some really nice green and grey stuff and some clothes with really bright coloured animals on.

my friend has got a 8 week-old boy and she hates the choices of grey green and blue for boys!
It's alright for me to be able to tone down the pink, but she can't cross over into the girls' section on colour because of the shape/frills :(

Incidentally my ultimate in baby clothes was the red and white stripey babygro (as in Labyrinth) and the black and white (as in Addams family) I have managed 3 of the former and 1 of the latter.