How do you challenge preschool gender stereotypes?

[cockles]

My four year old boy is just getting into the rules about boy stuff/girl stuff (pirates are for boys, pink is for girls, etc) I challenge it everytime he says it - so it's become almost a game. And I talk about advertising and criticise it. But I wonder if that's the best approach - it certainly doesn't seem to be having an effect. I know that picking up these cues is important at this age - does anybody have any other suggestions about how to encourage him not to be sucked in by them?

just seen edam's post from yesterday about researchers claiming that women like pink because of berries in hunter gatherer societies.

This really made me laugh. Do researchers think that only one colour of fruit was available? Have women in areas where there were mainly apples or bananas evolved to prefer green or yellow?

They had some loopy reason why men preferred blue, too, I think. It was so daft that it's gone out of my head for the moment.

ooh I know Prof - fresh from reading about it in Living Dolls.

It was because blue means nice clear skies for going hunting

Their whole logic was soooo rubbish that it's hard to know where to start picking it apart really.

Aren't many red berries poisonous?
Many edible berries are not red
Most fruits and other edible plants are not red
Red and pink are not actually the same colour
Presumably the women loved gathering food in the rain and didn't care whether the sky was blue or not?

God it's all hilarious and based on some kind of flintstonesesque view of prehistoric life.