DD is pink and princessy and cares about hair etc and is only 5

[NormaStanleyFletcher]

So not like me.

I was brought up by progressive parents in the 70s, and got nothing but electronics kits for my birthdays - there was a cartoon I saw once with a little girl opening a chemistry kit and thinking "I would kill for a barbie" - that was me.

So I have not tried to sway in any particular direction. I am going to have to come up with a reasonable answer to "how do I become a princess?" "Mummy when are you going to be a princess?" Erm, never is the answer to both so far...

Oh no - It makes sense - I get that!

When I talk about instilling a sense of confidence that was all about dealing with people and my academic stuff.

I also had fear about getting stuff wrong, and it took ageeeesss for me to admit to the bullying about sensible shoes, as I thought I was letting them down.

But I was a run around play with boys (star wars, game of choice I was Laya and had side buns) type girl, I always had male friends but I was concerned about my looks from a very young age. I never bothered about fitting in, lead rather than followed, but needed to be fancied....not to be confused with easy or sexually available. I took maths:pure & stats, French, Media and General studies at A level. I was the only girl at school to do both physics and Technology.

I always wanted a boyfriend though, from about 16 onward.

DEspite all of this, I wear make up, dress very feminine and am a SAHM.

Oh, yes, that sounds familiar!

It is so tough for both children and parents, I think: children want so much to please.

I remember justifying things to my parents in ways I thought were very cleverly framed in their own language of value - like telling them I wanted to wear leggings (it was the 80s ) instead of my brother's outgrown boys' joggers because they were more 'comfortable'. I think that was a warning sign to my mum that, erm, maybe I was struggling a bit! I wish she'd told me it was ok to want to wear leggings/not to wear boys' clothes. Because although I know there is really no visible difference between boys' and girls' clothes, I knew they'd been my brother's first.

I think it was always very obvious girls had more social pressures on them - because such a big part of life was resisting those pressures. But that will probably feel different for children who have no siblings/siblings of the same gender, than for who have siblings of the opposite gender - because your sibling is probably the first point of comparison for working out the rules/values behind your parents' behaviour.

(Sorry, that was to NSF not Posie).

Do you want to know something quite funny? I just Googled 'The equality illusion' as it was mentioned on the other thread, and up popped seven books on Amazon, such as Living Dolls and the Beauty Myth. And...four out of the seven's titles were bright pink! Even feminist titles have to be pinkified (you know, to signal they are about women's stuff...)

Fine ignore me LRD.....

I've been getting bit of a slating of late for my wayward analogies, but here goes...

In the art world, 'male' art has traditionally been identified as large-scale public works, whilst 'female' art has been identified as smaller scale, private work. In fact, much of it has not been called art at all, but 'craft'.

So, is the most effective way to break down the barrier, the divide between the two:

1. To encourage more women to make large scale public art work, and discourage them from making 'craft' works?

1. To elevate the status of craft/'female' art to that of 'male' art, thereby changing the definition of art to include craft works.

My assertion would be 2), as option 1) reinforces the binary opposition and perpetuates the stereotype, whereas option 2) would (hopefully) result in artists making work which is free from gender expectations.

I think the same is true in this case; this is not just about pink, but about children's play; how many references have we seen just on this thread to girls needing to be encouraged to climb trees and play in the mud? I am not asserting that there is anything inherently 'male' in these activities, just that they have been traditionally associated with boys. I believe the only way the divide will be obliterated is to elevate the status of 'girls'' objects and activities to those of 'boys'. This to me, is not about girls choosing pink. I don't actually think this is about resisting femininity (if you are resisting masculinity at the same time, what is left? It seems children must embrace one to resist the other). This is about how we create a world in which a child can choose pink (or blue, or tree climbing, or skipping) because they want to do it, regardless of gender stereotyping. And I think we may be going backwards.

I think the pink stamp enables the going backward, too.

I think the craft analogy is a good one.

There's a lot of intellectual/class snobbery going on too, isn't there, supporting the misogyny. Interesting too how lots of the pink sparkles that are most aggressively marketed at girls is seen by 'nayce' middle-class parents as trashy ... whereas tasteful Boden is fine.

This sort of thing is why IMO it is not so simple as resisting/rejecting the pink tat.

No. They should not stop. They should dress both boys and girls in blue and pink, along with all the rest of the colours.

But that is what 2) would achieve IMO, Lenin.

Most of our clothes are handed down, there is a fair amount of pink in it.

I do not choose my DDs clothes for her

How do I stop "dre4ssing her in pink" when it is her own choice (influenced by ....)

Also when babies they were always dressed in white/primary colours

Maybe you don't, but you try to find opportunities to talk to her about it/see if she knows boys can wear pink? There must be men in your life who wear pink shirts or ties or whatever. Part of the 'pink is for girls' thing comes from a bizzare kind of doublethink, where you're expected to automatically exclude grown men wearing pink suits with their shirts.

It never ceases to amaze me though, how powerful social stereotyping is against reality ... someone was saying a while back how her DD had certainly seen lots of female doctors, but still firmly believed in the context of fiction that doctors had to be men.

Maybe then, it comes back to subversive fiction that presents a different view/ makes her conscious of the way you can choose to reject the underlying premise of a stereotype (and princess smartypants is very good at this IMO).

See, that would be a good picture to have around! Isn't it strange how 'little girls wear pink' is peddled as an absolute law, and it's not even hard to falsify it by looking around?! I think this is the real crux of the issue ... it is one of those pieces of doublethink where it honestly does not matter whether teh phrase is 'little girls wear pink' or 'the cat sat on the mat' ... somehow, the message (ie, 'you must obey this construct of femininity I devise for you') gets across unbroken, no matter what.

Btw, I don't think Norma was picking at your posts, I think she was just asking the question. That's how it read to me, anyway.

Norma, I don't know if this helps, but I've found it very helpful to think in terms of children's personalities rather than their gender, which is something from his culture (he finds the pink/blue, girls/boys traits/subjects thing here very pronounced). In his culture, you would think of activities as 'suiting' a particular child. Hence if you had a boy who liked reading a lot and playing quieter games, they would think 'he'll be a scientist' . Boys have more options to be less physical and oriented around sport than in the UK. Similarly, a child who is very logical (like my dd 1 who has many traits considered 'masculine' in the UK, such as logical thinking, very competitive, quite physically strong and on occasions aggressive, slightly obsessive, not into playing with dolls) would be encouraged into games such as chess or where being competitive is a plus. It's just less gender oriented in early childhood (I am not saying the culture has no gender roles, of course).

There are downsides to this, it can box children in a bit, and of course if they are encouraged to do things that suit their personalities, then there is a danger they don't round out. However, it sure beats trying to define girls as 'girly girls' and 'not girly girls' as my daughters tell me is the way they talk about it with their friends (girly girls like pink, in case you hadn't guessed).

Where did I pick at your posts Dittany?

I am merely stating where we are and asking for practical advice

Sorry, I missed the bit where I said 'which is something from my husband's culture' which is not the UK.

hard, it's interesting you say that ... my DH is also not from the UK and is also often a bit puzzled by the way gender roles are imposed in early childhood - this is despite the fact he comes from a country and a religion that can be jaw-droppingly sexist. But he still finds UK gender-stereotyping of children to be pretty extreme.

(Sorry, I am digressing again from practical advice, but it's interesting to think how other cultures do these things too.)