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...

MJ - it's so unnecessary, isn't it?! I agree with you - men/boys can be beautiful, certainly.

dittany - to be radical, an argument needs to engage with the root issues of feminism, in this case, the social construct 'femininity'. I don't doubt it's important and useful also to tackle gender stereotyping and the wearing of pink by little girls, but centering the argument around a symbol, pink, is never going to solve the root problem, which is what I would say radical feminists are interested in: that girls are encouraged to conform to a social construction of gender, rather than simply acknowledging their biology and leaving it at that.

Isn't the whole point of this board to talk about feminism?

I'm not trying to 'lecture' - just explaining why I disagree with you and don't think your argument is tackling the root problems. As I've said, I don't doubt your good intentions ... I just don't think your argument works the way you imagine it does. I've explained very consistently several times - that's all I can do. Every time I try to explain to you why I don't think your argument is really getting at the root problem (and why it's liable to cause more harm), you deny all knowledge of your own argument and rephrase it slightly so it sounds a bit different.

So, to be very simple: What is important here is that girls should not feel they have to conform to a social construct called 'femininity'. Your argument - in all its varied forms - just does not really, IMO, do anything to tackle that root problem.

Btw, I believe the roots of feminism are recognition of, and opposition to, the roots of patriarchy.

'note the fact that I am asking you if my interpretation of what you've said is correct instead of informing you what you have argued - it's a better way of dialoguing'

Every time I do this, you simply respond 'I never said that! Lies!'. Which is a neat way of avoiding the issue, but rather rude if you're expecting me to rephrase my argument again for your sake!

I have seen DS dressed in pink, in a snowsuit with his onesie underneath. The snowsuit was the best designed item I have ever seen in the snowsuit line (actually it came from JCPenneys) because it was lined with polyester and not fleece or flannel, so it was very easy to put little limbs into it. People used to assume he was a girl when he wore it. I don't think you can assume all the babies you see dressed in either blue or pink are boys or girls respectively. You may think all the small children in pink are girls and you may assume some of the babies and small children dressed in blue are girls, but it might not be the case. There are blue dresses and there are blue snowsuits for instance. No real way of knowing who is encased in the snowsuit. You might have more of a chance of being right to assume there was a girl in the dress, but you might be wrong.

If you were to try to ban all gender marking for babies and small children you would have to insist on uniform hair length and uniform shape and colour of clothing and shoes.

I have seen lots of babies dressed in other colours too. I have personally started off the day with myself and the baby dressed in one outfit and ended up many changes of clothing later dressed in something else altogether.

I am coming to this thread a bit late.

I tend to agree with Tethersend. We don't, at the moment, have much in the way of androgynous culture, especially for children. There is boy culture and girl culture. I don't believe that pink does just mean women are inferior; if I see a pink DVD case it means that girls are in this film; girls exist; the same goes for many other products. These pink films are an exception in children's films, where 75% of main characters are male and over 80% of background characters/crowd members are male.

The issue of girls buying into girl culture is that it may limit girl's expectations of what they can do to a set of specific feminine roles and behaviours. Obviously I would rather they thought they can do anything.

The issue of girls buying into boy culture is that females are not represented in it, and therefore seen to be almost invisible, inferior and unimportant.

So, given the choice of choosing a pink DVD about girls doing limited things and a typical boys film by Pixar, where girls don't matter, I'm going to go for the girls film for DD. Because it is better to be limited than insignificant. Limited we can work with and talk about and change. Insignificant leads to that weird cognitive dissonance in women where they talk negatively about what a nightmare women as a group are, because in their head they're still one of the boys from the Pixar films.

MillyR, that's a really interesting take on all of this. I tend to think the opposite, for example, my dd1 plays a lot on playstation games like Shrek, Harry Potter, Madagascar...are those the type of girl absent films that you are thinking of? (or perhaps Cars, Toy Story apart from Jesse). But I hadn't really thought about them in that way, more that they were better structured and more challenging than specific girl-oriented games (which all seem about stroking puppies and stuff).

HG, I can't really comment on individual games. I am only basing it on the overall figures from somebody who researched a wide range of films - it was something like the top 100 films for children of the last 5 years.

I haven't seen all of the Shrek films, but in the first one, aren't the characters overwhelmingly male? Madagascar has only one main female character. Harry Potter has mostly male main characters. So I'm assuming that the games are the same.

UMS - that makes sense (and sounds fun, too, which must be nice!).

I like the idea of forging a new kind of culture rather than resisting or reconstructing the old one, too - good way to put it, especially because I can imagine that way of phrasing it would make a lot of sense to all sorts of not-necessarily-a-feminist types, too. I'll borrow it (if I may).

I am sure there are lots of activities that are androgynous - snowboarding, swimming, going on a walk and so on. And of course kids can and do all of these things without gender coming in to it.

But there are also a lot of things that children want to enter into where very few elements of it are androgynous - books, films, role play character toys (sylvanian families, barbie, action man, Star Wars figures) computer games and music. These are essentially all types of story telling, and and as such are really important elements of developing a sense of culture and of identity in the world, and of course of developing imagination. Unfortunately these are some of the most gender stereotyped parts of children's lives.

Perhaps it is because they are so important for the development of identity and culture that they are the most extremely stereotyped. I think it is these products that is at the heart of the whole pink princess issue.

Footnote acknowledged.

Milly - I agree about the elements of culture/identity and stories.

I was really surprised to find out how soon children recognize that those retellings of traditional stories that have a female in the 'hero' role and a male in the 'heroine' role, are 'the wrong way around' or funny. And as soon as you see the female dominant version as funny or subversive, you've already internalized the idea that it's not the norm. I don't think you can take both versions of a story (traditional/feminist ... male-dominant/female dominant ... however you choose to see it), and say that together they constitute androgynous culture, because the relationship between them strongly invites you to see one as a norm and the other as a parody.

Argh ... I mean I will acknowledge you in a (metaphorical) footnote ... I sounded as if I was taking credit myself there. Clearly this feminist parenting business is beyond me!

Mine don't do any cooking/cleaning role play as they don't see it much at home! (by either gender)

They do play a lot with boys, though. That's partly because their school has more boys than girls (e.g. about 18 boys in my dd2's class to 10 girls). Plus we have lots of friends with boys. Their favourite games are still stuff like chasing and 'it', so don't rely on things which are pink or blue or anything else, I'm guessing that may change.

Can you think of any societies that don't separate the sexes by appearance? I can't. [genuine question]

And why can't we have difference? I like my dd being a girl, I think it's great. As far as I'm concerned whatever she wants to do is fine and not lesser than the boys, if she never climbs a tree...fine, if she only climbs trees and never picks up a doll.....fine.

Can't stress enough that dd has three brothers and yet would not choose to play with a boy EVER....or rather has not yet.

Part of this perhaps is that we talk about things from the perspective of our own children and the age that they are. So mine are 10 and 13 and the princess thing is a short phase that DD is well beyond that age.

Mattel now market Barbie at girls age 3-5 because the core toy buying age is over for most kids by 7, and the 6-7 group have in general moved on to other things. Colours are heavily associated with age in marketing, so young girls products are sugar pink, tween products are purple and teen is hot pink. So lots of girls decide pink stinks because that is what the market wants. Your daughter turns 8 and suddenly she hates pink - it is girly girl and she is now supposed to be funky girl, so you have to buy a whole new load of tat in purple. That is why Barbie and the disney princesses are in pink boxes and Bratz and Hannah Montana are boxed in purple.

Maybe I can't really sort out the issue with the advice of this thread because my kids are too old. It just isn't possible any more to play with duplo and so on as an alternative, because they are consuming stuff for older kids, and that is going to be based around forming an identity that is soon going to be about participating in an adult world. Moving beyond the family and entering society is what teens do, and I haven't worked out how I am meant to guide them through that, in light of all the stuff mentioned on this thread.