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...

"I think the important point is to let girls and boys know that these distinctions of sex are arbitrary. If you have two arms, two legs and and a functioning body then whatever your sex you can do these things."

I could not agree more with this.

When I refer to something as 'male/female', I am referring to how society and history have gendered the activity, rather than implying that there is an inherent gender in the activity itself. My point is that stopping or discouraging girls from engaging in 'female' activities is as bad as barring them from 'male' activities, as it reinforces the binary opposition.

Do you not think, though, that some of these stereotypes themselves are outdated? At our local playpark there is a huge climbing structure, and there seem to be pretty much girls and boys up there all the time, I don't see any girls simpering at the bottom worried about their dresses.

I guess we model non sexist non-mysogunist behaviour in that they see a completely equal partnership between DH and i, he currently does the majority of the childcare/cooking as I commute - is that the kind of thing you mean by that?. I will think about appropriately explaining sexism, especially next time the princess conversation comes up, which it will.

But look at your language, Hardgoing- "I don't see any girls simpering at the bottom worried about their dresses."

Sorry, I don't mean to pick on you specifically, but this way of speaking about girls standing quietly looking at one another's dresses instead of climbing is symptomatic of what I'm trying to say.

Actually, I've quite recently seen little girls in a park trussed up in white (!) dresses they couldn't play in while the boys were in slightly more practical shorts and blazers. Look at any traditional wedding, and all the nice, practical clothing for little girls goes out the window!

(Btw, my last was a cross-post, and largely answered by the posts I crossed with, thanks!)

But dittany, pink isn't inherently feminine. That's the point. Shunning it because we associate it with femininity is self-defeating, isn't it? We're just constructing another idea of femininity.

I'm not totally sure what is restrictive about dresses tbh. I think they are a lot more comfortable than trousers and t-shirts.

I do dress dd in dresses and she messes them up as much as she wants whilst only having to 'be dressed' for less than 10 seconds (big bonus in her world) and having freedom of leg movement untethered by trouser seams.

pomme - depends on the dress/trousers, I reckon.

The simpering was a stereotype. I don't see this stereotype much, and I don't therefore need to send my girls up trees to counter it. Or stop them wearing pink on occasions.

I think in the context of this argument I'd be fighting for boys being 'allowed' to wear dresses too not that girls should shun them.

Wedding clothes for everyone are restrictive and horrid. However, that's my point. We no longer dress little girls in pettocoats and white gloves for everyday wear, thank goodness.

I am less concerned about what my five year old wears than what I see 13 year olds wearing. I think the need to look 'sexy' from a young age is something quite unique to Britain, I see lots of teenagers from abroad kicking about in jeans and a t-shirt, and the UK teenagers wearing some really strange tight 'sexy' clothing.

pomme - there was that story in the paper about a boy who wore a skirt to school in protest, wasn't there?

I think the problem is when little boys are wearing something they can move about in fine, and little girls are not. It's not uncommon to see little girls in the sort of long, pale, puffy dresses that will tend to trip them up and show marks, when they're at formal events. I remember getting in masses of trouble for ripping the dresses my mum smocked for me (it was the 80s! ), whereas my brothers had cord dungarees that didn't tend to rip. I do think putting little girls in dresses that aren't suited to active play happens much more often than the equivalent to little boys.

DD was like that at 5 too.

She grew out of it pretty fast and now at 12 is only just coming out of a long tomboy phase.

But in resisting pink because you associate it with femininity, aren't you just creating another construction of femininity? You're saying 'as a girl, society expects you to like pink. But you must resist pink - you're not that sort of girl!'

My problem is, I've seen that kind of attempt to tackle symbols without tackling the root cause and I don't think it works.

To me, the argument is a bit like saying, if everyone in Nazi Germany had learned to revile the swastika and carried on killing Jews, that would have been ok. I know that's not what you're getting at, but I think that's where the analogy breaks down.

Discourage feminity in favour of femaleness and masculinity in favour of maleness. Femaleness and maleness being the unarguable fact of a child's sex. Feminity and masculinity being all the narrowminded flummery that has become attached to sex.

I agree Orm.

Is it possible to improve the status of 'pink glittery stuff' without encouraging more girls to reject it and more boys to embrace it? Given that we're in a patriarchy and the revolution doesn't seem imminent, I can't see that feminine clothes/activities will achieve equal status unless men start wanting to do them. This runs the risk of becoming 'all about the menz' I guess, as when men do venture into a female arena historically they've had a massive tendency to take over and force women to the bottom of the pile (or expel them completely). That said, I would love to see a world where it really was 50/50 whether your son or your daughter became a racing car driver or a midwife and I think to achieve it means getting men in so-called traditional female roles as much as it means letting women into traditionally male arenas.

I don't have a problem with pink glittery stuff (unless it restricts activities or ambitions) and in this house it is DS who is most likely to be walking around with hairclips and a pink tutu. However, with every year my DC get older it is blindingly obvious to me how much they are internalising messages about boys toys and girls toys and boys roles and girls roles. I find myself challenging things umpteen times a day and fear I am turning into the ideological mother from hell unable to let her kids be kids because of her own political agenda (maybe that's the patriarchy making me feel that way).

Thing is, it's chicken and egg isn't it. To undo some of the gender stereotyping in toys/children's clothes, we need an adult population that sees challenges it and provides alternatives. And to get that adult population we need children brought up where their aims and behaviour are not actively moulded by gender stereotyped toys and clothes.

Hmmmmm.

sunshine - I think that is a bit what is happening with nursing, isn't it? And computing back in the 70s/80s (which used to be considered painstaking but not too highly valued work and was largely done by women)? So I think you're right it could happen.

What I don't think works is the kind of right-on experience sound of us (judging by this thread) had as children, where we 'knew' perfectly well that a big important part of being a girl was to do with not liking pink and not wanting to be a nurse or a housewife or whatever.

Whereas a big important part of being a girl is, erm, having girl bits. In fact that's pretty much it!