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...

Hardgoing said, "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."

Actually, I think there is a very strong connection between the marketing of gender-specific products for younger girls and even girl babies and the marketing of sexualised clothing, products and services to pre-teen and early teen girls.

Toys targeted at say pre-school school girls tend to be either in the "princess lifestyle" mould (i.e. be pretty, be decorative, be a lady of leisure, don't be too active, assertive or get dirty,) or in the "little mother" mould (e.g. dolls to care for, tea sets so they can serve other people, cleaning toys so they can take care of the home, etc.) Although I can remember toys of the latter group being pretty dominant even when I was wee in the 60's, I certainly don't remember the hard sell "princess-ification." And, while pink yes is only a colour, marketeers have closely linked it with this kind of message, so there is an association between the two that is pervasive.

When girls get slightly older, the toys, clothing and products start to morph - Barbies with impossibly large busts, long legs and thin waists, Bratz and Monster High type dolls with heavy make up, sexually provocative clothing and "back stories" related to shopping, being popular particularly with the boys, tending to hair, clothes and make up, etc. The message subtly transforms that being attractive means sexually appealing, with plenty of examples to follow and products to help with this (e.g. child specific make up sets, pamper parties, etc.)

If a girl / young woman has already absorbed the message that to be acceptable as a girl you have to be thin, shaved, made up, show off flesh, be passive, etc., before she even his puberty, it's quite possible she'll continue to perpetuate that "theme" through her choice of clothes, studies and career and dynamics in relationships. It's not impossible to counter it, but flipping hard.

It's damned hard to shield children from these all-pervasive messages. As someone else above said, even if you try your damnedest to encourage your child to be themselves and not buy into the negative gender stereotypes, there will be grandparents, neighbours, friends, school mates, etc. who have no such qualms. Often the girl who doesn't follow the herd can be targeted for bullying, even at a very, very young age.

LRD how old are you? I'm 37 and we just didn't have 'pink' for girls, it wasn't really an option. I played with cars, my Dad built me a garage too. I loved Sindy, had the car, house, horse etc. I didn't watch a lot of TV, merchandise wasn't yet considered a good money maker......

However I did used to sit in my room and think about who I would marry and what I would wear.....

I bet not a single heterosexual male did the same!!

That's interesting posie - I don't remember ever thinking about/playing games about who I'd marry etc. - I wonder how much that sort of thing fluctuates according to who's famously just got married?!

I'm 26, so you're probably right it's a generational thing. If you're a 70s child, not only childrens' clothes but also a lot of mens/womens clothes would presumably have been quite androgynous. I suspect it goes in cycles with what mothers pass on by way of expectations to their daughters, too.

Diana and Charles maybe.....I loved her dress.

I'm really not bothered whether my daughters choose traditionally girly toys. I tried to be more gender neutral with toys when DD1 was tiny but when she got to three she had a massive pink princessy phase. By the time she started school she was well over it and into more diverse things.

DD2 is 2.5 and seems to like all sorts of things, though I'm prepared for pink princessyness at some point if it occurs.

I think far more important is the attitudes and examples of gender roles they see at home. So I don't have any worries there.

Plus the fact if you enforce rules like not allowing them to wear pink it becomes a forbidden fruit.

ThePosieParker I'm nearly 36 and watched lots of TV as a kid and there definitely was LOADS of merchandising in the 80s. He-man, She-ra, My Little Pony, Care Bears off the top of my head. Perhaps not so much as now but it was definitely a moneymaker. The cartoons I just listed were invented just to sell toys.

There wasn't so much pink but it didn't stop me wanting it. In fact it made it worse. If I'd had my way I'd have been permanently dressed as a pink fairy between the ages of 3 and 10. I loved Sindy too but was also equally happy playing on my bike, playing football or cricket or watching sport. I can see myself now kicking a ball around in a dark pink top and "sticky-out" skirt with a white frilly underskirt and Adidas trainers .

I didn't think about who I'd marry or what my dress would be like but my Sindies (one had a wedding dress) did have weddings with Action Man on the last day of term, I seem to remember.

My mum always said either "Don't get married!" or "Marriage and kids tie you down, go out and see the world first!" when I was growing up. Despite being happily married to my dad. :)

Perhaps I just didn't watch it, I definitely was too old for my little pony, Care bears and the like.

On dresses - I did mean shorter, simple dresses. I would never dress dd in long frilly things (even when she was my bridesmaid). I might be moved to confess that it would be more for aesthetic reasons than any anti sexism ones as they are foul.

Jellybeans208 - I agree on both counts actually. I practice benign neglect in terms of murkiness and dangers on dd and will on number 2 as well whether a dd2 or a ds. Again, this may be more from laziness than any anti sexism theory!

As a child I was always messy and though very fussy about my clothes I didn't go for real 'girly' things (in fact my first real Xmas request was red cord dungarees!). Barbie and My Little Pony were however my first loves. I didn't like my brother's car based toys - although neither did he tbh!

I do think Barbie is intrinsically a bit wrong though. Although very stroppy and headstrong naturally I absorbed some bad messages about female looks and my looks very early on in my life and it has blighted parts of my life growing up.

murkiness = muckiness

If we are to resist what is 'feminine' and all things pink as a pushback against 'society' there will have to be a simultaneous resistance to 'masculinity' and all things not-pink or we risk validating the stereotype. The princess-ification of girls is matched equally by the hero-ification of boys and both are a cynical distortion, equally grotesque. The 1970s meeting in the middle as far as hair and clothing went, had its attractions. It was the occasional element of dogma there (as Hardgoing suggests) that was offputting for children.

'I'd also say that the people who throw up their hands and say that their daughters simply like this stuff, whilst ignoring the massive cultural stereotyping effort that goes into making girls like these things aren't really helping things.'
How we may see pink princessy stuff and how our children see it may be two different things altogether. When you assign a value to a colour of an item, that is, a value based on its appearance and not on issues of practicality or durability you risk acknowledging and validating the premise you think is behind it. If you think your view of a princess themed outfit is the right one and your child's is the wrong one, well and good, but are you going to do more harm than good in the long run by refusing her a little of what she fancies?

You don't have to embrace everything you think society is telling you about femininity when you buy a pink item; I think you can indulge it a bit while at the same time keeping it real, keeping your high expectations of performance at school and your expectation that they will participate in sports or dance or trombone lessons and make a similar effort there.

When it comes to guiding my own DCs through the quicksand, my efforts have been complicated (or maybe speeded up and rendered in clearer focus) by a situation at home where exH's behaviour tended to reflect a strong element of male entitlement. I have tried to avoid coming across as dogmatic wrt clothing and have above all tried to never compliment any of the children on how they look. I have however been strict about homework and schoolwork and other expectations (helping around the house) and tend to praise effort and persistence. They have bought their own clothes for the most part since they all started babysitting at about age 12. We have not had discussions about sexism or societal constructs until the late teen years when they were (imo) capable of developing their own arguments and had a few years of debating practice in school I hope I have avoided any tendency to force them to accept my pov (have tried to be subtle ) as I think the sledgehammer approach backfires, and because my values in raising my DCs involve autonomy, independence, standing up for yourself and your choices and being able to argue your pov and not necessarily how you look.

(ExH otoh hated what he called backtalk. Not a match made in heaven)

I'm not totally unconcerned about feminine stereotypes around clothes when children are 5/6/7 but I do wonder whether, in focusing so much attention on girl's clothing and campaigning about it, it is unconsciously reinforcing that for women, defining clothing and looks is the main 'event' for women. I don't personally see pink clothing as the worst thing perpetuated against women, because I believe it to be driven by commercial pressures, selling two of everything rather than one unisex product. It's also quite easy to resist if you really want to (don't buy Barbie, buy yellow things instead of pink ones). I haven't personally bought my children any of these things, nor any maternal role toys (e.g. irons, kitchens) because that stuff doens't appeal to me, but I don't forbid others giving it to them as I'm not big into trying to control the external world to that extent.

Constantly putting out books against women's oppression through beauty and clothing somehow continues to focus attention on that topic. Not so many books or public campaigns on why women continue to be totally under-represented in politics, in business, in public life in general (and no, I don't think it was because they all wore pink as a child, most children in the 1970's didn't wear glittery princess stuff).

"including the pinkification of girls, which is part of the process of marking us out as the subordinate class."

An interesting study would be to go into a variety of children's toy stores, look at the toys targeted at each gender and the kind of jobs those toys are realistically directing children to (eg. baby dolls towards childcare, mecanix towards construction/design). Then look at the average salaries of those types of jobs.

I think this would show how the above statement is true.

Just come back ... and i've suddenly realized what you were trying to say dittany. I'm sorry, I thought your comments about resisting pink and not dressing in stereotypically feminine ways were to do with refusing pink, rather than accepting but discussing it.

Whew!

• accepting it but discussing what it symbolizes, that should be.

I didn't follow that by resisting you didn't also mean rejecting.

I agree there is definitely a feminist pov required in the case of singling out girls for criticism when they are messy but allowing boys to own their environment and accepting that the resulting laundry you do for boys is necessary whereas that done for girls is somehow a chore.

I think the slutwalk movement illustrated how taking an idea and turning it on its head can be used to show up a pernicious attitude. I am appalled by the shirt linked to from JCPenney (resisting urge to comment on JCPenneys in general) -- earlier this summer I saw a shirt in a Target store with 'Throws like a girl - you wish' emblazoned on it. (Like this only for girls aged 6-14ish and with more of a fashion look than the sports style here, along with a silhouette of a softball player. 'Throws like a girl' is a traditional insult used against baseball players. All well and good until you remember that it is probably men laughing all the way to the bank on the proceeds of both shirts, while the toilers who make them are probably mostly poor women working long hours in China or Honduras or Bangladesh for very little pay.

I mean by accepting, what you do if you're not refusing.

I was concerned, and I am still concerned, that if you teach female children to actively reject a colour because it symbolizes femininity, they'll be performing a particular kind of femininity based on rejecting pink symbolism. And it'd be better if, instead, we knocked the concept of femininity on the head.

Focussing on the colour that symbolizes femininity, either by actively promoting it or actively rejecting it, means you're still implicitly accepting the premise, that femininity exists.

'tolerating' or 'ignoring' would be better than 'accepting', actually.

dittany - I don't give a toss about pink. I care about the stereotyping, but much more I care that what is being stereotyped, femininity, is not IMO a helpful or feminist concept.