This birthday party really got me thinking. . .

[FrankNCock]

Went to a party today for a friend's 2 year old DD at The Most Pretentious Indoor Play Centre Ever and several things made me a bit

So there was the obligatory 'princess theme'. When it was time for the lunch, it was sandwiches that had been cut into shapes of a top and skirt, and pink squash in plastic mini-wine glasses. Kids sat at tables arranged in a horseshoe, all decorated in pink, flower petals, tulle netting, glitter, etc. The birthday girl herself sat at a separate table at the open end of the horseshoe. It was decorated sort of like you'd imagine Barbie's desk, complete with a giant fancy pink phone. And there was the giant pink felt crown.

Ok, so it wasn't to my taste, and if I had a girl I could not see myself having a party like this. But I really got annoyed at the separation of girls and boys.

There was a craft activity. Girls made headbands with ribbons and flowers and glittery shit all over them (all in pink of course). Boys were shunted to the far end of the table to decorate blue door hangers. Boys and girls were given different cups just to hold popcorn (princesses for girls, pirates for boys). Different party bags (girls had Peppa Pig, boys had footballs). At the end, girls got pink balloons, boys got blue.

I just don't understand why everything had to be so different? I felt sad for all of them, and I can't even put my finger on why. More experienced feminists, want to help me?

But what do you do when they ask you for it?

My DD's about to turn 4. Until recently she happily played with all kinds of toys including cars, train set etc as well as dolls. But now she seems to have got infected with the pink princess stuff from the girls in her class at kindergarten. I'm planning her party now, and she's just asked for princess plates that she saw in some shop. She even brought home a disney princess book from the school library (we're not in the UK) and it was awful - Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty - all remarkable in their passivity and dullness. I've said to her I think princesses are boring and don't have adventures.

I'm going to do the usual boisterous games like musical bumps, and hope to find a cheap book I can put in party bags that will appeal to both boys and girls.

BTW, don't slag off Early Learning Centre - here we have almost nothing but Toys R Us, which has aisles and aisles of hideous pink princessy Barbie crap.

Where are you, Addamsflimflamily? Nearly all our shops that sell toys have at least one aisle of pink crap as well (NSW), plus at least one aisle of Nerf guns and other such shit (which are, IMO, just as bad).

I'm nodding my head in agreement to pretty much everything on here. But I think we have to give our kids some credit, as well.

Addams - I grew up reading (amongst many, many other things) the traditional nursery and fairy stories and it's only with the benefit of adult understanding that I can look back and see how insidious a lot of the stories are in terms of their representation of women and how passively they're portrayed.

But, even with these stories forming a backdrop to my childhood, and even with me never particularly questioning them at the time, I still identified openly as a feminist from as soon as I could think, and just knew that there was more to life than the brothers Grimm would have me believe.

Obviously I also admit that this gender channelling is undoubtedly worse and happening earlier to our DDs than it did for us. But I think as long as you're otherwise pushing the right message and letting your DD know that anything is possible, then you have to have a certain amount of faith that that will seep in and she'll be able to step up to the plate.

CheerfulYank, I'd be interested to know if you think the 'princess' culture is as bad in the midwest where we're both from? I swear when I lived back in the U.S. little girls hardly ever wore dresses/skirts and they were definitely not all in pink. Wondered if the lack of skirts was due to it being so frickin' cold all the time though

Thumbwitch, I've got an acquaintance whose DH is very much of the 'it will turn him gay' variety. Their son is 2, when he came to mine and was playing with DS's stroller, his mum snapped a pic and sent it to her H, who texted back 'get that off him!' and he was dead serious . The mum is nearly as bad, she hardly comes to our playgroup because there aren't enough boys.

I don't know...I'd have to come visit you there to compare! :o

I have noticed it more though...Disney Princess everything . But yes, no little girls in skirts in -20 weather, so that's something!

Oh and T-shirts saying "Lil Miss Diva" for preschoolers....yeah...'cause that's and admirable quality.

an

We have a spare room! It's yours for a couple bags of gardettos and some diet mountain dew.

Same thing with the tshirts here, though mostly I see girlie sickly sweet sentiments and then 'I'm a little rotten bastard' for boys

YankNCock and CheerfulYank, your names are morphing together in my head like a mental tongue twister.

it's very outdoorsy here, and there is definitely less 'should' about both activities and clothing. and the local ywca ran a brilliant workshop last weekend for y4-6 girls on body confidence, and showed them how photoshop and airbrushing are used in the media. all about promoting love who you are, and don't get into unrealistic aspirations.

it is easier here though - we have both male and female olympians in the community and it's very 'green' so a different sort of mindset...

although it means there are a whole other raft of 'essential' extra-curriculars for your kids to get into.

addams - read 'cinderella ate my daughter'. honestly. it'll answer any question about pinkery you ever had.

I've noticed that madwoman ....the more hiker-y and outdoorsy the families are, the less pink/sparkle/glitter diva nonsense seems to happen.

Again, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with pink or sparkles or princesses or fairytales...but when it starts to affect (effect? argh!) how a little girl sees herself and her place in the world, it becomes a very big problem indeed.

Yank I can send you some Gardetto's if you want. They'll be under four pounds. You're on your own for the Diet Dew though! :o

the orthodontist gave dd1 mountain dew t'other day, on the pretext that it was hallowe'en and presumably ok to rot your teeth one day a year. bizarre.

Very bizarre!

"Mountain Dew Mouth" is an actual term used to describe the terrible condition of the teeth in some children living in poverty in the Appalachian region. :(

!
i'll tell dd1.
she'll be thrilled.

DD1 did a service project in a Kentucky county and was horrified at the MD in baby bottles and toddler cups and the state of the teeth.

What flavour is Mountain Dew? OR does it have its own indescribable flavour like coke?

I thought Mountain Dew was whiskey.

Mountain Dew? Sort of luminous yellow lemonadey fizzy drink. I think they even have a diet version now. Oh, I never could stand it. Give me A & W Rootbeer for that frosty mug taste any day! :)

(Another transplanted midwesterner!)

KRITIQ, they have A&W Root Beer in the Chinese supermarket in Manchester! It was an unexpected treat. They also have regular Mountain Dew, but not diet. Regular is too sweet for me, always has been.

Trills, Mountain Dew, I think the marketing describes it as 'lemon lime' flavour.

CheerfulYank, offer very much appreciated, but I've just had some brought over by my friend, and I think I've eaten my sodium allowance for the year!

Back to the issue at hand, there is one mum I know here whose DD is just a bit older than DS, and I really like her style. They're always riding bikes, I've never seen her DD in a dress/skirt, her hair is cut short. She does wear some pink, but nowhere near as much as the other girls. She was even wearing some Thomas The Tank Engine socks one day (DS greatly admired them). The mum seems to go against the grain and I really like to see that. It inspires me! I wonder if she MNs.

It is citrusy/lime/orangey flavoured and has caffeine in it, so a bit like your coffee and OJ all in one. DS likes the 'throwback' version with real sugar as opposed to corn syrup and fructose.

Rootbeer always reminded me of toothpaste and weirdly enough I am not the only Irish person who thinks that.

I feel there is something a little wrong with the scenario you described there Yank. Something along the lines of pity that a girl has to appear boylike (or in the way society has come to accept/demand boys look) to be seen in a positive light or that anyone would make assumptions about what sort of person a girl might be if she had long hair or wore a skirt or painted her nails. My own DDs have never really had anything princessy/Disneyesque but they have worn pink clothes and shoes, shirts and dresses, wear their hair long, ride bikes that are pink or purple and we have an entire bathroom shelf devoted to nail polish. They are also excellent students, especially when it comes to maths and science, and they play organised sports.

Growing up in Ireland in the 70s and 80s I always noticed a tendency on the part of bright women to eschew makeup and attention to appearance, and a general assumption that if a girl was good looking or paid attention to her appearance then she was probably an airhead. Not quite the madonna/whore dichotomy but an inability to see women as multifaceted individual beings all the same. Girls were considered airheads and not taken seriously intellectually if they chose the path of 'looking good' and dismissed as unattractive if they chose the path of swottiness. Either way girls (and women) were looking at themselves and were being judged by boys and men according to the criteria of the male eye. The relentless focus on appearance and its concomitant value-judging continues when we notice that a girl has short hair or wears blue socks. It's the focus and the judging that are disproportionately applied to girls and women that is wrong, not the colour or the style of the clothing imo.

There was definitely a choice to be made by teenage girls; the idea that you could be either smart or 'pretty' but never both was quite strong and was reinforced by school dress and appearance codes as well as by mothers who grew up in an Ireland where codes for women's and girls' behaviour and appearance were akin to those of the Middle East.

Diet Mountain Dew at more than £1 a can!

Keeping the tangent going, Cyber Candy has A & W and Barqs (and Mt Dew, but sadly not IBC Root beer, another favourite, or the delightful Diet Chocolate Fudge)

Ah yes, drank that back in the days before pinkification. (sigh)

Ahhh...Mountain Dew. I love it so. It's citrus-y but no overly so...it just tastes like Mountain Dew! No other description. :) If I feel a headache coming on a can of it plus ibuprofen or Excedrin Migraine will usually chase it away. It's got more caffeine than you can shake a stick at.

I sort of see what you're saying, Math. I feel a bit..uneasy when it's frowned on to enjoy the "traditional" gender roles and...accoutrements, I guess? That makes no sense at all, I don't know how to say what I mean!

Just that I don't think there's anything wrong with liking pink or princesses, and sometimes when people go overboard with saying that pink and princesses are bad or wrong, it feels like they're saying that we must embrace stereotypically "masculine" things in order to be smart or strong. You can be head-to-toe glittery pink and still be smart and strong in my book! :)

I think the problems come in when people think that girls must like pink princesses, even when it's not their style, or boys must eschew them even when they'd love nothing more than to put on a purple feather boa and dance around.

I totally agree with the sentiments expressed that we don't want girls to see traditional "femininity" as something to be avoided and feel that they must align themselves with the "masculine" to be smart. I have seen this happen many times.

But considering the force with which pinkification is shoved down our girls' throats how do we know when they are choosing it because they genuinely want to or when they are succumbing to the huge tide of pressure (to the detriment of their other talents and interests)?