Am I wrong to let my daughter enjoy being girly then?

[pictish]

DD is four - she will be five in Feb. I have two sons as well.

I have never encouraged or acknowledged a marked differentiation between the sexes, regards their interests and clothing. I always steered away from that stuff, letting them make their own minds up.

However, dd has embraced girliness wholeheartedly. She loves pink, and dresses, and My Little Pony and all things sparkly. In the interests of autonomy, and cultivating her own tastes, I don't mind it in the least.

I am starting to feel though, that through reading MN, unless she is playing football in bovver boots, I am doing her a disservice.
My mil (who is lovely really) is rolly eyed about all things pink and girly, and can't resist from making little comments about it. "Oh that's a very fancy dress" (sarcastic).

I have explained that the girliness is her own choice, and just what she happens to like, but I think it goes over her head...mil wants to think it's me pushing this onto her. It isn't.

I sometimes wonder if, in the quest for equality, we sometimes go too far the other way, and heap scorn upon girls who want to be girly? I feel the need to defend my dd's right to love pink and sparkly, as it is now heralded as so deeply uncool.

I thought it was all about offering choices...but nowadays (particularly on MN) it seems as though a girl being girly is a failure.

Anyone?

[mysticminstrel]

Me neither, Pictish, all seems a bit touchy round these parts.

Ironically - I hadn't even bothered to read the thread and was only responding to the OP, which makes it doubly amusing that I was apparently commenting any anything the FWR 'usuals' had said.


I'm buggering off back to Style and Beauty before I get a bollocking here though!

[WoTmania]

I think we're probably talking at complete cross purposes: you said that 'that' was how your mother raised you - i.e not being allowed those things in a way that seemed to say it was detrimental and I read it as saying that other posters on here were advocating it and you disagreed with it.
I didn't 'launch' into anything - just queried it based on my interpretation.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I think bonsoir is posting as bonsoir likes to post.

But I didn't take pictish as heaping blame on feminists, possibly because I think I have had similar experiences to her and my mum is probably quite like her MIL. My mum would not call herself a feminist, she is one of those 'oh, but really it's all pretty equal now' types and she would see it as part of that, that she'd mock 'girliness' and 'pinkification'.

It is a problem - not because it's bad for women to be equal (!), but because mocking stereotypically feminine things isn't really helping.

[BasilBabyEater]

Well I made an attempt to explain why Pictish.

Anyway, moving on, I think one thing to be borne in mind is that lots of "boys' toys" actually teach more highly regarded life skills than those taught by "girls' toys".

There's been quite a bit of evidence to suggest that boys' toys teach more hand-eye co-ordination, problem solving skills, spatial awareness, maths skills etc., while girls' toys teach story telling, role play etc. So when they get to school, guess what? The skills that many of them have developed, conform to gender stereotypes, leading teachers and parents to declare that "it's just naycher innit, it's there even when they're 5 and haven't had time to be indoctrinated (er... )". And they don't make the connection that guess what, they've already had 5 whole years, a number of life-stages in the life of a child, having their skills developed by the toys they're given and the behaviour they're socialised towards. The adults then put it down to inherent ability (blue brain, pink brain) and as they get older unconsciously nudge them towards the subjects they're good at, believing that they're good at them because of inherent ability, not because of having been socialised into being good at them.

That's far more of a problem than what colour they are IMO.

[pictish]

Ok well...the third comment down which is mine, was referring to Bonsoir saying

"It is more than fine for your DD to enjoy being a girl and woman."

To which I replied 'that is what I think Bonsoir, and I agree". I didn't say it in response to her comment on feminists on MN.
Just to clarify.

[BasilBabyEater]

Sorry, what colour the toys are to be clear.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I think maybe others read that (and I did too) as you agree with her that MN has a distasteful strand of radical feminism.

But I am probably reacting to the usual clever stirring-stick option Bonsoir takes.

[BasilBabyEater]

Yep that's how I read it.

It was a bit of an unfortunate start to the thread.

But we're past that now, aren't we?

[5madthings]

basil its not that the color is a problem, its that the colors signify girl/boy and then children won't play with stuff that is seen as for the 'wrong' gender. And I think girls at least can get away with playing with 'boys' stuff and it is seen as OK or even a good thing when they do. Yet a boy who plays with 'girls' stuff is often ridiculed, likely to be teased.

[5madthings]

Bloody autocorrect defaulting to american spelling...I need to change that in my settings..

[5madthings]

And I can see the confusion over your reply to bonsoir

[SatinSandals]

If you stop them having a free choice, and impose your ideas, you are only going to make the pink etc far more desirable. Much better to let them work through it. I know some women who are OTT 'girly' purely because they were denied it when young.

[DalekInAFestiveJumper]

On a side note, does she watch the My Little Pony tv show? One of the ongoing themes of said show is that there are many ways to be a girl, and that as long as you're a good person, all of those ways are equally good. It's good stuff.

[PenguinsDontEatPancakes]

Yes, yes WhentheRed. I was ranting earlier on this thread about how 'girly' - which, when you think about it can only mean 'like a girl' - means a girl who likes pink and sparkles and princesses and dolls. My girls are just as much girls whether they like trains or dolls and I really resent language telling me that they aren't.

Liking pink should mean liking pink, not 'being girly'. Tom boy gives me the rage even worse. DD1 is not a pretend fucking boy. She is a girl.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

It's a circular process though, isn't it?

At the moment, a little girl has to grow up in the world we have. If you do what my mum did, and say 'you don't like pink! Pink is bad!' you are effectively teaching that little girl that what everyone else associates with being a girl, is bad.

I think it also depends how men in our lives act (well, duh, I know). But I've seen my friend's little girl's dad explain seriously that daddy's favourite colour now has to be pink, and daddy is completely happy wearing the sparkly tiara.

That's a dad who is making it easy for his daughter to enjoy what she enjoys, without making gendered connections.

[Threalamandaclarke]

I don't like the term "tomboy".
It's all a bit "George - out - of - The Famous Five" hated being thought of as "like a girl" because she was "just as good as a boy"
So where does that leave poor Anne? Hmm?

[ThisIsMeToo]

The reality is that treating our dcs in the same way is very very hard. There is so much that is coming out from our own attitude, wo even realizing. The fact that we are insisting perhaps that little bit more on how pretty a little girl is with a costume or how clever a little boy is for climbing on the top of the frame.
On the other side, a little girl in my family has never being 'allowed' to be a girl. She has 3 brothers, two of which are older and canbe bossy. She had her brother's toys to

[SinisterSal]

It leaves poor Anne washing up, iirc

[ThisIsMeToo]

Sorry ...
She had her brothers' toys to play with but no dolls etc 'because she doesn't like them' (well she never had the choice !). As a toddler and young child, she had hand me downs from her brothers but no skirts etc because she doesn't like them and it will be impractical to play out in the garden.
She was never given the opportunity to be different from her dbs. And she certainly struggled with it as she doesn't 'fit' and her mum despairs she is a tomboy...

You can't have it both ways. Girls need to be let to be girls but not the weak female version that we are all sold. Not the one that needs her dinosaur to be pink if she wants one.
But one who is happy to wear a dress, run around in a garden, go and do some DIY with daddy and some cooking with mummy (or even better some cooking with daddy and some DIY with mummy)

[LadyRainicorn]

I need a crease beast. Sounds swanky.

I can't say what I want to on mlp because I love the show and want to rant about the horror that is the movie they made of the back of it.

I agree that the general feeling is pink=girly=lesser. It's a shame. I think it links in with the devaluing of work traditionally associated with woman - cleaning, caring.

I would like one day for people to be able to choose what they like, for them, and for the only judgement to be - did they do it well? Is the person concerned happy?

I'd like that day to be today. I'll keep hoping and acting like it will be.

[Coupon]

I don't like the word "tomboy" either. A girl who enjoys toy trucks and football isn't "like a boy", she's a girl who likes those things which are in fact just as much for girls as they are for boys.

[Threalamandaclarke]

Please may I be excused from DIY?

[20wkbaby]

Thinking about it we should all take a leaf from the books of 3/4/5 year old girls who worship pink precisely because they identify it as a girls' thing - they certainly don't see it as frivolous and silly - until we or someone else teaches them otherwise.

I truly believe that whatever influences your child is subject to the ones that come from family - mainly parents - are the ones that really 'stick'.

If my daughter shows a preference for anything - other than swearing, being unkind, refusing food without trying etc etc - I try and be supportive and applaud her choice. She needs to know her choice matters and she has a right to it no matter who tries to deny it to her.