Where do I direct my rage and the school re Pink Day?

[AnnieLobeseder]

So our school is having a Wear it Pink mufti day today to raise money for breast cancer.

When I dropped DD off this morning, I walked past 5 classrooms. All the boys bar ONE were in regular school uniform while all the girls were in pink. There was various chatter on the school mum FB group last night about sons refusing to dress in pink.

I'm so angry and disappointed about this; not with the school, but with a society that has drilled it so hard into our children's heads that Pink is for Girls and Never Ever for Boys that boys would rather miss out on mufti day than be seen in Girl Colour.

I want to write to the school and say that I hope they share my disappointment over the poor turnout from boys, and suggest that they might use this as an opportunity to discuss gender stereotyping with the children. I accept it probably won't happen but I have to try.

Can anyone think of any campaigns etc I could point the school towards? The only ones I can think of are Let Toys be Toys, which is more about toys than colours, and PinkStinks, which is more for girls who don't like pink rather than boys.

Help please?

Pink hair spray is an excellent idea - for everyone, not just the boys!

Am torn on this - ds is 7 and is adamant he hates pink. He knows perfectly well that colours are for everyone, and toys are for everyone, but he even complains if he gets a pink cup to drink from. However, if I chatted to him about the charity aspect of it I think he would join in a school event and actually it is a good place to start discussing the whole pink/blue thing. Shame more parents didn't think of a creative way for their sons to do this - I like the pink hair idea.

I do get that buying something specifically for days like this is a bit tricky - we've had wearing something spotty and wearing jeans days and not had the required items - but you can borrow from other people if given enough notice.

Perhaps they felt excluded. We all know how that feels don't we?
I'd say that was a pretty good introduction to the gender imbalance in Cancer specific research spend in the UK.
Raise funding for ALL Cancers within a mixed gender environment!
What a waste of potential income in the name of a populist Pinky Party!
This school should be ashamed.

Breast cancer is only one type of cancer - the school should have held a fundraiser for ALL types of cancer, and I would have been reluctant to let any of my children wear pink for this very reason.

Breast cancer affects men too

This is one of the issues I have with pink (== female) being associated with the breast cancer campaigns - it reinforces the idea that breast cancer is purely a womans' disease. While it affects 100 women for every man, 'A man's lifetime risk of developing breast cancer is about 1/10 of 1%, or one in 1,000' - rare but worth males being aware of too.

'Our' school had a pink day last year and almost all the boys turned up in something pink. Really encouraging. Not sure what you can do here but writing that letter would probably be a good place to start.

The boys in my Y9 form last week had painted their nails pink and put pink hair accessories in. Was good to see all the pupils getting involved.

I think it's odd for a school to support such a gender-specific campaign, though

Men get breast cancer too.

OP

Maybe you could suggest the school invests in 20 pink ties and rents them out for the day, I also like the idea of pink nail polish.

I think a pink day would work fine in a secondary school but not at primary.

My oldest is in y8 and in y6 ish he came to the realisation that pink is just a colour and will wear it happily. You can get pink clothes for boys once they are 10 ish so I assume he's normal in his outlook on pink.
My son in y3 would not wear pink. To him pink is for glittery princesses and fairies so not appealing at all.
I think he'll probably change his mind like his brother but I can't be bothered to try and persuade him to like pink when society and tv have brainwashed him into thinking that pink=girl=not for boys.

My 6 year old godson owns pink clothes - tshirt and shirts - so it is definitely available for boys.

Dd's school did a pink day this week for breast cancer, chosen specifically as one of their chosen charities as a teacher has recently been diagnosed.

Likewise dd's primary had BHf as a chosen charity last year as her teacher died. Heart related.

The ulster rugby team are currently playing in pink socks for breast cancer awareness. You don't get much manlier than a rugby team!

I think it's odd for a school to support such a gender-specific campaign, though Really, so would you have a problem with a school raising awareness/funds for testicular or prostate cancer?

I don't see why it should be hard at primary school level to get boys to wear pink unless those stereotypes have been firmly entrenched and they know they will get teased. If they are all wearing pink and probably won't get teased maybe it's the parents who won't 'let' their boys be tainted by that girly colour?

I think some of it comes down to how the school approach it and how confident in themselves the children are encouraged to be, my ds's junior school did this (he's now Y10) and most of the boys all wore pink without it being an issue, likewise teachers both male and female. Admittedly the girls wore more pink (often top and bottom halves) but very few boys didn't wear any.

I like to think if we did that at our school the boys would probably opt for pink-sprayed hair!

That is pure genius Bramshott.

Ds1's school had a pink day a couple of years ago (I forget what it was for). They had a whole school photo in the paper & everyone seemed to be dressed in pink. Ds1 owned 2 pink t-shirts at the time, so was spoilt for choice!

Last time the Ashes were in Australia they had a pink day and collection for breast cancer. Former Australian cricket star Glenn McGrath's wife died of it and he has set up a research foundation. Both Australian and English teams wore pink ribbons, the TV commentators (all male) wore pink ties or shirts and loads of the crowd - men as well as women - were in pink T shirts.

The Stade Francais rugby team's regular colours are all pink.

Maybe seeing some sporting heroes in pink would help boys realise it is a) just a colour and b) being associated with girls does not make it unacceptable for boys - unless of course they really do believe girls are lesser beings.

I bet if they had a blue day for male cancers, girls would be OK with wearing blue.

This is off topic, but historically pink was a male colour. It was associated with health and blood etc while blue was for girls, calm and soothing. Pink and blue as gendered concepts is a relatively new phenomena. Perhaps the school could draw attention to this, ultimately I wish that people would pay more attention to cancers that are less difficult too find such as ovarian and highlight these as they are under represented.

One of the reasons for the focus on breast cancer is that despite it being rare in men its the commonest cancer in Britain - stats here. The third highest is prostate cancer which is of course male (but lower mortality rate, many men die with it at an advanced age rather than of it).

Perhaps the obvious candidate for more focus in schools is lung cancer - the second most common and surely the prime target for prevention by education. I've read that research is relatively underfunded, perhaps because its seen as self-inflicted - though it affects non-smokers too.

Our school has a pink day every year, the boys do wear pink and have pink hair and wigs too.

I have a tom boy DD2 who does not own a single item of pink clothing she borrowed her sisters pink hair bobble as she wouldn't have to look at it.

I would like to see children raising money for childhood cancers.