Please can someone explain this to me? I thought I understood feminism.

[Hakluyt]

My niece is an active feminist and an academic. She has two small boys, 4 and 2.

She is incredibly excites that the older one is wanting to wear a Disney Princess dress, and his little brother is following suit.

Now, I am all for anyone dressing up in whatever they want to dress up in. But what is the politics behind boys wearing sexist stereotype girl stuff? And what is the equivalent ? Should we be delighted if our gils want to dress up as Action Man? I don't understand.

Caveat. Of course if a boy want to wear "girl's" stuff then he should. And anyone who says he shouldn't needs to have their consciousness forcibly raised. But why is it something you would actively push- and be proud of? What's the politics that I am missing?

I think the positive part is that the boy doesn't think "something girlie" is beneath him.

It didn't sound to me like she was pushing it, more that it had arisen and she was pleased - ?

But why pleased my ds loves to wear his sisters dress up tiaras and play with dolls and a pink pram. I am indifferent not pleased.

See my first sentence, Soon.

Because as a feminist it is extremely disheartening to teach your young boys to respect everyone only to have them come home and say they suddenly don't want to do something because it's "girly," the implication being that girly=wrong. If a 4 year old boy is still keen on dresses then it means he has experienced some of the anti-girl messages and they haven't got through (yet). The hope will be that he will continue to choose to wear whatever he wants, although it's more likely that the girly=wrong message will filter through in the next few years.

Yeah- I suppose.

But I loathe princess dresses for girls........!

Hak, I see where you are coming from. Unfortunately there isn't an obvious "dress up dress" (ie one targeted primarily at girls) that isn't a princess dress. It's not like Florence Nightingale or Mary Beard dress ups are ten a penny.

Dress ups targeted at boys also tend to be based on cartoon characters - batman, Spider-Man, Buzz etc. Like princess dresses, these can be impractical for play - hot, easily snagged, hard to remove quickly for a pee!

Then there are the "career" dress ups which are theoretically neutral - fire fighter, police officer, doctor etc.

I'm sooo conflicted about this. In this particular case it does seem a bit performance parent-y with pictures all over Facebook and I suspect that the choice the boys made was not entirely a free one!. But that aside.

I agree that a child should be able to wear whatever they want, and I hate the girly=bad thing. But shouldn't we be thinking of ways to bring our boys up as happy, confident, secure, confident men? Is this a way to do that?

Hak, at that age (leaving aside the performance parenting!) I don't think that there's anything non "secure, confident men" about the dresses. Ideally it means nothing more and nothing less than son has seen a dress up outfit he likes in the shop, on a friend, in the box at nursery and has picked it up and is not put off by or perhaps doesn't even register that it's mostly girls he has seen wearing it.

Ds1 used to pick a dress sometimes from the box at nursery, and DS2 likes using the Girls World (grr) hairdressing toy there. That I hope came naturally - they played with what caught their eye.

• it's a Let Toys Be Toys thing, ideally there would be a dress up aisle in toys r us with all kinds of non-separated choices.

Lol at the idea of a Mary Beard costume!

I have the opposite thing going on with my younger dd (age 7), and I'm never quite sure how to handle it. She's in a very boy-heavy class, and as a result tends to see 'boyish' things as innately superior to 'girlish' things. I love the fact that she's not Disney-princessy, and enjoys climbing trees and playing pirates and all that good stuff, but it makes me a bit uncomfortable that she always wants to play male characters in make believe games, etc. It's not that I have any problem at all with her play-acting male characters, but I don't like the fact that she sees being a boy as better than being a girl.

I completely see where you're coming from.

But ... what about the feminist tenet that you might be right here?! Your post comes across as if you've already decided she's right and you're half-apologizing for your view. And that is something women are socialized to do, isn't it?

I reckon you're right, and she is well-meaning but, TBH, a bit less feministy. Others might think differently, but it's not about you missing something, is it?

With my dd and ds, I find I do consciously, subtly err on the side of the opposite gendered toy, as I know society will push them the other way sooner or later (they are 4 and 2 as well).

Could that be the thinking behind your niece's actions?