Trans Royal Family

[KittyPerry77]

Looks like Sarah Ferguson and Lady Sarah Chatto were actually trans - who knew?
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5807141/Candid-snaps-taken-four-decades-Royal-family-away-public-gaze.html

My husband and I remarked on how we could have pretty much interchanged our wardrobes as children (80s). His clothes in family photo albums are pretty much the same as mine - apart from the odd special occasion dress I had. I also had short hair for years until I was old enough to sort it out myself.
The lack of decent primary colours and good, thick trousers for winter for girls depresses me. Leggings are useless in cold weather and tights and skirts not always practical.

My seventies school uniform was a blue crumpled trouser suit i definitely would of preferred to be a boy theirs weren't striped!! really glad I grew up with the freedom to wear what I liked out of school without being castrated/sterilised/irrevocably damaged.

You have a point, clothing isn't as strong, hard-wearing or useful anymore. It's propose no longer is practical to keep warm, cool and decent, it's now art. People are objects, the clothes wear us, they aren't comfortable, suitable for the weather, long lasting, all throw away like the attitude of the people living in the Capitol from The Hunger games.

I was born in 1980 and was dressed like this (in my male cousin's hand me downs!) with short hair until I started school and grew it long enough to have in bunches.
At work recently we all put up a picture of ourselves as a kid and had to guess who was who. My (mostly younger) colleagues assumed mini me was a male member of staff!
I only wore dresses for special occasions and parties. I suspect dressing me "gender neutrally" was just practical for my parents. And cheaper.

Anyone have a shellsuit and had to keep away from the fire incase you set yourself alight? I did

The century of the self docos describe the process of consumerising everything - the neoliberals in the form of Thatcher Reagan Blair etc deregulated everything and social media became the vehicle for global sales and mind tampering to conform to warped US values. Follow the money - who benefits from consumerising kids, and instilling anxiety if you don't conform to stereotypical imposed norms - so either way you're ripped off - if you do you buy more, if you don't you're convinced there's something wrong with you that declaring yourself the opposite sex will sort out with it's associated drugs and surgery - big bro or what?

As kids my dad cut all our hair. We all had short back and sides. I rebelled when I was about 10 and wanted long hair and a "proper" hair style. My mum used to make our clothes and I had elasticated trousers as well, unless it was a special occasion when she made my sister and I matching dresses.

SuitedandBooted 'The only girly thing about me was my T- bar shoes' - I'm pretty sure my brothers had brown T-bar StartRites till secondary, same as mine.

Do Clarks still have the big machine that you stick your foot in and then the metal bars move in until they touch it to determine your size?

Forget that, do they still have any shoe shops with a slide from the upstairs adult dept to the downstairs children's dept?

We knew how to enjoy ourselves in the 70s...

That big machine scared me when I was little (and I still ended up with butt ugly mustard coloured T-bar sandals that mum chose)

I think even as a teenager in the 90's a lot of my peers had grungy clothes and short hair. It was jeans with a jacket tied round the waist and a choker. Very little make up. I think it was post-2000 that suddenly girls were all growing their hair very long and massive heels and short dresses overtook things.

I blame social media and the whole selfi-ready generation.

Do Clarks still have the big machine that you stick your foot in and then the metal bars move in until they touch it to determine your size?

Oh I loved that machine but I feared it too
And the little green plastic foot measuring things I used to want to wear them as shoes

That is how I looked in the 70s, although I am quite a few years younger than Fergie.

Mothercare catalogue 1976
I was born in the 70s and I had those dungarees which were then passed to my brother
Ditto the sandals
Presumably we would both be transed now

Ooh - my brother and sister both had those red dungarees!

How much is social media influenced? For example, having tight boxes around people to describe them makes marketing easier, so you steer your platform to favour a conventionality that you Define?

Or is it more the concept of you can be anything you want if you try hard enough, and the role models being more visual? Not sure about the later but we didn't have much TV until the 80s in our house and glossy magazines were way out of our price range.

What changed? Money, advertising, the web, porn and a backlash against feminism.

That is probably very accurate, Bowl.

Somehow, since becoming a young woman in the late 80's/early 90's - and feeling like we had practically got there with women's equality - it all changed.

It changed while I was partying in the 90s, and settling down and having children in 2000s. Took my eye off the ball, didn't I?

I don't doubt a lot of it is to do with maximising marketing opportunities and growing the consumerist markets, a la Bernays model. But it's also interesting that it has increased as the voice against male violence and entitlement to sex gets stronger than it has ever been. We seem to be living in a time of extremes of all kinds.

I think the whole notion of 'childhood' and 'children' as a target market has increase over the past twenty years or so, especially as society has become more child-centric and 'parents' are now seen as 'consumers' and 'parenting' is seen as a stage where one has to have the 'right' paraphernalia and gadgets. This has led to much more 'image conscious' parents - escalated by social media, and as a pp said, this makes a lot more money if girls and boys are targeted separately.

Missing the point but this is a beautiful dress.

Susan Faludi wrote a book about it called "Backlash".
It started in the early eighties and while it was similar to earlier propaganda efforts against women's social progress, this one had both the governments and the corporations behind it.

I was born in the early 80's. I had long hair and my mum would tie it in bunchies and put me in dresses. I hated both. Once I got to choose my clothes I lived in jeans, t-shirts and jumpers much like my brothers did. Dresses were simply no good for swinging really high on the swings or tearing around on my bike!

I had lots of dolls but I'd also play with Micro Machines, Lego and my dads old construction toys that he kept from the 60's/70's.

This is interesting...old Argos catalogues! retromash.com/argos/

In 1978, mainly primary coloured toys with the exception of a few dolls. In the early 80's lots of primary coloured toys, some pink, and very few children shown playing with them so could make your own mind up about who to buy them for.

Looks like an increase in pink and pastels in the mid-80's with My Little Ponies, Care Bears, JEM, etc all being on the TV. In 1990, more children shown in the images...only girls shown with the play kitchens and ironing boards, only boys with cars.

Baby toys seem to stay primary coloured throughout this time, though in 1999 there's a pink version of the Cozy Coupe car. So maybe the start of pink versions of every baby item but they don't have catalogues past 1999.