Bloody patriarchy even in card selections!

[NorthernLurker]

Ok now I might be seeing this through an unnecessarily political lense but.....

Went in to m and s to buy a card for my nan. Found cards for mum, sister and daughter but nothing for gran, step mum, nan etc. Which seemed odd but I thought maybe they were narrowing their range until I turned round and there were cards for every MALE relative you could think of! Including Uncle! Who buys a named card for an uncle?

So I queried it with staff and they said they were being relaunched and the men's range had come in first. To which I said 'well of course it has!' Rather terrifying the manager type chap I was speaking to. He backed away saying they had had complaints.....

Go to Card Factory. Every branch I've been in is hotter than Hades, but they are cheap and have a good selection and variety.

Variety with women well represented?

M and s cards are surprisingly rubbish.

Make your own. My Mother gets a Mam card every year and considering Mam or Mammy is the main form of address for Mothers in South Wales you'd be hard pressed to find a Mam card.

NorthernLurker, I've seen Mum, Stepmum, Like a Mum, Grandma, Nanny, Sister, Daughter, Stepdaughter, the lot. Heck, they've even got a really healthy selection of anniversary cards that include 'To my wife, from your wife' cards. And the most expensive cards in there are about £1.99 I think. Most are about 99p.

Crikey, I sound like a saleswoman.

I thought this was going to be about how overwhelmingly pink and twee all the cards for women tend to be.

That does sound really annoying, though.

Yesterday I went to Booksale. 20 cards for £1. About 50 different designs and I came back with nothing.

All women's cards were pink, prosecco/shoe/butterfly/shopping/cake based.

Girls' cards - pink, purple, glitter, unicorns,

Men's - golf, football, beer, cars, blue, etc

Boys - football, video games, blue,

Now I don't expect much, but one birthday card for an adult human female without a pair of heels or flowers..am I demanding too much?

20 cards for a quid mind....

Ah, well, yes, women's section in CF is pretty pink, I grant you. But there is an open section with a better spread of generic Happy Birthdays and you can buy those dinky little stickers that say 'mum' or whatever from behind the till if you didn't want to go overly gendered.

I'm doing some cleaning up around the yard and wanted a pair of heavy gloves. The supermarket had heavy-duty working gloves, but only in extra large - not left over, that's the only size they stock.

I was always impressed every year when my Nan managed to find a ‘to my step-granddaughter’ card for my cousin’s step-sister.

There’s definitely a gap in the market for non-gendered/feminist cards though. Especially for children. When my best friend had her baby, I couldn’t find a single card that was just a new baby card that wasn’t heavily pink/blue-ified. I ended up going with a simple “Congratulations!” one that had gold sparkly stars on it.

I ended up going with a simple “Congratulations!” one that had gold sparkly stars on it.

I let the DSes pick any cards we send... we've sent quite a few like that as DS2 is a big glitter fan, and can't read - the family don't mind, and I think it makes it all the more interesting :P

If I may bang the Card Factory drum one last time (honestly, not on commission) when I was in there last, they had 'new baby' cards with yellow on them. Clearly designed for the "Crap, they've had a baby and I wasn't listening when they said the sex and birth weight" market, but it's a start!

Clinton's do a large range of cards for all sorts of relatives and friends.

Yes, but Clinton's charge an absolute fortune.

I have often bought ‘boy’s’ cards for Girls because it had the thing on it the Girls liked and the ‘girl’ cards were boring and sparkly.

Rofl Floral, I'm actually sitting here giggling at your Card Factory advocacy. Perhaps you should be on commission :D

Do you actually need to buy cards that say who they're for on them? I avoid them like the plague - people who know they are! Plus they are always in gendered colours, with twee sentiments inside. Blerg.

And I try to avoid pink/blue baby cards too - not because I've forgotten what they had but because I bloody hate pink for a girl, blue for a boy crap and refuse to partake in it.

I do for my nan. We always used to laugh about her love of sentimental words. Then one year I’d got her a card with words and she said how much she liked them because when she was a kid a birthday like that was a luxury. She didn’t get them. Hearing about that little girl who didn’t get a card was enough to make me buy them for evermore! She was 91 this week, worth making a fuss to get her what she wants.

He he. Others build up trust for months because they are stealth TRA and MRA infiltrators. I am clearly a Card Factory sleeper agent who has just been activated.