Please could someone help me articulate an email to Asda regarding these pyjamas?

[Acunningruse]

First post here so please be gentle.

I was looking for Christmas pyjamas this morning for DD age 3 and 7yo DS. Ridiculous I know in September but last year I left it too late and everywhere sold out.

I was just about to buy the red pyjamas from Asda below for both of them when I happened to notice the pyjamas were in the boys section. Intrigued, I looked in the girls section and found these pink so-called Christmas pyjamas.

Now I am very sleep deprived due to said 3yo not sleeping ever. So I don't know if my initial horrified reaction is OTT. But just WHY??? Why are there pink ones for girls? The universal colours of Christmas are red and green not insipid pink! Why do there need to be separate girls and boys ones? It just seems so unnecessary but at the same time sending a message as ever seems to be the case that girls and boys should be treated differently. My DD is already one of the strongest fiercest people I know and I don't want that changing any time soon but with stuff like this how can it not??

Excuse tired angry rant, if anyone else thinks I am not BU pls could you help me form a coherent email?
Thanks

Just did a quick check on the website of a standard health / beauty type retailer : feminax express £4.50 for 16, neurofen express 3.50 for 16. It’s a real thing...

It's annoying that they're categorised by gender but I don't think there's anything inherently ridiculous and un-christmassy about having a pink option. Why do you think the pink option is "insipid"?

Buy the red ones and if you want write tell Asda why you've done so.

They're just offering a choice. Buy whichever you want (personally I'd buy neither because I am not into the special outfits for one day a year, nor the extra present box for christmas eve, but that's just me).

If they were only offering a choice though, wouldn’t there be pink and red in both the boys and the girls sections?

My questions why are dinosaurs and planets seen as boy things? And why are clothes for girls so pastel coloured? I'm a grown woman and most of my clothes are black. So yes, this is stupid.

Basically, you want to tell them that you think it's ridiculous that christmas pyjamas need to be split by gender and that doing pinks for the girls is silly, and also unchristmassy.

This kind of thing is annoying as hell.

Of course you're right OP.

People deciding to pick their battles are the ones who are fuelling blue's for boys/pink's for girls, girls are pretty/boys are strong then ultimately girls jobs/boy jobs.

These small battles matter!

Definitely done to sell more products. The explosion of blue/pink everything seemed to start in the early 2000s but is now ridiculous. Lots of parents buy into it - baby blue or pink pram/car seat etc rather than neutral grey/navy/black that can be reused regardless of sex. Its becoming pervasive. I've noticed even on fb /WhatsApp etc they have pink / blue hearts. What's wrong with red? And heaven forbid a girl baby sleeps under a blue blanket Very lucrative for manufacturers but terrible for our pocket and the planet.

I agree in many ways it doesn't matter. Just buy what you and DCs like.
However it can be quite insidious. I remember quite clearly being a young child in the 80s and feeling awkward / embarrassed / wrong if I wanted something that was "for boys" (Lego, action figures, clothing etc.). I can't remember it ever coming from my parents so must've picked it up somewhere.
That's why i want to make an extra effort to make DD feel comfortable with whatever her choices are (princesses and tractors alike!)

I've just been on the George website. Their clothes are split by gender first, and then by the type of clothing.

The baby girls section has an option for leggings, but not for trousers. The baby boys has trousers but not leggings.

So do baby girls not wear trousers then? It's not just asda either, I was in sainsburys the other day to get some plain dark trousers for my girl to wear when she starts nursery and they were all in the boys section. Who knew black jogging bottoms were for boys?

I think clothing colours are probably the last thing I worry about in terms of sexism, for a few reasons:

There really is no functional advantage to having red pjs rather than green ones. And red isn't an intrinsically better colour than pink.

Everyone realises, usually by the time they are seven, that this is a social convention only.

In most cases, no one really cares or even notices if you wear the colour associated more often with the other sex. (I would except maybe boys wearing pink or sparkles.)

The other thing I would say is that many people like to be able to emphasise or express masculinity or femininity in their dress, and that is impossible without some sort of convention. Many people think this is a perfectly ok thing for adults to do, and I'm not sure that it's bad for children either.

I've found it interesting that a lot of mothers I know who become focused on kids wearing totally non-gendered clothing end up really jumping on the kids choices as a sign of being trans. Not that I think the OP will do this, but it says to me that the connection between gender ideology and conventional clothing differences between the sexes is not so straightforward.

So - I'd just buy the red pjs if you like them better, or the pick ones if you think your daughter will prefer them. I would save getting worked up over clothing for girls or boys that is actually less practical or is sexualised.

I follow Let Toys be Toys and Let Clothes be Clothes on Twitter. This stuff is going on all the time.

So many examples like this:

Little girl: I like the green bike best.
Parent: Great, it looks like a good bike, it's a reasonable price, that's the one we'll get.
Staff member at till: Oh, but this is a boy's bike. The pink ones are over there.

Little boy: I want the t-shirt with a puppy on it!
Parent: Yes, he looks like Nana's puppy, doesn't he? Let's go and pay.
Other child at school: Your t-shirt says 'Girls' on the label! You're [insert homophobic/sexist insult of choice here].

Even when a parent does their darnedest to avoid gender stereotyping, other adults undermine their efforts, directly or by what they tell their own children. It's sad.

Boys who like things for girls learn very young that they are demeaning themselves - it's a sign of weakness that has to be stamped on hard.

Girls who dare to like things for boys get slapped down because it's important to keep them in their place, at the bottom of the hierarchy, being soft and kind and putting boys and men first.

Christ. Just buy the red ones. I and my DCs just shop all areas. We don’t care about labels. I’ve been buying boys jeans since I was 12!

Why do you think the pink option is "insipid"?

Yes, that's the question isn't it. Often when parents rebel against gendered clothing they end up inadvertently giving a much more destructive message, for little girls it's that things associated with femininity or expressing their femininity are lame.

For boys it's less of a problem, or at least it was when I was growing up, now I do see a lot of boys whose parents want to reject gender norms who are getting a message that expressing masculinity is toxic. It's not necessarily a strong message, but it's there and I think a lot more destructive than the message that males and females have somewhat different clothing customs.

Someone has too much time on their hands, just buy the bloody red ones lol

It's just pyjamas op. I mean . Think of all the poverty and homelessness in Britain and kids going to school hungry etc

Asda do this all the time. They put grey bing top I the boys section I still got it for my bing obsessed girl. And they have Harry Potter outfits I'd class as neutral but always go in the boys bit. It is annoying I always check the boys section now as well.

@bd67th

Was a cross post, hadn’t seen your suggestion and actually I agree with it entirely, seems a simple solution all around.

However, it’s not a feminism bashing straw man. You cannot honestly say that if every major retailer changed its childrenswear section to “all children” that there wouldn’t be a backlash from some parts of this site - and that’s not to say they are wrong either. My point was Asda are damned if they do damned if they don’t

@NKFell

But is the battle with Asda or society generally. I’d say the latter, so the solution is to just buy what you want regardless of department. It’s not like the boys and girls sections are miles apart

OP I agree that it is irritating. I hate the pinkification of everything. Christmas pyjamas are red because red is associated with Christmas. Girls don't need their own special version. If contact asda through their twitter feed and call it out to a wider audience.

On the other hand, I'm not keen on the Americization of everything either and the Christmas eve/day pyjamas 'tradition' comes from there. Do people's kids really get the wear out of Christmas patterned pyjamas or do they end up in the landfill outgrown and barely worn?

Why do you think the pink option is "insipid"?

Interesting question.
A few years ago it seems pink shirts for men became popular.
Almost all the office-working men I knew started wearing pale pink shirts.
I think pale pink (as well as pale yellow) is insipid, but it struck me as odd that men were happily wearing what is often thought of as a feminine (or iffeminate) colour.

My hunch there is that when a man wears a pink shirt there is no risk of being mistaken for a woman, but when a little boy wears pink he might be mistaken for a girl, and in the eyes of some that would be a very bad thing.

I like pink shirts on men (and women). I just don't like to see little girls in nothing but pink and other pastel colours. So boring to have so little choice!

FFS, who cares?!

but when a little boy wears pink he might be mistaken for a girl, and in the eyes of some that would be a very bad thing.

You know, there may be something in this, but is it necessarily a terrible thing? It's true that boys and girls can more easily be mistaken for each other. Many don't care, but at some ages or with some kids it does bother them. generally speaking they will grow out of that kind of thinking.

I sometimes find with these discussions that people seem worried about behaviour that is just a normal developmental stage. For example many kids go through a stage of being very concrete about gender norms, they over-generalise and think the "rules" are hard and fast.

Sometimes they totally misinterpret things too like my son who thought that only women were doctors at one point, because all the doctors he saw were women. When I was the same age, I thought that women got curly hair when they got old, like many men have male pattern baldness.

But that's not sexism, that's just the normal process of trying to discern complex social patterns and take them in, which typically is a very rough approximation, which is then winnowed down and becomes more flexible. Kids do it with all kinds of things, its the only real way to get enough information to begin to make connections and live in society very quickly.

Sometimes it seems like parents worry over these stages which are just part of development, and are necessary to get to the next step of thinking and probably can't really be skipped.

Maybe some people like pink? I would buy either pair for my daughter. It's just another colour option. Calm down.