This may not make masses of sense, it's something I'm thinking through. Will probably be long as a result!
DD (5, yr1) has to wear sports kit to school tomorrow (and pay a quid, obvs) and she's going to have to just wear her bog standard PE kit.
This isn't because she isn't sporty, she's a really active kid, but she doesn't do any team based, run around with a ball on a pitch type sports. She swims, and is moving through her lessons at a great pace, cycles, and goes horse riding. To me, that's a decently sporty kid, and I've purposely steered her towards sports that she is more likely to keep going with into adolescence and hopefully into adulthood.
But, she can't wear any of the kit for these to school for the day. Swimwear is obviously out, cycling she just wears normal clothes and I don't want her helmet getting clonked around in school, ditto riding hat, and her jodhpurs are incredibly thick material, she'd boil. So she's going to shove her PE kit on.
I started thinking about this because nom hoping DD won't be upset that other people are wearing fun, colourful kit. Then I realised that when I was thinking 'people' I really was thinking 'boys'. Quite a few boys in her class do rugby or football, so they have kit for that. More will happen to have a footy shirt or rugby shirt because their dad will support X team, or because they support their own teams by now. Yes this is a bit of a stereotype but it's what I've discovered from chatting in the playground this week.
The other girls in her class, in contrast, don't do football and rugby, and don't have a team shirt hanging around at home. Lots of them do a range of sports/activities, but they also can't easily wear the kit to school. For eg, ballet and gymnastics = leotards which make going to the toilet in the day a pain, and are cold & revealing unless they put other clothes on top - by which point you can't see the kit. Martial arts - very bulky and warm, and often white, not best suited to a day of school.
My worry is that when she looks around at the school during that day, she'll see loads of boys in their sports gear, looking very obviously sporty. And hardly any girls in obvious sports gear. And this will feed the "sports are for boys" idea that I know from teaching at secondary is still completely prevalent in teenagers. I don't want her to conclude that she isn't sporty because she has worn her school PE kit.
It also annoys me that the thought process behind it is so boy centered - "oh they can come to school in their kit, that'll be nice and easy, won't interfere with the school day etc", which is only true if kit = football/rugby style shorts and t-shirt. And hardly any sports more likely to be done by girls use this type of kit.
Obviously I know girls can play football and rugby, and some will do, and may wear their kit, but most don't seem to, not in this class anyway. And why are those sports the default? Oh yes, it's because they are traditionally 'mens' sports, and so they are somehow better.
I'm annoyed. But I can't quite pin down into less than a thousand words exactly WHY it feels wrong.