Gendered objects for kids

[IamAporcupine]

Help me out here please

I was shopping yesterday and saw some drinks (actually just plain water) for kids, one with a dinasour, the other one with a unicorn. I took a picture and sent it to a couple of friends with a face.

Their reply was that because the bottles do not actually say 'for girls/boys' then there is no real issue with it, as you are free to pick whichever you want.

I somehow agree but I still find this gendering of objects totally unnecessay and in the end, damaging.

They claim it is just marketing, and that dinasours and unicorns sell, and it is up to us to teach our kids they can pick what they want.

Again, I agree, but I would prefer it of things like water, when marketted at kids, had less stereotypical boy/girl options.
Or I am looking for issues where there is none?

Those particular bottles may not have boy or girl written on them...
But expecting kids to treat them both as potential options when every clothes aisle for boys or girls is painfully colour coded, right down to which shade of blue is masculine feminine is naive at best and dishonest at worst.
By the time kids get to the unicorn/dinosaur decision it's been made for them a hundred times so they'd be stepping outside the mould to go against the grain.
Ds has reached that delightful age where everything is shades of khaki and charcoal. Where things for boys get serious.
He's coming up to one and apparently his 'fun' is over. Office wear shades for him.
Bigger that he's getting rainbow unicorn farts from me. But until the rest of society agrees I expect he will gravitate towards grey dinosaurs. Yawn.

Not that butterfly unicorns with no variation are better. But at least they get more than one shade of blue.

I don't know the answer. Buy plain bottles and make them into rockets.

With bloody rainbow sparkles.
And dinosaur astronaut.

Thanks TheBuffster that was exactly my point.

I thought it was incredibly naive to think that it is up to us to teach our kids that they can pick what they want and that was all that mattered.

Yes, case and point.
Ds has a dolly. It is a unisex looking thing with blue hair (short) and a pink heart.
Which me and DH got for him and refer to as it's name rather than pronouns. (Occasionally I forget and go she er he er name)
That grandfather calls she.
That great grandad calls, " that girly dolly".

Nature versus nurture.
I don't fancy my chances.
I give it two years before we get swallowed by grey dinosaurs. Max.

Interestingly I didn't find out the sex before the birth. Everyone who got me a gift moaned because they had to get unisex toys. I said I wasn't fussed. Brighter the better. Turns out unisex is grey. Yawn.

We have a lot of grey shit.
One unicorn (hurrah)
A pack of pink socks.
Many white babygrows.
And a bucket load of dinosaurs.

Da incidentally eats faces of dinosaurs and dollies indiscriminately. He's equal opportunities like that.

@OmicronPersei7

It starts with unicorn water and never ends. When I was in my early twenties I used to smoke cigarettes called Vogues. They looked like a box of tampons, I kid you not. (I'm quit many years now!!)

Everything marketed at the "fairer" sex looks like this. I bought my daughter 4 plain white vests from the supermarket last week and there was a pink butterfly next to the world "girls" on the packaging. Totally unnecessary. The vests I bought for my son (also plain white, same supermarket) just said boys. No football, tractor or dinosaur required.

Once you've binned the packaging, is there actually any difference between the "boy's" and "girl's" vests?

The cut of girls vests goes in like a waist.
They also tend to ride up on the tummy.
And be made of flimsy material or not as well made as boys clothes.

I feel like the unicorn/dinosaur water is pretty mild when it comes to gendered things for children. I think the clothes are the worst. I have 2 boys, and I find it so disappointing to see aisles of blue, (dull) green, black, and grey clothing with an occasional spot of red, yellow or maybe orange. Rarely do boys get purple. The designs are usually vehicles/construction, dinosaurs, or animals like dogs, bears, foxes, and lions. At least I don't have to deal with an overkill of pink and frills.

@DdraigGoch - the difference is a bow on the front, which apparently makes all the difference to my 8 year old girl.

I remember the meltdown when I tried to make her wear "boys" gloves on bonfire night.

Of course kids know which colour / toy they are supposed to pick.

To pretend they have equal choice is disingenuous.

IamAporcupine Babdoc Lego Friends has been around for almost a decade now and has actually been highly successful in getting girls interested in Lego and STEM.
Lego has had ranges 'aimed at girls' since 1970s. Some more successful than others. Friends has been one of their most successful themes for years. It's also actually very popular with male adult builders because of the bright colour schemes and the accessories you don't tend to get in City etc.
I wouldn't say Harry Potter is the only range 'aimed' at both. You have Classic, Creator, Creator Expert, Brickheadz....

I find this annoying. Both my DC (a girl and a boy) dislike both unicorns and dinosaurs. They are both aware of the gender implications and as 4/5 year olds would have picked the ‘appropriate’ bottle, but at 7/8 are now over that stage (DD also liked/ identified with pink a lot during nursery). I never commented on their preferences but they are bored with these kinds of ridiculous gendered items now

themiserychick my 12 year old daughter gets most of her clothes from the boys/men's departments at Primark. She has lots of purple clothes from there. The boys/mens T-Shirt section has all the colours of the rainbow (including - horror oh horror - pink). The women's t-shirts are usually black, white, grey, navy or dreary shades of brown.

Also in case unicorn water branding people are reading this: DD would actively refuse to drink either unicorn water or dinosaur water. DS wouldn’t drink unicorn water but would be vaguely annoyed by the dinosaurs but wouldn’t really care enough to refuse it if there were no other choice

@themiserychick - I agree the clothes are worse, but those are openly gendered as they are for boy/girls. So going back to the discussion I had with my friends, they would clearly disapprove of this.

The issue with the water was that because they were not labelled as for girls/boys, they were not gendered. They were just two options that the kids could pick from feely. It was almost as if the water branding people were openminded re. the subject

@Ilovemaisie - thanks, I didn't know that