Book / tv show recommendations for my boy-girl

[MiMouse]

My DD (4,5) has been expressing her desire to be a boy for nearly 2 years now. She gets extremely excited when people mistake her for a boy. She always wants her hair short. She always wants blue / dark clothes. She wants to play with cars, and dinosaurs, and anything pink or glittery is treated like it might give her scabies. I have just gone along; she likes what she likes, and that is fine.

Anyway, I am not sure where her entrenched gender ideas come from. I know it is not from us. We're not a very stereotypical family. But I do see gender stereotypes in pretty much all media she consumes, and it is so disappointing that we are still dealing with this in 2023. She mostly loves rescue team / police / fireman stuff (Mighty Express, Octonauts, Poli, Fireman Sam, Paw Patrol), and if there are any girl characters, it's often a token character with limited screen time, or she's the team's healer or whatever. So, I am looking for books or shows where girls are the strong one in the team, lifting heavy objects, or girls have short hair and play with cars... Just to show her there are a million ways to be a girl.

All the usual mighty girl book recommendations still have girls looking like obvious girls, and then she is just not interested.

Any ideas?

Puffin Rock or Bluey maybe?

Also Dino Dana, Anne Droids (maybe when a wee bit older?), and Catie's Amazing Machines.

Pippi Longstocking - strong, independent
Zog where the princess doesn't like dresses and pink and wants to be a doctor instead. Still very much a girl.
The paper bag princess - saves the prince instead.
Agree with Bluey - both kids are female but dogs so no feminine stuff

Sex balance is typically off in Go Letters but the female is the pilot and an equal strength character, not flouncing about in pink

Thanks for the tips so far. We did watch Puffin Rock and Bluey when she was younger (I loved them) but she was never so keen. The other shows all seem to have feminine girls as protagonists, with long hair (I cannot find Go Letters?). We have Zog and the Paper Bag Princess, and she likes them, but does not identify with those characters. We haven't tried Pippi - not sure she has the attention span. I've found chapter books are a struggle for her; we're still on board books and picture books. Anyway, there's lots of "you can be girly but cool / tough" role models out there, and as a feminist I filled her library with those books before she was born, but it doesn't seem to help. I hope to find short-haired girls without frills or bows, who dress like she likes to dress, but are still "she".

It’s Go Jetters- pp has been autocorrected.

Hey Duggee, which is still one of my faves- has Betty the headband wearing VERY clever octopus. So watch that because it’s lovely and also entertaining for grown ups (big plus).

Not quite what you are asking for, but how about trying to get her interested in the women's football World Cup which is now going on? You could watch highlights together? My DD seems to enjoy watching sport, which surprised me!

Would showing her some boys/men with long hair doing 'manly' things help with the fixed hair idea at least? Lots of male (and female) weightlifters have long hair.

Dora the Explorer is pretty neutral. Shortish bobbed hair.

Disney's Mulan may have long hair but she is a true warrior.

Can you show her animal/non human movies for now, so the gender is less pronounced? (DC are older so these films may have dated. They may have gender stereotypes in I've forgotten about but worth a quick look.)

Ratatouille
Alvin & The Chipmunks
Cars
Madagascar

In Jungle Book the boy Mowgli has long hair...

Hmm maybe Miraculous? The female character has short dark hair, tied in two small bunches so it looks more like a short haircut iyswim. And the male character has longish blonde hair. Female character is definitely the lead and in charge of the various world rescues/villain defeats.

Annie (80s movie) had a short haired girl in it. Very girly clothes but she’s fierce. Tangled is good at the end to show her character doesn’t change because of her hair.

What about cutting your hair short or her dad growing his hair longer? She’ll see you don’t change with hair length.

I hated pink and sparkly. My Dds only wore pink and sparkly through hand me downs or gifts. One v much embraced it, the other didn’t. Both very different styles still and both strong women.

There are Pippi movies as well as books!

Dora sent me round the twist. It’s so shouty.

Not quite a narwhal on Netflix might be of interest?

moana, frozen and the sea beast for strong female leads that would appeal to a 5 year old.

howls moving castle and ponyo for stories about external transformation and internal identity

i think feed the imagination and work out what it is about being a boy she likes… i was tomboyish and liked boys toys because they were more fun. My feminist mum encouraged this but actually had a lot of internalised misogyny and didn’t like typically girly things, which left me a bit unbalanced as to what being a girl meant. Maybe let her see “girly” things as fun and worthwhile too, not just strong feminists being one of the guys? (Not saying you do this but these days it’s easily done)

Oh and Daniel tiger on iPlayer is lovely too!

The Kitty superhero books are good. Might be more 6-7 years old, but a girl with a short Bob in dungarees who has a superpower over cats.

Is Nina and the Neurons still on? She's cool.

There's also a series of feminist pictures books about fairytales. Little Red, Rapunzel... can't remember others, but they're great at reimagining the tales and putting the female child as the protagonist and hero of her own story rather than a passive subject

Link for you - Little Red https://amzn.eu/d/j1VnVWb

Transformer Rescue Bots the girl has long hair but is a scientist/inventor and often saves the day.

At 4 she might be old enough to start Minis rugby. Rugby is mixed and focused on skills at Primary school age and doesnt segregate into sexes until under 12s. Rugby is fantastic for girls self esteem as there's a job for everyone small and nippy as well as stocky and strong. She'll be exposed to the older teams too where you will see lots of girls and coaches some with long flowing hair and others with shaved undercuts and everything inbetween. The physicality of the sport, especially once they get older and start tackling is great for girls that don't like the idea of delicate femininity but prefer strong and powerful femininity instead.

Dino Dana might have long hair but definitely isn't girly - she wears camo trousers etc and is very into dinosaur facts and play.

The Katie Morag picture books also might work - she runs around on a Scottish island having adventures. Doesn't have short hair but wears jumpers and boots etc and nothing girly.

These might be harder to track down but the Janet and Allan Alberg books are great for girls doing non-feminine roles. My kids have enjoyed Mrs Plug the Plumber, Miss Brick the Builder's Baby and Miss Jump the Hockey.

There is a book called Unicorns don't love rainbows by Emma Adams. Basically it's a unicorn who is essentially a goth and hates all the rainbows and glitter. The message is it's OK to like different stuff from everyone else. Not quite what you wanted but a related message

All the usual mighty girl book recommendations still have girls looking like obvious girls, and then she is just not interested.

They usually have a good main (but not the main main) character? Powerpuff girls, My Little Pony, Sailor Moon, Thomas&friends, Lilo&Stitch? Otherwise just here to commiserate.. I got really annoyed as a little girl in the 80's, now things aren't much better 40 years later.

Ridley Jones on Netflix is another great one, but beware... the theme song gets stuck in your head for days!