Stop Whistling, Start Listening

Pink stinks!

With a royal wedding just behind us and a new princess in the making I’ve been thinking about the princess fantasy sold to young girls. It’s closely tied in with the everything-for-girls-must-be-pink trend that is so pervasive in toy shops and kids’ clothing.

It may seem harmless, but the endless trail of toys marked as ‘for girls’ and only coloured pink does send a message. It’s insidious because it does two things. Firstly, it marks girls as being ‘other’. Boys are the default. Unfortunately this carries on into adulthood, where men are the default and women are ‘other’. The fantastic Sociological Images have many examples of this, but also have a great round-up.

Worse than this though, is the fact that in the process of pinkifying and segregating toys for boys and girls in this way, girls are pitched passive toys which revolve around fashion, appearance, hair or occasionally toys related to housework, cooking and childcare. Toys for boys are active and related to doing things like playing cowboy or doing DIY. Girls are taught to be quiet and calm. Boys are supposed to be rowdy and active.
Following this through, this is an attitude brought to girls’ expectations of what they can be when they grow up. Instead of wanting to be something adventurous, outdoorsy or active, girls are expected to look after children and engage in ‘caring’ roles.

Again, Sociological Images has this covered but their post on Doctor and Nurse sets is particularly telling. A reader sent in images of two sets which contained almost identical pieces - stethoscopes, syringes, clipboards, blood pressure gauges etc. There were noticeable differences in the packaging though. One was a multi-coloured, had a picture of a boy and was a doctor’s set.



The other was almost entirely pink, had a picture of a girl and was a nurse’s set. It’s a very clear message - doctors are boys and nurses are girls.




Images from Sociological Images

The princess fairytale is part of selling girls the idea that they shouldn’t do things for themselves but should sit around, preparing the house and beautifying themselves until Prince Charming shows up and whisks them away (to a life of housekeeping and child-rearing presumably). It may seem harmless but I really do think that the bombardment of little girls with the message that they must be pink, girly, pretty and passive is damaging. At an age when children should be coming up with ever-more outrageous ideas of what they want to be when they grow up, girls are being presented with the same-old options - princess, nurse, home-maker, child-minder. As we, as women, grow older we’re still being pitched the myth that we want to play with pink Scrabble sets and the only words we’ll spell out are ‘fashion’.

It’s these kinds of issues which have spurred the Pink Stinks founders into action. Their campaigns also focus on the pressure for girls to be image-conscious at a very young age but they’re well aware of the potentially damaging effects of girls buying into the pink, princess myth. Fortunately, it’s not irreversible as women’s editor at The Guardian, Jane Martinson, recently discovered with her 7 year old.  There is still hope for the girls of today!