Thanks a lot, Grandmas
Jul 11th, 2009 by SemiCrunchyMom
In the days leading up to Monkey Boy’s birthday, he started talking about the cake he wanted to have. He didn’t have any real preference on the type of cake, but he was very certain on the candles. He wanted pink candles on his cake. C and I thought this was great. Proof that we’d managed to avoid putting ideas of gender stereotyping in his head! He had no idea that pink was “supposed” to be a “girl’s colour”. He just liked it and wanted it on his cake.
Then he spoke to my mother-in-law on the phone.
I heard him telling his grammy about the cake he wanted to have, including the candles. And the next thing I hear coming out of his mouth is “pink is for girls, blue is for boys.”
Thanks, Grammy.
Nothing I could do or say would shake this idea from his mind, and he wanted blue candles on his cake.
(We actually ended up using blue, green and yellow, plus a fourth, pink one that he asked to have on there for his new baby sister, since her birthday was the day before his. He’s the sweetest kid ever!)
So his birthday came and went, Princess Pout was born, and a couple of weeks later my mother came for a visit. She was helping me fold clothes. Specifically the new baby clothes, many of which, admittedly, are pink. Monkey Boy was watching her and asked why the clothes were pink. And what did my mother say?
“Pink is for girls, blue is for boys.”
Thanks, Mom.
So now the idea is fully fixed in Monkey Boy’s head and he spouts it at random times, despite my best efforts.
ARGH!
Oof, this always frustrates me. If it’s any comfort, know that my daughter’s willingly embraced pink, seemingly from birth. And trust me, I didn’t really have a whole lot to do with that.
Funny though, how adorable the girls look in pink and how that softens the attitude towards gender bias colors
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That stinks. I had my 5 year old niece telling me that blue was for boys, and of course she was wearing a blue shirt, but that didn’t matter. Did you know that 50 years ago they were trying to decide whether pink was a more masculine color or if blue were more delicate and feminine?
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