I wrote a post last night about how I was upset about the gender stereotyping that occurs at stores like Gymboree and Old Navy for Halloween (and all year long really) and I made a terrible and glaringly awful mistake in that post.
I forgot about the boys.
And it is because I totally got called out by this comment from reader Dave (highlighting is mine), that I am writing this now.
…gender stereotyping starts much too young and invades far too much of our society. As bad as it is for the girls who want to be an EMT or Astronaut, and it is really bad, it is even worse in the opposite direction. That’s right, if girls are highly stereotyped as ‘Pretty’, then the degree of stereotyping aimed at boys is far, FAR worse. It is so bad that it is not even recognized as stereotyping – indignation is expressed against the lack of images of girls as pirates or dragons, but no mention is ever made of the lack of boys as butterflies or flowers. The image of girls in traditional ‘boy’ roles may be having trouble breaking into the mainstream, but the image of boys in traditional ‘girl’ roles is almost universally viewed as “queer”, “gay”, or “immoral” to the point where it is never seen and virtually never mentioned – I note that it is not mentioned in your own blog. If we want to see gender equality, then both sides of this inequality have to be addressed…
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t quite forget about the boys, I was thinking about them the whole time I was writing the post and struggling with my own ingrained stereotypes.
Because here is the thing…
Even though Natural Urban Dad and I have not purposely focused on anything particularly gender specific for our children, we are the parents of a superhero, dinosaur, Transformers, and Hero Factory loving boy and a puppy dogs, unicorns , Hello Kitty and fairy loving girly girl. Now that is not to say that at any given point in our house there may in fact be a tea party happening with fairies, puppies AND Transformers all enjoying a sip or two kids running around the house roaring like the scary T-rex’s that they are while wearing their baby dolls on their backs, but for all intents and purposes I am a mama to two kids who A) love each other a whole lot and B) who have pretty specific and somewhat traditional likes and dislikes.
And why wouldn’t they?
I am quite the girly girl myself. I like to wear skirts and dresses and jewelry and have pretty shoes and painted toenails and all that jazz. I like to have tea parties (or coffee playdates as we mamas like to call them) and go shopping and I happen to have a love of all things fey as well.
{Case in point: My new sparkly ‘Goddess’ shoes!}
And Natural Urban Dad is a {ridiculously gorgeous} superhero nerd, who loves his comic books, will never wear pink (although a nice lavender is OK) and firmly believes that all of life’s important lessons can be learned from the likes of Superman, Spiderman and The Avengers.
{And it is a key factor in his decorating choices as well.}
Somehow, without quite meaning to do so, not only have we have created two incredibly lovable and beautiful little creatures, but we have also quite literally created them in our own images!
This is not a bad thing at all, it just means that I need to be a bit more honest about my own thoughts and feelings about gender inequality and stereotypes that exist in this world and in the reality that is my kids lives as well. Am I still upset about the ad images and marketing that kids stores use? YES! Absolutely. Costumes are just that, costumes. To be used to inspire imagination and role play and for kids to pretend to be anything they want to be. Be it a flower, a bug, an astronaut or a dragon. But like Dave said, until we address this from both sides of the gender coin this inequality and stereotyping will continue unchecked.
No one illustrated these points better than my dear friend Alex in this incredible post about her son and his wings! Please read it and know although I am still #notbuyingit from Gymboree, Old Navy or any of the ‘girl’ this and ‘boy’ that toys and products that companies keep shoving down our throats, I will likely have a Minnie Mouse and a Zombie on my hands come Halloween this year.
Of course, because he is my son, that zombie may in fact be a daddy zombie wearing his baby zombie in a carrier on his back.
Who knows….?
Till tomorrow,
Natasha~
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This is Day 20 of the 31 Days of the Summer Blog Challenge.
Comments and retweets and sharing makes us all feel special.
Go do some of that over at these blogs too! Thank you.
Zita at The Dulock Diaries.
Meaghan at MagzD Life
April at This Mom’s Got Something to Say
Aramelle at One Wheeler’s World
Jessica at 2plus2X2
and Liam at In the Now
I want those sandals very badly.
I am loving the idea of a Zombie babywearing a little zombie. Yes. That needs to happen.
My 1 year old daughter was a strawberry and a zombie for Halloween last year. Not at the same te, but the best of both worlds.
I’m so glad you posted this follow up. I met another mom once who’s 7 year old son identified as a girl and she spoke about the struggles she went through every day for her son to be accepted. Our society has a long way to go.
As someone who works in higher education, I see every day how gender sterotyping impacts a person’s whole life. In 2012, we still have very limited enrollment of young women in Engineering and the hard sciences, and very little enrollment of young men in Nursing and Education. I would like to see a world where a little boy and a little girl can be as “feminine” or “masculine” as their little hearts desire and still make a career choice based on their passion and talent rather than their gender. It’s totally ok to have a little boy superhero grow up to be a compassionate, caring nurse and a little pinky-toed, butterfly-winged girly girl be a kick-ass nanoEngineer.
Thanks for pointing out my post, Natasha.
Gender stereotyping is a difficult, huge topic. The best I can do is give my kids options at home, and teach them that it doesn’t make them less a “girl” or “boy” to chose things on that opposite side of the store.
I hate the gendering of children’s departments SO MUCH. Yet I do realize that this all started with Men’s and Women’s departments, rather than just having an adult department. The concept was extrapolated to children’s departments, now mostly divided into “boy” and “girl” sections, in order to sell more products. I think colours being branded as “boy” or “girl” colours bothers me even more. Interestingly, pink used to be a “boy”colour (just look at Michael in Peter Pan and the baby boy in Lady and the Tramp).
That all being said, I will NOT be boycotting Old Navy (Gymboree is overpriced in my opinion, or more specifically my budget’s opinion). Last Halloween, our then 17 month old daughter picked out an AWESOME blue and orange monster costume from Old Navy. I say awesome because she enjoyed roaring like a monster in it (and looked adorable doing so at every door while trick or treating). I enjoyed that the costume was one piece, made of polar fleece, and easy to layer clothes under (so super warm for an evening outdoors in an Edmonton October). And it was under $30! It happened to be on the “boy” side of the store, not that she noticed and not that we cared. I don’t listen to which gender a piece of clothing supposedly belongs to, so nice try Old Navy. Sadly, we did get a few looks from people who thought she was a boy based on the costume when they found out she was a girl. However, that is a result of a far deeper societal issue than anything Old Navy has control over. She received mostly comments of the “she’s so cute” and “how adorable” variety.
Now, I love Minnie Mouse and Disney… But if there’s a problem with Old Navy, then there’s certainly a problem with Disney now. Minnie Mouse resides on the “girl” side of the Disney Store (that is the most gendered store I have ever seen by the way). I don’t know if you’re shopping there, somewhere else, or making your own, but that doesn’t change the origins and premise of the character. Disney has even changed Minnie Mouse, from wearing red to wearing pink, in order to make her even more “for girls.”
Thanks for the post. Just sharing some of my thoughts…
I tweeted this morning how weird I find it that Old Navy has divided toddler Halloween costumes on their website by gender. @lifeofk mentioned your post to me and I’m so glad I found it.
This week, my daughter likes playing with her dolls and says her fav colour purple. Last week she played with her fire truck and coincidentally, liked the colour red.
The reason the boy/girl organization of the Halloween costumes on the Old Navy website bothers me is the underlying suggestion that selecting a costumer IS a gender decision. That only boys want to be sharks, tigers, monsters and dragons. That boys wouldn’t want to be a bumblebee or a cupcake.
It bugged me as soon as I saw how the costumes were categorized on the page. Glad you wrote about it. Role play doesn’t need to be divided by boy/girl! My daughter loves dolls but she loves being a pretend monster too. She can “argh!” with the best of them.
fyi – You might like this post written by my friend, Karen. In the article Karen discusses how she posted a photo of her son dressed up as a princess on FB (he looks awesome btw) and the responses she received: http://karenschronicles.ca/blog/2012/7/28/a-persons-a-person-no-matter-how-small.html#.UDY3SdblvYo
I saw your post when ^^^Mel^^^ tweeted it and this is a topic I’m particularly tuned into lately.
I encountered this in a whole new way recently as my son (who is going through assessments and therapy for possible developmental disorders – *probably* something on the Autism spectrum) was being taught the different between “he” and “she”. Brandon doesn’t understand this difference, so he frequently refers to females as “he” and males as “she”, often interchangeably. I think it’s *good* to distinguish between males and females, but I cringed at the way the therapist did it. Anyway, I have lots to say about it, but I need to blog it to get my head around it.
The costume and clothing colours available baffle me. I am bothered that anyone would assume a boy who dresses in a dress might be gay. He might be. He might not be. Does it matter when a child is exploring their world and discovering the things they like? Not in my opinion. It bothers me that girls are boxed into pink, bows, hearts, flowers and all things “girly”. Does that automatically make them not gay? That’s ridiculous! My little boy likes those things too!! And why not? He adores me and wants to emulate me – most boys do in the baby/toddler/preschool years.
I don’t like moves to remove all gender references, though – males and females are different. Those differences are valuable and good. I want to celebrate the differences without highlighting them in stereotypes. When Brandon goes into a toy store, I let him wander and explore and be drawn to the things he’s drawn to. Some days it’s a pink elephant. Other days it’s a bulldozer. I leave the choice up to him. He gravitates mostly to stereotypical “boy” things and he always has. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. I want him to be the person he wants to be.
Do marketers need to target him that way? Absolutely not. Let *children*, regardless of gender, explore and discover on their own without shoving them into a pre-determined box. I love that Lego added new colours, but they didn’t need to separate them from the classic colours and throw them in a pink box. I could go on and on, but I’ll stop now. Thanks for sharing this about boys. There really isn’t enough discussion about the effect of these stereotypes on boys, so I’m glad you jumped in.
[...] (aka @lifeofk) pointed me to a post by @naturalurbanmom where she asks the same thing (it’s actually a follow up to an earlier post on this same [...]