Today I was at a local community center with Ruby and noticed something. There were 12-15 children playing in the room, and every single girl except Ruby was wearing pink (at least some pink – most had a whole top or bottom that was pink). Every boy was wearing a blue top or bottom (even if you overlooked jeans), except one boy who was wearing green and grey.<\/p>\n
My aversion to pink is nothing new<\/a>. I don’t wear the color myself, and Ruby rarely does. I realize that’s an extreme position for something as basic as a color, and wouldn’t fault someone for including pink as part of a balanced wardrobe.<\/p>\n And that’s where the trouble starts. It isn’t balanced<\/em> when 90% of children are wearing a single gender-appropriate color. Many girls have a wardrobe with pink on every outfit. Boys get slightly more freedom, being allowed some greens and greys with their blue. It’s as if, when a child is born, he or she is assigned a uniform that must be worn at least until adolescence (and beyond, for many). Take a moment to consider how you’d feel if some larger power insisted on a uniform for your child, one that every other child would also be wearing. I bet you’d feel angry and want to resist.<\/p>\n Anger is just how I feel about a society that not only thinks this system is OK, but actively encourages it in every way. I won’t even get into what the girl outfits and boy outfits could symbolize; I’m just mad about the conformity, the mindless acceptance of the blue\/pink hegemony. About sending your kid the message that it’s desirable to be exactly like everyone else.<\/p>\n The good news is that, while it’s hard to avoid, the blue\/pinkness is not yet mandatory. It is possible to shop for your child on the girl and the boy sides of the store. I’d say at least half of Ruby’s clothes are boy clothes (although I avoid the irritatingly masculine as I do the irritatingly feminine). There are a few enlightened clothing brands (Zutano<\/a> is an example) that use all colors and don’t force everything into girl\/boy categories. I have also had great luck at consignment stores finding items that are interesting and colorful.<\/p>\n If you have any kids, please take a minute and just think about whether you are unquestioningly pushing them toward conformity. There’s nothing (much) wrong with a frilly pink princess dress. But there is definitely something wrong when every dress is pink, or when every outfit features some kind of sports equipment or large vehicle. Mix it up a bit. Do it for my sake, so that when Ruby is old enough to want to conform, it won’t all look so pink. Today I was at a local community center with Ruby and noticed something. There were 12-15 children playing in the room, and every single girl except Ruby was wearing pink (at least some pink – most had a whole top or bottom that was pink). Every boy was wearing a blue top or bottom (even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,37,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-parenting","category-pop-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nHere’s a great article<\/a> from The Guardian this week about the pink phenomenon. My favorite quote: “If pink is understood to be the colour of the female genitalia, then maybe hooray for it, but the male genitalia are even pinker and the rectum pinker still.”<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"