Our straight talking Lancashire lass takes a sideways look at the daily news.
Pink for boys, blue for girls?
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Hold your horses people… Lego is going pink and pastel! Oh the horror!!!! This is part of a sinister bid to encourage the next generation of girls to develop their skills as princesses and housewives. Or is it?
Gender politics have been the soup du jour this week.
It began with a rather bizarre couple from Cambridge - the Laxtons – who hit the press because they have decided, in a very public way, to bring up their son as ‘gender neutral’.
They have dressed their poor five-year-old boy in tutus and fairy outfits and paraded him all over the Daily Mail, and any radio talk show that will have them. A painful You Tube video of the young lad being pushed by his mother into saying how ‘pink for girls is silly’ has been published online by his web-savy parents. If this doesn’t pave the way for a lifetime of bullying I don’t know what will.
My gut reaction to this is that the parents are naive idiots who are imposing their Middle Class politically correct indulgences onto their son, doing him a massive disservice in the process. I’m not saying they should ban their son from playing with dolls and give him an Action Man. Let him play with what he wants. But to see it flaunted in such a public way is sickening. I feel really sorry for that kid.
On the other hand Angelina Jolie’s daughter Shiloh is celebrated for being a Tomboy. It does show double-standards, in that it’s okay for girls to be boyish, but boys can’t be girly. But that’s the way the world is. Also, I think it’s important to remember that generally speaking boys get cooler toys, they have more interesting sports and the notion of the Pink Princess – with toy kitchens, toy houses and toy babies – is geared towards creating good little housewives. So encouraging boys to be girly embraces an outdated notion that women have been working to reject for decades.
But this ‘gender neutral’ nonsense is pure guff anyway. Ultimately, kids will play with whatever they want. I remember being jealous of my brother’s Tonka Truck, he used to nick my teddy bears, and we both loved Lego. We spent a lot of time doing outdoors stuff like hiking, climbing and caving – not because my parents didn’t want us to conform to gender stereotypes, but because it was fun.
I loved dungarees and Barbie dolls, my brother was well into Transformers. Sometimes I’d make the Barbies fight the Transformers and other times I’d make them get married. But we both loved dinosaurs, astronomy and computer games. I remember dressing my brother up as a Brownie for a laugh once. He didn’t appreciate that one. None of this is ‘gender neutral’, it’s kids being kids.
Or am I wrong? Is it okay for Mr & Mrs Laxton to dress their little boy in pink frocks and parade him to the nation, just to make a point?
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