Showing posts with label So it turns out that.... Show all posts
Showing posts with label So it turns out that.... Show all posts

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Pink Schmink - I don't get why some feminist mothers don't like pink. The real front line is somewhere else.

So it turns out that you can want to dress head to toe in pink, dress all your teddies in pink, and still find trucks interesting. Who knew?



I don't know why she's obsessed with pink, all I know is that it must be a gender thing as the people who market toys to children colour their products for a reason. My guess is that the pink girl toys outsold the blue girl toys resulting in the pink isle you see in the toy shop today. I think it's funny that the fact that the isle is almost entirely blindingly bright pink negates any advantage there may have been in making your product pink in the first place. These days a pink toy is lost in the searing haze of pinkness...

One of the more common arguments against dressing girls in pink is that there are assumptions inherent in pink. Assumptions about gender, purpose and societal roles. Apparently by dressing girls in a certain colour we're dooming them to an unfulfilling life in the kitchen (and that a life in the kitchen is deemed to be unfulfilling is a whole other bugbear of mine that I won't go into here).

The social constructs that are dooming girls to roles they find unfulfilling are far bigger than pink clothing. They are companies that discriminate against women on the basis of gender or family commitments, unaffordable childcare, and crusty old blokes like an ancient chemistry lecturer of mine who made it quite clear to me that in his opinion anyone with a vagina didn't belong in a laboratory and ought to be doing social work. He has retired now thank goodness. More and more of those crusties are retiring (a good thing) but unless we're careful they'll be replaced with blokes who are quite happy to continue a company tradition of rewarding people who are willing to work themselves to the bone at the expense of time with their families. In this kind of culture the children need a parent at home if they are to get any one-on-one parenting at all. And of course, in this kind of culture the at home parent is bound to be the birth mother as she needs all that time off to have the baby anyway... Changing the colour of your precious girl's clothing is not going to make one whit of difference to this kind of work culture.

So, as we don't want to return to those dark ages, I'll tell you where I think the real front line is. The people on the front line are the mothers returning to work who are organising job-sharing, or working out how their job can be performed part-time, or working out how they can do some of their work from home. Also on the front line are the fathers who are doing the same, braving up to bosses, swimming against a current of a century's worth of dogma and stating that they need parenting leave or part-time/flexible hours too, as they'd like to do some, duh, parenting. The real changes aren't caused by banning a clothing colour, they're caused by brave parents who are willing to break molds to create a work culture that is equitable in that it allows both men and women into the workforce without leaving our children in the lurch. So dress your girlies in whatever colour you like, you're not going to make a difference to your daughter's prospects until it is taken for granted that both sexes will participate in the workforce and do their share around the house. And for that to happen.... well... let's say it's going to be a little harder for parents than choosing a colour for clothing.

Monday, May 4, 2009

So it turns out that...

...if you're making a banana smoothie and drizzle the honey over the vanilla ice cream the honey turns rock hard and it sounds like you've got a blender full of bullets for, like, ages.