When I was a child, little girls did not wear pink all the time. I was a child of the 70s, so orange was the dominant tone of my childhood.
When did pink take over? Little boys don’t have to wear blue all the time. Why should little girls have to wear pink? My loving husband would be the first to point out that when the Princess was a baby, I went out and bought a range of pink things. Well, I’m tired of it now. I note that in Belgium, pink does not dominate in the same way as in Ireland though after spotting a number of girls in hot pink at the foire du midi this afternoon, I may have to reconsider. I am informed that in Italy, it is not uncommon to dress baby girls in black. Trendy but a little alarming, I imagine. I bet they get through a lot of pink all the same.
Is it all Walt Disney’s fault? Is it easier to market to little girls, if everything is pink? Is there a conspiracy? Do I only care because my daughter looks better in blues and greens?
Weighty questions for a Saturday evening while my husband is off emptying out his office. Rather ominously, he feels it will take all evening. Where will we put everything?
In a related packing question, my husband and I were discussing what we would take with us in the car rather than leave to the mercy of the movers. “Only important things” we agreed.
“Like the family photo albums,” I said.
“Like my degrees,” he said simultaneously.
This neatly sums up some sexist assumptions. I don’t even know where my degrees are, I should have left them in Cork with my mother where they were safe. Maybe I should wear more pink.
SO true. when i got my second degree my father sent me a check and told me to have my degrees framed. i spent the money on clothes. (well, they were work clothes for my first real job, but still).
My six-year-old recently declared that she was “so over pink”. It’s a great relief as it’s been a passionate and monotonous relationship.
Oh, and my degrees aren’t framed either – they are still rolled up in cardboard somewhere at the bottom of a box.
I never even bothered to pick up my degree, because it involved a lot of dressing up and faff. I know have a piece of paper from the university that says that they have examined their records and I ‘appear’ to have satisfied the requirements for a degree. And now I come to think of it, I don’t know where that is either. I also never wore pink as a child. Do you think the two are related?
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile!
I think the point of pink-ifying everything is so that a little boy will refuse to wear the hand-me-down jeans which are appliqued and/or embroidered in pink. And a little girl will refuse to wear the good-as-new khaki/camouflage gear which her older brother has hardly worn at all.
I am fortunate in one sense – Belle will wear (almost) any colour. I am less fortunate in the fact that she will (almost) only wear clothes that float or preferably spin out when she turns. She has A Lot of dresses because she is also a remarkably messy child…
Do people really display their degrees? Gosh.
I hardly ever wore pink, but nobody that knows me at all would be surprised by that …