to be so angry at Kinder Eggs!

I admit that I raised an eybrow when I saw the Kinder advert. However, much as I detest this modern everything-must-be pink girlie thing, I don't blame a business for trying to cash in on it.

What's annoying, as already mentioned, is the fact that so many toys are only available in pink.
DIL wants a little shopping bag for my 2 year old DGS but couldn't find anything that wasn't girlie. Hence I have stepped in to make one. I have ordered some dinosaur fabric for it - not sure if that means I am now guilty of gender stereotyping or not, but at least I know he will love it!!

In a way it is hearbreaking that, just for the sake of profit, little boys and girls are so quickly pushed into their little boxes. I don't think the woman was being silly at all.

Well done her for taking it up with Debenhams and making a difference. When peoples words are reported in the press they are often distorted and heartbroken is one of the UK press's favourites.

Re the knickers - yes and I have no trouble getting them in Markies, Asda, and Tesco when Im in the UK at various times of the year.

I was reading in the paper today about Debenhams decision to stop marketing toys as being for a girl or boy. Seemingly they had specific shelves or something for them but as the nearest Debenhams to us is about 350 kms away its not something Ive experienced. The mother who spearheaded the campaign spoke sense but how she could describe herself as being heartbroken when taking her little one to the shops and seeing the shelves marked for girls/boys was an overkill. A child with cancer is heartbreaking, being a young widow with children is heartbreaking, a child with special needs can be heartbreaking - but a shelve full of toys?????

I didn't read anymore of the article and whilst she had made many good points that anyone with any common sense would just think and not really need to make much of, the bit about the hearbreak was when I stopped reading and she lost all credibility with me. I switched off from the article and what ran through my head was 'oh shut up you silly ........ '.

I don't think they should be allowed to sell any toy in only pink or blue.

Wish there were some way to force manufacturers to always offer a gender-neutral choice.

I guess people have the right to choose pink, or blue, if they want.

Wish we had an equal right to buy our grandkids a present without being forced into stereotypical girl-pink or boy-blue-graphic.

Not just toys. Ever tried to find non-pink, non-frilly knickers for a girl toddler? And it's just not right to get her tiny y-fronts!

The original colours were red/pink for virile hotblooded male and cool delicate blue for refained female.

There is a legend that a royal scandalised the traditionalists by putting her baby into the wrong colour and it became fashionable that way round.

Oh they are all "sweet" in their parents eyes aren't they?
Not only logos but bulldozers, slogans that imply girls are princesses and boys are naughty, frilly hearts and fairies etc etc

I believe that in Victorian times it was pink for boys and blue for girls. PS know I am clutching at straws JessM - but some babies are so plug ugly it is hard to say anything. If in blue I have been known to try "I bet he looks like his Daddy"!!!
Embellishments like logos (logoes?) are the spawn of the devil IMHO.

Has any research been done to see if babies/toddlers prefer certain colours depending on their sex? I seem to recall an experiment where girl and boy babies were looked afterfor a by people who didn't know their sex to see how differently the adults treated them ie how they spoke to them/handled them etc.

We seem to have gone quite a way past the Kinder egg debate .
But I have noticed on tv that women are all now dressing [and hairstyles] like American actresses from the 1980's. I sometimes wonder why the early feminists bothered at all.Every woman on tv has the same Farrah Fawcett type long wavy hair [regardless almost of age]The panel on Loose women used to look different to each other.Even the weather girls
seem to look the same.

Clutching at straws gracesmum - there are phrases one can choose like:

Oh gorgeous baby! Can you see any family resemblances? and What name did you choose? that can get round that particular hurdle.
Where did the "pink for a little girl blue for a boy" thing come from originally? Anyone know?
The other thing is the embellishments on the bloody clothes - quite hard to buy a plain green t shirt for instance, that is gender neutral an dcan be passed around the family. It is a plot to get people to buy more.

Indeed, all the colours of the rainbow means that they are healthily clad in whatever took their fancy at the moment of buying.

To have a few toys in pink is the luck of the draw. To have ALL (or many of) the toys in a toyshop in pink or blue, colour-coded for whether they are suitable for girls or boys is not healthy - it leads girls to think that the only things that should interest them are pink and frilly, and that only boys have things in strong colours, because they are stronger. It aint so.

Hanoona, we are all free to make our own choices [as adults] but children are constantly got at by advertisers, and it takes a strong Mother to say the word NO. Any grown woman that I knew who wore pink outfits a lot, well, they may not be the full shilling, to coin a phrase.However, hopefully, girls will have grown out of the pink fairy phase by age 10.Whatever we would like to believe about our society, no man or woman would view a pink clad adult as either able or independent [what we would like doesn't come into it.]Obviously I am not talking about wearing a pink top, or pink jeans or now and then a pink dress [away from the workplace].
The world is not a perfect place, which is why we have to adapt, and why it is not feminism [but misplaced faith in human nature]that allows girls to stagger drunkenly though our towns at midnight wearing hardly anything at all, [pink or otherwise.]When my own daughters were young, thankfully there wasn't the sea of pink/purple tatty stuff about.

AS I read it, it is the whole pink for girls, blue (or primarie for boys )marketing brainwashing strategy that we are criticising, not mothers or grandmothers of little girls.
However I do have one thought regarding one reason for pink/blue baby clothes - it helps you to say the "right" things regarding a new baby when you don't know which sex it is. Some mums really do not like being told their little boy is "pretty" - "gorgeous, lovely, sweet, happy" OK! "pretty" NO !
DD was a little bit unchuffed to be asked when DGS2 (dressed entirely in dark blue/white/green trousers etc ) was aged about 1, "What is your little girl called?"

I have never looked at my granddaughters and attributed their 'all colours of the rainbow' clothing to anything more than a wardrobe full of clothes in all colours of the rainbow bought because they were comfy and practical as well as nice. And I doubt very much my daughter has ever hung the clothes on the line and congratulated herself on making a feminist statement. She would however be very happy about getting rid of a stubborn stain.

And yesterday when I bought my soon to arrive second grandsons coming home from the hospital outfit I bought it in lemon because I loved it and not because the version in blue was gender stereotyping. If I'd preferred the blue I would have bought it because all it would have been is a nice outfit that happened to be blue.

It really can be that simple. However, if I did have granddaughters who were into pink and who grew up to be women who were into pink I would like to think that other women could see them for the independent and very able young women they will undoubtedly be, rather than looking at them and thinking they are anything but because they are in pink.

Sometimes we women are each others harshest critics.

Far from going backwards [towards stereotyping the genders]I think it is in fact much worse now than it ever was.The very worst now are the clothes for little girls going about dolled up like little Lolitas in short tight pink clothing, what does this say about our society; and the parents?They should be dressed as children not teenagers.
The toy industry is never slow to spot a trend, so we drown in a sea of pink and purple plastic for girls.Fluffy and sentimental stuff, while boys get scary looking military lookalike guns, and any toy that flashes lights and noises.Sure, some toys are pretty good, but a heck of a lot are not.
The pink Lego is vile, but Lego also now produce most of their stuff to be made as ONE item therefore reducing the play and imagination[also it takes a Dad to be able to put it together, or me a Grandma, or an adult anyway.]If parents were not weak and stopped buying all the tat, then things would change.

It is not overthought and we need to make more noise about what marketing cr*p it is. I wold put money on very few of us bringing up our DDs or DSs in a Pink or Blue environment. We have 3 Dwho played with - primary coloured toys,wore dungarees and jeans (more practical) with occasional pinafore dresses and matching tights for "best" before they were old enough to rebel and insist on the jeans. Pefectly feminine independent young women with a stong sense of their own worth. I am relieved that (so far) I have DGSs as the pink question does not raise its ugly head, but I would do my best to circumvent the issue should DGDs arrive in the future.

Little girls are now taught to like pink. Boys are taught to dislike it. There is a slight inclination of females to like pink/red colours. But all this pink crap is marketing, marketing, marketing.
My nomination for one of the crappiest : ELC easel in pink or blue. It's an easel FFS. Sorry, I was wrong, its a plot to ensure that big sister's easel is no good for little brother, so you have to buy another one.
Most repulsive item: in Dunelm. A "little girls dressing table" in the style of 18th C French furniture. In bubble gum pink plastic. Plus a little chest of drawers and bedside table to match.
Irritating leakage of this into the adult world includes the pink branding of breast cancer research.
Most irritating grownup pinkness: mother's day card display (huge) in Sainsbury's. About 40 sq metres of pastel pink with the odd touch of lavender.
AAAArrrrgggghhhhhhhh

Im so confused about gender stereotyping but I don't know how to explain it apart from saying - pink for girls and blue for boys, is it really a problem?

And red Doc Martens and brown knee length boots - why is it worthy of mentioning?

Could it just be that some things are overthought and this topic is just one of them?

my dissertation, years ago, was about gender stereotyping so i feel really frustrated to see things still, in marketing, as they were then!

My daughters had a real mix of toys: dolls and many accessories, garages /cars . Lego (no pink!), art/craft etc etc. One loved dolls etc the other did not. One asked for a complete pink bedroom when we redecorated the other preferred green!
Took the DGDs out today to buy boots: one chose red patent Doc Martens and the other some brown knee length. They had the choice of girlier /pinky but that is what they chose.

I'm so glad that I only have grandsons and we don't have to drown in a sea of pink. I have photo's of myself as a three year old and you would never know I was a girl. My own daughter had to be forced into dresses practically at gun point, and we both have a deep hatred of the colour pink.

Eloethan, so glad I missed Newsnight, i'd have been chucking things at the tv. I do believe things have gone downhill on the toy front. The gender stereotyping is frankly shocking and its impact is evident. This old fear of feminism just doesn't go away does it.

There was a discussion on Newsnight last night and one of the people interviewed said she thought that feminism was now fairly ridiculous as it had achieved its key objectives. I think this sort of blatantly sexist marketing demonstrates that she was way off the mark.

Pink/blue toys not only stereotype girls but also boys, and ultimately affect the way in which men and women see themselves and behave.

Perhaps retailers think they'll make more money this way since parents may be nagged to buy separate toys for boys and girls even if the toy is, apart from colour, identical.

I haven't explained that too well but you get the gist!

Funnily enough, I bought a box of three pink Kinder eggs on Monday to take with me, as I was going out for a meal with ds and family.
Littlest dgd two loves playing with the plastic containers and toys.
They only had pink ones in store.

Inside was a padlock and key, a spinning top, and a little 'pony'.

Pony was ignored but padlock and top were well used!
Absolutely no point being in a pink box!