My three daughters all loved pink, writes Cassandra Jardine, but it hasn’t done them any lasting harm.
Source: The Telegraph >> Read Full Article
My three daughters all loved pink. For a time nothing in their rooms – not only toys but dresses, bed clothes, cushions – could be any other colour. We made pink icing for cupcakes and every birthday party was themed with princessy plates and balloons in, you guessed it – pink. I was the only female element in the household not to be coloured that particularly putrid shade, so I sympathise with the Pinkstinks campaign founded by Emma Moore, a mother of two girls, who objects to the way toy shops colour stereotype gender from an early age.
The only thing worse than the ubiquitous pink is the depressing hues of sludge green and brown in which everything aimed at boys – from superheroes to dressing up sets – is swathed. Moore isn’t the first to have noticed that those who make money out of children are pushing them in one direction or another at an early age. Nor is Early Learning Centre – Pinkstinks’ top target – the only offender. In Sweden a group of 13-year-olds recently attacked Toys R Us for the same gender crime, after two years’ research into toy catalogues – though goodness knows why it took them so long to spot the obvious.
A heated debate rages about whether colour preferences are hard-wired. Some researchers have found girls to have a preference for pink that cross cultural divides. Others can find enough exceptions – red for both sexes in China, blue associated with girls in Catholic countries because of the Virgin Mary. I have no idea about the neurological status of their arguments, but I have observed in my children and their friends a desire to conform. At the stage when they are beginning to work out who they are, and which gender they belong to, most of them (with honourable exceptions) … Continue Reading
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