PINK PINK PINK

 It started with fairies.

Oh sure, there was always pink for girls and blue for boys. Then in the 70’s the soft pastels gave way to orange! And green! And red!  And navy blue! And brown! And all sorts of dark saturated colours that had the grannies tsk-tsking about how inappropriate these new clothes were for babies. Certainly the bright sunshine yellow (as opposed to pastel ‘lemon’) was a mistake for most new babies, making their jaundice fluoresce.

But something changed. The great social experiment of the 70’s kind of slunk away and so did the unisex overalls for toddlers. And now, in the 21^st century, it’s pink for girls. And not just pink, but PINK! PINKPINKPINKPINK! Pink is compulsory for girls, all girls. You must luff ze pink! And pink tutus and pink party frocks and pink princess paraphernalia. And pink Lego! For girls.

For boys?  Meh. Miniature adult clothes. Dressing tots in jeans and check shirts, who thought of that? And jackets and polo shirts. Cute T-shirts at least. Navy, chocolate, green, usually pretty somber. But girls? A riot of pink in every shade, from baby fairy breath of pinkish mauve through roses and peonies and fuschia to shocking, burn-out-your-retina PINK.

It’s not a colour so much as a statement, but I don’t know what it is trying to say. Girls are girly. Girls are expected to be girly. Girls are expected to like being girly. Am I reading too much into this?

So, the fairies. The trend started in the 90’s and it was and remains cute. Little girls dressed in tulle tutus and wings, usually pink, maybe mauve, not just for parties, but all the time. How sweet! Opening up the windows of their little imaginations. Does it? So why just pink fairies, is that all they can imagine? Of course it all ties in with Disney merchandising. I grew up with Sleeping Beauty and all that lot, but then some marketing genius packaged up the whole concept and the Disney Princesses were unleashed onto the public, along with all the merchandise, from socks and undies to onesies and nighties and dresses and backpacks and drink bottles and and and. And mummies buy them, because they are usually girls too.

Look, I now know that gender identification isn’t all a cultural construct like we used to believe in the 70’s.  Boys and girls are different. It’s the way in which this difference is expressed that is the cultural construct.

My first kids, twins, were born in 1980. I had been in university for most of the 70’s, which is why so much of early gender theory was implanted in my brain. So when I had a boy and a girl, I was determined that they have equal opportunity in life and that my daughter wouldn’t be defined by such superficialities as pink frou-frou. So, ever practical, I dressed them in overalls, (for ease of handling as well because it’s easy to pick up a twin by the cross straps on the back) and my particular favourites were matching red Oshkosh overalls. I wasn’t that hard core, I did allow some tiny bit of trim on my girl’s white t-shirts, sometimes.

And then one day, at about 8 months of age, she crawled to my tea towel drawer and draped some towels over her shoulders; then she took the coloured rings from the Fisher Price stacking toy and placed them on her wrists, like bangles; and then she posed, waiting to be admired. My son, meanwhile, was pushing toy trucks along the floor making vroom-vroom sounds. It then occurred to me, not for the first time, that a lot of the stuff I had learned in uni was rubbish.

Later, I remember being critical of what the girls did in school, always with the colouring-in and the pretty decorations on everything they did, and I scorned it as girly-whirly-shmirly. I tried to compliment my kids on their achievements and their efforts, and to encourage the Pursuit of Excellence! But I should have just shut up with the critiques and just admired everything. They needed the admiration and the praise, not the crits. But at the same time, the boys, definitely less into decorative arts, were not encouraged to do anything much with an aesthetic, even if they wanted to. Art classes vanished after the early primary years. So how much is nature and how much cultural pressure? Bit of both; but kids are not blank slates for sure.

But this pink thing makes me a bit uneasy. I just think that 100 years of feminism shouldn’t be leading us to this. And of course, there’s so much worse to follow as far as little girls’ clothing and toys are concerned. As sickening as Barbie is, Bratz dolls are far worse. And the pressure to dress the tweens like mini hookers is dreadful. I was in Sydney not long ago and took a night train, and the young women there seemed to have only two modes of dress; Beach Bunny and Working Girl. I don’t know if it’s just Sydney on a weeknight or everywhere, but it was hard to know where to look, there was so much on show. Having some sort of standard of modesty in dress cannot a bad thing!

It seems that whether pinky or punky, it’s not really about imagination or self-expression in the end, it’s about succumbing to pushy peer groups and/or pushy marketing. Isn’t it?