Of Pink and Princesses...Children's Gender Socialization

I have a confession to make... and it might get my sister-in-law to hate me for the rest of her life. Oh well, I don't really care, do I?. Stumbling upon this hub might be the eye opener that might get her to see the world less in terms of pink princesses and blue princes.

OK, back to my confession. The thing is, two months ago, while my family and I were spending the weekend at my in laws' home, this sister-in-law ( let's simplify things and call her "Sil") offered my then almost three year-old daughter a gift, that I later threw into the garbage bin, once my family and I were back home. "Oh how mean!" you are probably thinking... Well, just sit back and read me out...

Before I tell you about the gift, I should probably give you a rough picture of what Sil and her family are like. She and her husband are a couple in their early thirties. They have two children: a son who is six years old, and a daughter who will be three in November. Sil is a nurse, and her husband is a junior partner in a legal firm. And they are basically a middle income French family.

As a couple, they are not what I'd call the traditional French couple. They both work for pay outside the home and they are both very involved in caring for their children and their home. As you would expect, Sil's working hours are not exactly 'family friendly'; she works nights, weekends and public holidays. So even a super macho man (of which her husband is not one, at all), would have felt the necessity to roll up his sleeves waaaaay last century.

In contrast to the functioning of their couple, Sil's parenting style is extraordinarily caricatural, traditional and highly gendered. She decorated her son's room in blue, and her daughter's in pink. The number of things that are not pink in her daughter's room, if counted, would not amount to seven. There are of course no pinks in her son's bedroom.

A few months back, their son had a thing for red and on several occasions requested to have a red this or that. At a particular occasion, while we were in a kiddy clothes shop, the boy requested to have a pair of red trousers... The mother would not hear of it. Her justification? "Des pantalons rouge pour les garçons? Ah non, ce n'est pas possible. Le rouge c'est plutôt pour les filles!" (Red trousers for boys? Oh no, that's just not possible. Red is rather for girls!).

Their daughter is what I would term 'a highly gendered walking-talking doll'. Even before she was two, Sil had introduced her among others, to necklaces. One of our relations even nicknamed their daughter 'Mr T', because she was made to wear (and consequently now still wears) three or four multi -coloured bead necklaces, all at a go. And yes, that little child even has her nails polished.

Need I describe their super gendered toys? OK, perhaps just a wee bit. Right from birth, the daughter has had every kind of doll and stuffed animal shoved her way; from cuddly toys to Barbie dolls (Did I already mention that she's only two and a half?). Actually, pinks and princesses would suffice as a description of their daughter's wardrobe and toys. As for the son, he has been socialized into dark coloured clothes because, as the mother often puts it: "C'est un vrai garçon; il est toujours en train de sauter de tomber et de se salir..." (he is a real boy, always jumping, falling and getting himself dirty).

OK, so what did Sil offer my daughter ? A musical jewellery box; you know, the type with a little 'princess' who slowly rotates to the music. In case you still don't have a mental image of what I'm talking about, just have a look at the pink pic alongside. Got it? Lovely huh? ;-)

In all fairness, let me state that the music box Sil offered my daughter was not pink. Oh non, she would not make that 'mistake'. She and some close relations are well aware of my 'pink allergy', and when offering things to my daughter, they often make H-U-G-E efforts to buy anything but pink. She did buy her daughter a pinky jewellery music box though. And hey, I'm not saying that my daughter is pink starved. No, she does have three or so pink items in her wardrobe and toy boxes, but you can be sure that I was definitely not the buyer.

Oops, once again I digress. Back to the gift. The particular jewellery music box given to my daughter was a little bit different from the pinky one above. It had two colours: purple and a pale shade of green and the same colours apply for the 'princess' figure on it. To cut this description short, the princess figure on it was none other than "Princess Tiana", from the 2009 animated Walt Disney movie "The Princess and the Frog".

Sil did make one 'mistake' though. She went into a conceited narration on how she came to the decision to offer my daughter the box. In brief, she and a friend of hers were window shopping when they stumbled upon a shop selling gift items from the the latest Walt Disney animation "The Princess and the Frog". The chocolate coloured princess naturally made her think of me, and oh what a nice gift it would be for my daughter (to have a play figure who 'resembles' her mother). She also explained in a rather self-assured and conceited way, that she knew I was not into all the princess and pink stuff, and that as she made up her mind to buy the box, she said to her friend, "Oh what better way to piss off my sister-in-law, than to offer the princess musical box to her daughter!"

What did she expect? That she could 'bully' me into adopting her parenting style? That I'd acquiesce to the gift because a Walt Disney key character and myself are thought to have one thing in common: dark skin pigmentation? Am I, the dark skinned person, expected to leap for joy and embrace the Walt Disney fairy tales Crap I am firmly against, just because it is now being served to me in a much darker shade? Am I now expected to identify myself with it? My take on that is: Crap is Crap, whether served hot or cold, with chantilly sauce or with blackstrap molasses.

If you grew up with the prince and princess fairy tales and now consider them an important part of your children's childhood edutainment, then you most likely find, an opinion like mine offensive. Unfortunately, I have no apologies to offer. I also grew up with those kinds of fairy tales...Cindarella, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the like. What lessons did I retain from them? Frankly? Aside from the 'romance' and the "Hey girl, you will only find true happiness when and only when you get married to your prince - kind of message, there was  nothing more for me to retain. I was/am lucky though, since the Walt Disney crap was not my only source of edutainment. Growing up in Kenya came with stories narrated to me by my grand parents in the evenings. These oral narrations had an incomparable impact in my childhood through to my adulthood.The narratives were definitely not Walt Disney romance oriented, and I did not in any way suffer from the absence of 'romance', quite the contrary. Each came with a different moral lesson that, to date, I still remember.

Given the irrelevance of royalty in today's world and the ever changing gender roles and relations, why do large numbers of parents worldwide still accept to bring up their children with highly gendered fairy tales (such as those produced by Walt Disney), when with a little bit of effort, they can find more meaningful edutainment sources?

Oh, perhaps the answer lies in the word "effort". Indeed, it takes some mental effort to question what has been served to you as the model of children's entertainment for decades; it takes an effort to go into a DVD shop or bookshop in search of children's meaningful edutainment sources ( given that that kind of good educational material does not receive as much publicity as do most Walt Disney productions); it takes a bit of effort to question what has since forever, been served to you as 'typical' of male children or female children (dressing, colour preferences, behaviour...) and it takes even more effort to reject discourses and all things that socially construct certain character traits as exclusively female or exclusively male. In brief, it takes quite a bit of effort to question and consciously go against what has been socially constructed as century-old 'traditions' or to counter society's traditional gender expectations.

PS: Just in case you are wondering, my daughter was not traumatised by 'the loss' and has to date, never asked for the box, let alone notice that it is missing....Goes to show her enthusiasm for it and oh, what an 'indispensable' gift it was!