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A mother in the US dressed her 5 year old boy in a “Daphne from Scooby Doo” outfit for Halloween.  This was initiated at the boy’s request being a Halloween fan and Daphne being his favourite character. The boy apparently got cold feet about wearing this on the night and the mother, as all mothers do, encouraged him to wear what he had bought and wanted to wear and to go trick or treeting in the outfit.  All was fine and he was happy but other mothers gave the mother grief about dressing her child in girls’ clothing, so much so that the mother was distraut about it and posted information on the net on her facebook page. 

Do you have boys?  Would you do what she did?

We have all talked about gender stereotyping and whether it is inbread or put upon our children. Girls on the whole mostly seem to steer towards girls toys and boys towards boys, girls towards pink and boys towards anything but!  I even see it on our vinyl labels orders. Girls on the whole order the pink or mauve or glitter silver name labels for their belongings.  Boys order red, green, yellow or blue, ie. primary colours, for their name labels.  However believe it or not we also have boys that order pink or mauve, somewhat more surprising than girls that order primary colours.  Ok their mum or dad or nanny order then. If we query it though you can bet that it is normally initiated by the child liking that colour and the parent or carer going with the flow.

Is it all about gender steriotyping or is it just “Hey, it’s halloween, he’s only 5 and what the heck!”. In a way I feel sorry for her as some parents are so adament that they are right and their way is the way it’s done.  Is it?  Surely at 5 we can wear whatever we want and not fall into the adult steroetyping of accepted fashion by gender.

According to some fashionistas anyway perhaps girls should be wearing blue and boys would be better off in pink as a softening colour.  I mean look at Roger Federer and his pink RF T-shirt which my boys have suddenly got interested in wearing after being anti pink for some 12 years!  I nearly fell over in shock but then that’s cool as they think they look cool and that’s all that matters to me.  I was never criticised for the boys wearing light pink tennis t-shirts because everyone else on the court knew Roger Federer did it too and it is “cool”!  I have friends whose boys have a nice tan and their boys look great in pink.  Apparently though society sees pink as calming and daintier and therefore a girly colour. It’s strange though as girls get older how they suddenly want another colour like magenta or cerise pink (stronger and darker) or silver or purple over around 10 years of age.  I see this on orders for labels4kids vinyl labels, personalised bag tags and personalised gym bags.  Suddenly pale pink isn’t cool any more at that age, but before that it seems almost anything goes at times. 

AND my younger boy has more of a feminine feel in that he picks up on moods and looks etc much quicker than the other 2 boys do. Infact they don’t even notice. He wouldn’t wear girls clothes at all but I can see that if he really liked a character in a movie or whatever that had what was considered feminine look he probably wouldn’t care what people said and would wear it anyway, just like the boy in the US.  

Some schools even have pink as part of the uniform ie brown and pink stripes. Goodness was Gordon Brown damaged because he wore a uniform that had brown and pink stripes as shown in this link to Fettes College?  I don’t think so as he made PM but of course others will well disagree on that!

What do you think?   Would your boys wear pink or girls dress ups?  Would you let them?  Would you complain if other mothers let their child wear this?  Send in your views for our users to read.  We’re all interested to hear in the office here!