I’m excited for Frozen 2 – but not a new wave of sexist merchandise

Frozen (2013) was released just shy of 2 years into me being the parent of a daughter. I was at the height of my determination that the princess-industrial complex was not going to dominate her childhood. Continue reading I’m excited for Frozen 2 – but not a new wave of sexist merchandise

Does the world need pink and blue globes?

Spotted these in a high street shop this week. One globe is as you would expect – blue oceans, green and brown landmasses. The other is pink.

It may not say ‘boy’ and ‘girl’, but there can’t be any doubt that this is the intention. Continue reading Does the world need pink and blue globes?

Guest Post: It’s Either Princess, Trainee Stripper, or ‘Boy’ Clothing for Little Girls

AJ Roberts is a fellow dad who’s frustrated about the limited options retailers offer for his soon to be born daughter. Unlike me, he’s also been a father for over two decades and has no interest in geek culture. This is a nice reminder (for me at least) that seeking greater retail choices for our girls isn’t all about superhero capes and lightsabers.

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I’m about to start my second go at a family 21 years after I first did it and later this year my partner and I will have a daughter. When my first daughter was born 17 years ago I was practically a child myself and missed so much of it due to trying to build a career.

Back then I let my (now ex-) wife do all the girly mum and daughter stuff and while she was never a full blown princess fantasist, our daughter still fell into lots of stereotypes over how she was dressed, the toys she had, and the activities she did. Thankfully, genetics kicked in and she railed against being forced to go to ballet and being given pink stuff for her birthday whilst her brother got to play drums and got robots for his. Mercifully, other than the One Direction fixation and a brief flirtation with wanting to be a hairdresser, she has become pretty badass and a strong modern young woman.

Anyway, like so many people in my situation I have vowed not to miss out on so much this time round. I didn’t want to hand over all the pre-birth goodie buying to my partner or let her mother dictate anything. I wanted to be involved in buying clothes and early toys and decorating and all those things new parents do. And when my partner returns to work I will be gleefully taking on the role of a stay at home dad (well, at least part time anyway).

Welcome to the pink aisle

Holy crap, is it possible to buy anything for a baby daughter that isn’t pink and frilly? It turns out that I can only find solace in the section of the shop that they send people to that don’t know the gender of their child yet, so that they can buy white stuff for their infant until they have the chance to return to the retail apartheid regime and buy either blue or pink items after the poor kid is born. I then glance around the rest of the shop… it gets worse.

Apparently the clothes my daughter can look forward to wearing in the first 6 years of her life will be limited to either princess or trainee stripper wear. Our only alternative seems to be giving up and going to the boys section, which would seem to defeat the whole point of being pissed off with the current status quo. I bought a pair of black baby leggings the other day with little cow skulls on them (the sort of skulls you’d see on a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt) and was seriously affronted, although not surprised, when asked if they were for my son or was I buying them as a gift.

Girls love pink

I’ve questioned this to a number of people and I keep getting told “that’s what little girls like”. But how on earth can “little girls” give an opinion when their only choices are nylon Frozen dresses and pink Barbie cars?

Now, I’m not a “geek” – in either the original sense of the term, nor it’s more self-deprecating modern version. While I do love Star Wars, I do so because it is an awesome western set in space rather than a sci-fi film. I have little interest in comics other than old copies of the Beano, I haven’t had a favourite superhero since I was ten (a tie between Hulk and Superman). I have absolutely zero interest in Dr Who, and find no humour in The Big Bang Theory. So this is not a case of me looking to justify dressing his daughter up as Batman, but a dad that is wanting their daughter to have more options than being a princess.

Of course I want her to have things in common with me and would love her to be into art, music, literature or (dare I dream…) cricket. But I want her to at least be given that choice.

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Please follow AJ on Twitter (@ajrobertswriter), and Facebook. His first novel, 42 Days is out soon.

How Darth Vader defends my daughter’s right to be a girl

Star Wars girl, Darth Vader Girl
“I don’t take no sith from anyone!” – Star Wars girl

It’s fancy dress week at my daughter’s preschool. So what should she go as? The question I should have asked my daughter was “What fancy dress would you like to wear?”. However, what we actually asked was “Would you like to wear your Darth Vader costume?” I just couldn’t let this opportunity to enlighten her peers slip by.

A local mum recently made a good point to me that I had never considered. Many of the children my daughter goes to preschool with will be at the same primary school, in the same year, maybe even the same class. They may continue to be her closest peers until adulthood. The same goes for lots of the children we see at playgroup, at the local park, soft play, the library, or even just the high street. What these children think, how they perceive the world, how they treat my daughter, will have a massively influential impact on the woman she becomes.

Part of my approach to parenting is to constantly refer back to my memories of growing up, and use that to positively inform my approach. The fantastical worlds of comic books and Star Wars loom large in my childhood (and adulthood too). They fired my imagination, but perhaps more importantly provided both escapism and inspiration to make sense of the world in the darkest times of my youth.

I want my daughter to have access to all of this too. Luckily, superheroes and Star Wars are still very much in vogue. Raising a Star Wars girl isn’t an anachronism.

It’s also fair to say that I’m not a fan of Disney Princesses, and pinkification in general. So as well as simply sharing my enthusiasm for Star Wars with my daughter (she has all my old toys), this is also about me offering her an alternative to girly girl culture before she heads into the school system, and peer group pressure becomes a driving force in her development.

So far, my daughter is a real Star Wars girl and enjoys it all. So do all the little girls who come over for playdates – they always love to play with our Star Wars and superhero toys.

However, so far it seems very clear that to the likes of Hasbro and Disney (who own Marvel and Star Wars) these brands are just for boys. That’s another battle being fought by myself and others, but in the meantime, here in the trenches, our kids are forming opinions on what is and isn’t for boys or girls, based on the way these brands are marketed.

As our Star Wars girl grows older, I worry she might be singled out for displaying an interest in this geek stuff, simply because she’s a girl. I don’t want her to be perceived as ‘weird’ because she’s a geek. Perhaps even teased, ostracised, or bullied.

This mentality starts young. One time, a little boy saw me with my daughter, looked unsure, then asked me: “Is she a boy or a girl?”. When I confirmed ‘she’ was in fact a girl, he countered “Then why is she wearing a Spider-Man t-shirt?”. “Because she likes Spider-Man.” I replied. The boy’s older sister then chimed in, “Yeah, girls can like Spider-Man too y’know!”. The boy went away with a new concept to contemplate, while hopefully this exchange supported his sister’s seemingly healthy outlook on gender.

It also exists in adults who should know better. A friend who recently became a dad asked me ‘Why are you trying to make your daughter into a boy?’. Grasping for a calm answer, I replied ‘I’m not. There’s nothing inherently male about any of this stuff. I think whatever she wears are girl’s clothes, her toys are girl’s toys, her books are girl’s books. Because she’s a girl.’ After mulling it for a moment, he agreed with me. I think this had never occurred to him before, but now it makes sense.

My daughter & I get so many positive comments from parents when we’re out and about. I often then hear them telling their son or daughter how cool my daughter looks. So perhaps we are influencing some parents too.

I am confident I am doing right by my daughter, that these things are a positive influence on her developing personality. But in order for her to not be socially excluded because of it, I also need her peers and their parents to accept girls can be just as engaged with these things as boys.

So I feel that each time she runs around with a cape, carries her cuddly Spidey to the playground, wears her beloved Batgirl dress yet again, or goes out dressed as Darth Vader, she is doing her part to challenge (some) people’s idea of what it is to be a girl.

My hope is that by the time she gets to school, and her attire will switch from geek chic to school uniform, her fellow pupils will be so used to the idea that girls can like this stuff too, that it won’t be weird at all.

And while Darth Vader didn’t wear pink – he does have a pink lightsaber…

Pink Darth Vader, darth vader pink lightsaber, pink is for sith,

A Dispatch From The Gender Frontline (I Went to Some Toy Shops)

Needing to kill an hour or so, I took a stroll around the Westfield London shopping centre this week. I naturally gravitated towards the toy shops, and I decided to amuse myself by indulging in a spot of gendered toys mystery shopping.

The first shop I went into was The Entertainer. They are a large independent toy retailer, and I have a particular soft spot for them as they began with one shop in my home town neighbour of Amersham, Bucks. But sentimentality aside, I had no idea what they were like as a toy shop these days.

I was pleasantly surprised and really impressed with the way they categorise their toys – eg. ‘Action & Adventure’, ‘Arts & Creative’, ‘Cars, trains, and planes’ etc – not by gender. This seemed like such progressive (and logical) way to sort toys, that doesn’t exclude on the basis of gender – at least in how product is grouped. Bravo Entertainer!

The Entertainer toy shop
The Entertainer toy shop

What I didn’t realise (until I tweeted about it) was that this came about because of a campaign by Let Toys Be Toys (we were living outside of UK when this happened). So bravo to them too. 🙂

I didn’t buy anything, but I will definitely be back to shop here, another branch, or online.

I was expecting the worst with the next shop I visited. I have written about the divisive way LEGO creates and markets its product before. The beloved Universal toy of my youth is no more. I have resigned myself to not buying any new LEGO, that in all likelihood my daughter will be playing with our ample hand-me-down supply throughout her childhood. So I went to the LEGO shop all prepared for their gendered marketing tricks.

But then I spotted this.

Lego Female Scientists set, Lego Female Scientists kit, Lego Female Scientists sold out, female scientist lego
Lego Female Scientists

Yes!

The female scientists minifigure set, that I had in my own little way campaigned so furiously for, that had finally been released only to be sold out everywhere… It was back! I stopped looking around the store, grabbed the set, and headed straight for the counter.

As I paid, I asked the staff about it. They told me they had only been delivered a small number of sets in the original release, and everyone in the company was surprised how popular it had been. The staff were keen to point out that they now have a much healthier stock of it. So if you’re thinking of buying some LEGO for your child (or you!), then I would strongly suggest that you get this one. I’m intending on saving it until Christmas day. Hopefully I can resist the urge to put it together it until then.

LEGO Research Institute 21110
My daughter’s LEGO Research Institute 21110

That’s all I can say about the LEGO shop. They could have had an entire wall of pink Friends sets, with a sparkling sign proclaiming ‘LEGO FOR GIRLS’, and I wouldn’t have noticed. That’s how chuffed I was to finally have this awesome set in my hands.

So it had been a really positive experience so far. My final stop was The Disney Store, which I entered with trepidation. I love Star Wars & Marvel (both acquired by Disney) as much as I do not love princess culture (pretty much created by Disney).

IMG_4015Given that Disney & gendered marketing to kids go together like the Empire & the Death Star, I tend to browse Disney’s virtual and actual aisles with frustration. This occasion was no exception.

Starting with Marvel, there was nothing in the store featuring a female character. No Black Widow in the Avengers line, no Gamora or Nebula in the Guardians of the Galaxy stuff, no additional female superheroes, nothing. *sigh

On to Star Wars.

There’s large section of the store devoted to movie merchandise, primarily the original trilogy. The lack of Leia merchandise was an early issue on this blog, so I was keen to see if things had improved at all. At first glance, it hadn’t. There was a prominent display featuring Han Solo, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and a Stormtrooper – but no Princess Leia.

IMG_4040I scanned the large selection of Star Wars stuff here, and eventually found a Leia. In fact I found a couple. They were each part of different play-sets figures. One set was Jabba’s palace, which of course means one thing – Slave Leia.

An eagle eyed fan on Twitter also spotted a Torryn Farr figure. Who is she? The blink and you’ll miss her Rebel Comms officer from The Empire Strikes Back. She may not be the most active character in the trilogy (she sits in a chair and relays orders), but I guess at least she’s a female Star Wars character figure.

That’s not all the Star Wars gear the shop has now though. There’s a big display of merchandise from the brand new TV show Star Wars Rebels. It’s early days for the show, but it has TWO major female characters that are prominently featured in the artwork of the toy display. So I was curious about what the the product would be like.

Product? What product?

IMG_4009IMG_4037

That’s right. There was nothing, nothing, featuring either of the female characters of Sabine or Hera. Not an action figure, not a t-shirt, nothing. I asked a member of staff about this. She looked surprised, had a glance at the section, and then kind of shrugged “No, there’s nothing with any of the women”.

What’s a girl gotta do to get into the Star Wars line at the Disney Store? It seems even a pink skinny waisted Boba Fett with a boob plate can’t break the gendered marketing glass ceiling far, far away…

So in this flagship Disney Store, in one of the premier shopping centres in Britain, there were just three items including any female characters in the whole of their Marvel & Star Wars sections – nothing in Marvel, and Star Wars had a classic Princess Leia (as part of a set), Slave girl Leia (as part of a set), and an individual figure of a rebel who says “Stand by ion control…Fire!” and nothing else.

Apparently, Sabine & Hera will be included in the second wave of Star Wars Rebels figures being released by licensee Hasbro. Staff also told me “We’re going to get Princess Leia stuff soon. But they keep saying that”. They had no idea about female Marvel characters.

I didn’t buy anything, and I’m not planning on going back. I left the shop more frustrated than ever about the fact that The House Of Mouse now own Marvel & Star Wars. I really hope things change for the better, and they embrace the female – and girl – market for these brands.

I reflected that my previous positive toyshop experiences were both due to the willingness of brands/retailers to engage with feedback, listen to those seeking change, and take a good look at their offering.

In conclusion, in terms of gendered marketing and division of toys: The Entertainer good, The Disney Store sadly not, and the LEGO shop? Well, they had me at female scientist minifigure set and was the only shop I spent money in.

So while this may have been an unscientific survey, in the end it was all about science.