Girls - pink, boys - blue
Disclaimer: not a feminist post
In the summer my university turns into summer day camp for kids. That's the way of the academic institution to make money even in the summer, it lets using its lawn and facilities for summer camp activities. So from morning till noon the university is full of 5-10 year old children with their 12-15 year old camp instructors.
Yesterday I had a TA meeting in my university and after that headed towards the library. On my way I spotted a group of young kids aged something around 6, playing some game with their instructor in the shadow of a tree and wearing what first appeared to me as a pink uniform. It was a bit puzzling, since in Israel the practice of school uniform, even during the school year, is almost extinct, but I thought that maybe the bright colour makes it easier for the instructors to find their flock. However, when I got closer I realized it was not a uniform at all. It was just that all the girls in the group, including their instructor wore pink outfits. The boys, who were a minority in the group, actually wore differently colored clothes (mostly sailor-themed) which proved me wrong about the uniform assumption. I strained my eyes to spot a girl, who would were something other then pink, but alas, there was none. And that made me wonder, once again, about these girls equals pink, boys equals blue equations.
Well, actually, in that particular group boys, miraculously, got away from it, but let's set it aside. It is true that when I see a cute small child girl on a street wearing a cute pink dressy and a cute pink panama hat, I'm inevitably overflown with mushy feeling of "oooh, how cuuuute" followed by "girl's mom has no imagination though, this girl has blue eyes, a sky-blue dress could look so good on her", but when I saw this group it really hit home. It's not like people don't have imagination, they don't want to have it. I mean, what is going through a mom's head, when she comes to pick her child up from this day camp and sees that her princess is identical to the other ten in her group? And anyway, what's with the pink? Why not yellow or green or lilac or something? Why is that, that when I go to buy something for my friends' kids, most of the outfits for girls involve pink? Do my friends ever put the green with a yellow duckling sleepers that I buy for their daughters, after long and exhausting hunting, or are those sleepers being thrown away since they don't fit into their parents' perception of how a girls should look like? And why the hell should these girls look pink and cutesy?
I have to reiterate again, it has nothing to do with feminism (well, maybe a little, but it's not the point) and the equal opportunity laws and regulations. Actually, come to think about it, it is precisely NOT about equality. It is about diversity, individuality and creativity that are being tossed away in favor of universally accepted concepts of cuteness and propriety. What would happen to a girl, who'll come to the day camp wearing, god forbid, blue dress? I don't even want to think what's going to happen to her if she, by an unfortunate chance, is a child of divorced parents, or has to moms, or lives in the wrong neighborhood… I'll tell you what's going to happen to that girl with the blue dress. She will come home crying, asking her mom to buy her a pink one, and then this mom will tell me (or some other coffee friend of hers) that well, her daughter is such a young coquettish lady, only five years old but already has a sense for fashion. But what her girl has is a fright of being different in an extremely uniform group and she also has a mother who mistakes her daughter's anxiety for a sense of fashion (not surprisingly of course, since the mother finds the ugly and unflattering gladiator shoes and figure-distorting dropped-crotch pants beautiful and stylish, just because they are the latest trend and e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y have them).
I might be mistaken though… Maybe it was the Israeli sun that made me see in these uniformly pink girls more then there is to it.
In the summer my university turns into summer day camp for kids. That's the way of the academic institution to make money even in the summer, it lets using its lawn and facilities for summer camp activities. So from morning till noon the university is full of 5-10 year old children with their 12-15 year old camp instructors.
Yesterday I had a TA meeting in my university and after that headed towards the library. On my way I spotted a group of young kids aged something around 6, playing some game with their instructor in the shadow of a tree and wearing what first appeared to me as a pink uniform. It was a bit puzzling, since in Israel the practice of school uniform, even during the school year, is almost extinct, but I thought that maybe the bright colour makes it easier for the instructors to find their flock. However, when I got closer I realized it was not a uniform at all. It was just that all the girls in the group, including their instructor wore pink outfits. The boys, who were a minority in the group, actually wore differently colored clothes (mostly sailor-themed) which proved me wrong about the uniform assumption. I strained my eyes to spot a girl, who would were something other then pink, but alas, there was none. And that made me wonder, once again, about these girls equals pink, boys equals blue equations.
Well, actually, in that particular group boys, miraculously, got away from it, but let's set it aside. It is true that when I see a cute small child girl on a street wearing a cute pink dressy and a cute pink panama hat, I'm inevitably overflown with mushy feeling of "oooh, how cuuuute" followed by "girl's mom has no imagination though, this girl has blue eyes, a sky-blue dress could look so good on her", but when I saw this group it really hit home. It's not like people don't have imagination, they don't want to have it. I mean, what is going through a mom's head, when she comes to pick her child up from this day camp and sees that her princess is identical to the other ten in her group? And anyway, what's with the pink? Why not yellow or green or lilac or something? Why is that, that when I go to buy something for my friends' kids, most of the outfits for girls involve pink? Do my friends ever put the green with a yellow duckling sleepers that I buy for their daughters, after long and exhausting hunting, or are those sleepers being thrown away since they don't fit into their parents' perception of how a girls should look like? And why the hell should these girls look pink and cutesy?
I have to reiterate again, it has nothing to do with feminism (well, maybe a little, but it's not the point) and the equal opportunity laws and regulations. Actually, come to think about it, it is precisely NOT about equality. It is about diversity, individuality and creativity that are being tossed away in favor of universally accepted concepts of cuteness and propriety. What would happen to a girl, who'll come to the day camp wearing, god forbid, blue dress? I don't even want to think what's going to happen to her if she, by an unfortunate chance, is a child of divorced parents, or has to moms, or lives in the wrong neighborhood… I'll tell you what's going to happen to that girl with the blue dress. She will come home crying, asking her mom to buy her a pink one, and then this mom will tell me (or some other coffee friend of hers) that well, her daughter is such a young coquettish lady, only five years old but already has a sense for fashion. But what her girl has is a fright of being different in an extremely uniform group and she also has a mother who mistakes her daughter's anxiety for a sense of fashion (not surprisingly of course, since the mother finds the ugly and unflattering gladiator shoes and figure-distorting dropped-crotch pants beautiful and stylish, just because they are the latest trend and e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y have them).
I might be mistaken though… Maybe it was the Israeli sun that made me see in these uniformly pink girls more then there is to it.