Normally I shun the pink aisle in the toy shop. If Akra Jr hadn’t come home with a party invite from a girl in his class then I’d still be avoiding it, instead I was left standing there in the midst of a sea of pink having palpitations.
My pink aisle phobia doesn’t have much to do with the feminism aspects of rows upon rows of plastic monstrosities; it’s just I was never a girly girl, preferring to play with cars and lego as a child, and I have produced boy offspring. I don’t know what to do with myself in the pink aisle and I dread the social minefield it draws me into.
If I buy the flirty little hooker doll, will the girl’s mother ever speak to me again? (Bizarrely, Barbie is now the most demure doll on the shelf – what sort of weird parallel universe is that?!) Is a baby doll too “babyish” for a five year old? Do I go for the politically correct cheat of buying a craft toy, knowing that the child would probably much rather have had a lump of cheap tack and hoping that the mother actually enjoys creative activities with her daughter?
Bolstered by the thought that my son’s favourite presents this year were dolls… no … sorry … action figures, I bit the bullet and made my choice.
Oh sod it … I’ll be honest. I panicked and grabbed the nearest Barbie doll and threw in a packet of fluffy pencils for good gender-sterotypical measure. Please tell me I’m not going to be shunned by the mother and polite society as a result!
8 responses so far ↓
1 ella // 19th May 2006 at 9:41 pm
I can’t really help (all boys in our house) but I’d have bought the same sort of thing and then worried if I’d got the right thing too!
2 Kathy // 20th May 2006 at 2:21 am
My girls like to play with the Barbie’s and Fashion Polly’s WITH their legos and cars and trains. We have a birthday this week (5 years old) and she’s getting some Barbie DVD’s (Nutcracker, Rapunzel, Swan Lake, Mermadia…) – life is certainly different if you have 2 boys or 2 girls!
3 Jane // 20th May 2006 at 7:45 am
Arrgh! I feel your pain! Would definitely have gone for the craft stuff :-)
OMG, if #3 is a girl do I have to visit the pink aisle too?
4 Pewari // 20th May 2006 at 8:19 am
No Jane – you’ll just have to tell her she’s a boy ;)
5 Jane // 20th May 2006 at 3:31 pm
Good plan – and the boy clothes we’ve already got won’t go to waste either way :-)
6 Kaptain Kobold // 22nd May 2006 at 7:09 pm
“hoping that the mother actually enjoys creative activities with her daughter?”
Or perhaps the father does …
7 Pewari // 22nd May 2006 at 7:10 pm
Ah but it’s her mother that stands in the playground twice daily and thus has more power in the ostracising stakes ;)
8 paula // 22nd May 2006 at 9:56 pm
I also wonder what I would have done had I been a little girl now as I hate pink and girly swirly things. I go for craft stuff for my friends little girls, there is a theme here then. I’d have sneered at a Barbie but sold my mother for a jumbo pack of crayola (especially the packs with gold, silver and bronze.)
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