gender oriented items that don't need to be gender oriented
By Sissy15
@sissy15 (12330)
United States
August 6, 2016 12:06am CST
I am having a conversation with a friend, and we're talking about how everything has to have two versions. The regular version and the pink or girly version. This always annoyed me to no end when I was pregnant. The whole reason I found out my son's gender was so I could prepare, there really wasn't much that was gender neutral. Nothing even remotely cute.
As the mom of a son I find it a bit annoying that girls have store upon store of clothing and toys that are dedicated to them, but there are few stores for boys. I'll see a ton of aisles for girl things and maybe one or two aisles for boy stuff.
I am all for girl power, but I feel like people are over compensating. Not all girls love pink and purple either, and whenever I go shopping for my nieces that's mostly what I see. We have a store here that doesn't even have men's shoes, but have a ton of women's shoes, and it's not a store for women.
I can always find clearances for women and girls, but it's so difficult to find stuff for my son sometimes. I sometimes wish they'd just have more gender neutral things, not everything needs to be pink. I got frustrated once because I was trying to find my son a carseat and all they had were pink carseats left, or the only thing they'll have left on sale in a certain item will be pink. It makes shopping for a little boy hard. I don't mind my son playing with pink items, but he doesn't like pink.
It's OK for little girls to play with non girl toys, they seldom get made fun of, but if you see a little boy playing with dolls that becomes a big controversy. It just doesn't seem right. I have taught my son to be sweet and compassionate. He has a lot of empathy for others, and is the first to see if someone is OK when they're hurt. He tells me he wants to be a daddy when he grows up, but chances are he'll eventually be called a sissy for these traits, because people and kids are cruel.
I'm tired of this whole gender war. Why can't some things just be left as they are? Do people really need pink everything? I just get sick of looking in stores and them being out of everything but the pink version of things. I get some people like the pink version and that's fine, but at least make more of the non pink things. Clearly pink doesn't sell as well as the normal version does. If I had a girl I probably wouldn't buy them anything but cloths in pink if I could help it. I'd go for more neutral colors.
I get men aren't typically as picky about their clothes as women, but wouldn't it be nice if they had more options? I shop for my son, and I get frustrated that I get this tiny selection of clothes in comparison to what they have for girls. It would be nice to have even half as many options for my son that women have for their daughters.
I can respect that some women are probably OK with this arrangement, but as the mom of a little boy I often feel like he often gets the short end of the stick.
2 people like this
2 responses
@jstory07 (140085)
• Roseburg, Oregon
6 Aug 16
I raised four boys and two girls that did not want girly things or pink items.
The girl items were always on clearance while the boy items are rarely on clearance.