Sunday 10 May 2009

More pinkification of mothers

From Google today (Mother's Day):



Such lovely pinkification.

Good grief! Can we please, please get over this girl = pink nonsense, and the constant infantilising of women by associating them with soft, pinky, girly colours.

12 comments:

Alison said...

EVERY SINGLE Mother's Day card in the Paper Plus near my work was predominantly pink or purple, and not even vibrantly or richly so. I don't buy anything pink or purple just on principle now, because I'm so fed up with the pink=women generalisation. It was bad enough when it was for little girls, but the sex-coding in goods of all sorts is just sickening. I don't doubt for a second that companies are deliberately perpetuating pinkification and the gender binary for profit.

David said...

I hate pink! It might be ok for wee girls, but growm women? On a light hearted note experience has shown me to run and run very fast if I meet a woman (over the age of 18) who is into pink.

katy said...

I like pink and have a few pink items of clothing, lucky I am not trying to impress anyone I guess. My teenaged sisters also tell me I am deranged if they see me wearing pink but it just happens to go with my other favourite colour (green).

Anna said...

Oh dear. I actually quite like pink (pastelly, girly shades, to be specific). I figure that if I wear it with my big black boots and scowl a lot, it'll undo the girly effect.

I heartily agree with the infantilisation point, though. Women carry the floral and pink clothing of babies throughout their lives, but you seldom see grown men wearing fluffy blue jumpsuits. That's probably for the best.

My daughter (aged 7) tells me her favourite colour is blue, yet almost every item she wears is pink. It's like she feels she has to. And frankly, there's not much choice available in wee girls' clothes anyway. Boys' clothing isn't great either, mind you. Within a certain age group, there's not much that doesn't feature skater motifs or skulls and crossbones. Yick.

Anonymous said...

Yes the pink diamante flash drives tipped me over. Ick!

On the other hand I like pink clothing in small amounts and I have purple Doc Martens.

Azlemed said...

I like wearing pink, just like I like purple or black, but not floraly nanaish stuff... girls clothing is really hard to buy that isnt pink, or labeled with some figure like barbie.

Boys stuff isnt much better in some regards, its often camo or skater stuff that I arent into either,

my cards this year were purple and blue, both made by miss 6, not a bit of pink on them,

And whats with hairdryers, hair straigtheners etc being pink... black plastic is perfectly fine by me. Or the pink handy woman kits... wtf?

Deborah said...

I have purple Doc Martens.SNAP! Lighter toned purple boots, and my very favourite dark purple Mary Jane shoes.

Anna said...

Pink tools are so patronising!

Julie said...

Driving to work this morning, before I had read this post, I noticed 5 small girls walking to school (yay!) with ENORMOUS pink backpacks (boo!). I think four of the five were official Barbie ones. Ugh.

Anonymous said...

So what if a girl/woman actually just likes pink? For instance - I quite like those pink floral tool kits. The thing that annoys me about them is that the tools are crap quality which is the patronising part (to me). I do have a huge (non-pink)tool kit of my own though so not really an issue.

We are having a huge problem getting pale blue sports shoes for my oldest daughter. She doesn't want pink/purple OR the dark blue boys shoes.

BTW: Deborah - lighter toned purple boots too.

Azlemed said...

I have a pair of pale blue and white gym shoes for miss K, shes too small for them yet... most kids stuff is so pink that its scary. Having said that I bought pink draped with butterflies for their new room this morning, but AT $20 for 2 sets I wasnt bothered.

I want purple waitangi minx boots...

Random Lurker said...

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