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You know I often do little threads about the messages on boys& #39; and girls& #39; clothes, like @letclothesbe does. And I was going to do another one today, but then I noticed what was happening with adult clothes too.
I realised that the same relentless emphasis about needing to be nice and happy are also all over women& #39;s sleepwear. Here& #39;s a selection from Matalan today.
I went to see whether the men& #39;s sleepwear was similarly captioned. Er, no.
Men get no exhortions to be happy, to be anything. Why would that be?
Would it be so completely crazy to put messages about love and happiness on men& #39;s sleepwear? If so, why?
So let& #39;s have a look at the messages that are on offer to girls in the same store. Be sweet!
Shower [something?] with sprinkles, doughnuts, unicorns, whatever.
![Shower [something?] with sprinkles, doughnuts, unicorns, whatever.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAEJwWtW4AAdf2v.jpg "Shower [something?] with sprinkles, doughnuts, unicorns, whatever.")
Be part of something beautiful [what does that even mean?]
![Be part of something beautiful [what does that even mean?]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAEJ_l-WsAUZWEW.jpg "Be part of something beautiful [what does that even mean?]")
Get distracted by cute things, some of which aren& #39;t real (girls are so ditzy!)
Shine! Have BFFs!
It& #39;s your duty as a girl to Be Happy. Don& #39;t let the side down by having a normal range of feelings.
Are you listening?
Be like something that isn& #39;t real.
Are you definitely on the case with being HAPPY?
Love everyone.
Dream. And SMILE. Because you& #39;re HAPPY.
I said, DREAM.
Don& #39;t do anything active, just sit on the sidelines and dream about things that don& #39;t exist.
And above all, be CUTE.
This is a medium-sized shop and you walk in and it& #39;s just a tsunami of pink telling girls it& #39;s their innate duty to be passive and pleasant.
They can demand things rudely.
They like space and technology.
And active football. They& #39;re awesome. (I checked and there were no girls& #39; shirts with space or football slogans.)
You wouldn& #39;t think we had women astronauts or women involved in the space programme, or there was a successful women& #39;s national football team.
Boys love SCIENCE!
They don& #39;t just sit on the beach being happy, they do ACTIVE stuff.
Not like girls.
They zoom about.
They eat lots and are powerful.
They really do eat a lot.
ZWUMP! CRASH! Boys are superheroes!
They like predators! (Girls are naturally drawn to prey animals.)
(I mean, a proper boy wouldn& #39;t like a little puppy or a rabbit, would he? It& #39;s got to be a big, angry animal for a boy to like it.)
A dinosaur, for instance. You can& #39;t stir for dinosaurs in the boys& #39; section, and yet there& #39;s not a one in the girls& #39;. Mary Anning never existed.
Boys RULE THE WORLD, apparently.
They like travel and sport.
And, for some reason, sunglasses on random things. I suppose it& #39;s because boys are always COOL.
I do know I sound like a broken record on this. It& #39;s just that, once you see it, your jaw drops to the floor because it& #39;s ubiquitous and relentless. You& #39;d have to be an exceptional parent to navigate around this stuff and even begin to address the negative stereotyping.
Well, I checked into WH Smith today and the messages for girls about dreaming and being lovely are all over their flippin& #39; stationery.
This stuff is coming at girls and women from all angles.
"Head in the Clouds". Females are too ditzy to function.
"Be happy, be bright, be you." Because you& #39;re not allowed to be anything other.
"Unicorn dreaming". Passively obsessing about objects that don& #39;t exist.
This one& #39;s arguably the worst of the lot. "Dance with fairies, ride unicorns, swim with mermaids, chase the rainbows." What does it even mean? It& #39;s drivel.
Girlies, distract yourself with nonsense to avoid engaging actively with the world.
Happy, Love, say Yes. I want one that says "Assert your boundaries."
"Sweet."
"Good as Gold".
Don& #39;t forget to DREAM!!
Really, DON& #39;T FORGET TO DREAM.
"Live, Love, Shine."
"Be Fabulous."
"I& #39;m so fancy" plus some sort of disturbing kitten-unicorn hybrid because kittens are no longer enough of a feminine icon apparently.
And I know none of this is specifically in a women& #39;s section of the shop, but we all know who it& #39;s supposed to be aimed at. The colours, the font, the images.
I think this one absolutely sums up what messages we& #39;re giving out to the female half of the population: Do Small Things - because that& #39;s your level and your limit - With Love - because your role is to care and nurture the people who do the big things.
Individually I have no beef with any of these except the last. But look at the wall of them! It& #39;s vast and overwhelming. It really signals to women and girls what their concerns should be, where their focus should lie.
Be compliant, be passive, be frivolous and vacant, nurture others.
Though I doubt that& #39;s who they were aimed at.
Popped into M&S this morning. Some of their children& #39;s clothes are presented as neutral, not under a boys or girls heading, which is helpful. But where it is, we see the same old pattern. Girls should be filling their heads with fantasy.
It might as well say, "keep girls stupid because they& #39;re cuter that way".
And obviously girls need to be nurturing.
So what do the boys get? Trains and dinosaurs, technology and science.
More dinosaurs. ALL the dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs and space travel.
Science and computer tech.
Action, sport, coolness!
Baby boys get predators, baby girls get prey animals.
In high street shops it& #39;s just everywhere, inescapable messages for parents and children about how boys are expected to behave one way and girls another, how their interests *have* to be different. Don& #39;t tell me this doesn& #39;t in the end affect their career choices and earnings.
So how can this unhelpful and damaging cycle be broken? Some parents are taking matters into their own hands. They& #39;re shopping online, or designing their own clothing. They& #39;re encouraging their children to cross the floor and look in the other section.
But that puts the onus on parents and carers. What we need is for the high street shops and supermarkets to routinely stock decent children& #39;s clothes so that anyone can walk in and pick them up.
In the short term, these shops could dismantle the Boys and Girls section and mix the clothes up. That way, if a boy wanted a T shirt that said "Be kind" he wouldn& #39;t have to feel he was stepping into unfamiliar territory. No parent or grandparent would usher him away.
@Matalan, @Georgeatasda, @Primark, @Tesco, @sainsburys and all the other stores who promote this vision of girls as one thing and boys as another could literally sort this within a month.
In the longer term, store buyers need to talk to their designers and suppliers and ask for a more varied range. Because it& #39;s all the same stuff, whichever store you go in. Girls - be passive, dreamy, loving and sweet; boys - be active, assertive, tough, techy.
And could we not - I know I& #39;m asking for the moon here - could we not have a brief moratorium on flippin& #39; pink? Sometimes you look over the girls& #39; clothing section and it& #39;s like you& #39;ve got a disease of the retina.
We can fix this. We really can.
