On our kitchen wall are photos of our two daughters as a toddler and a baby. The older one is in navy blue and dark green, the younger in a red-and-blue checked shirt and cute little red trousers. Only the other day, our 18-year-old asked, “Why did you dress us as boys when we were little, Mum?
The answer is that I didn’t. I just dressed them as children. When our daughters were little, Babygros came in white, pale blue, yellow, lilac, red, navy and, yes, pale pink. But there was no pressure to put the girls in pink. In fact, most of their baby clothes were hand-me-downs from their male cousins and no-one even noticed.
It is only in the past decade or so that saccharine pink girliness has spread through Britain like the Ebola virus. These days, most babywear websites have a girl
and a boy
section in which not just the clothes but the bibs, booties and blankets are colour-coded. (Kudos to Mothercare, which allows babies to be unisex
up to the age of one.) And the virus has spread to toys, too. If you’ve done any Christmas shopping for children this year, you’ll have seen the floor-to-ceiling walls of sickening pink fluffiness in the girls’ section and all the fun action and adventure toys in the boys’ — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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