Published by Zabimaru on 10 Dec 2008 at 11:37 pm
Gifts for Little Girls
Christmas is coming up and I have some present woes. I’m buying presents for my four and a half-year-old niece and it is causing me to ponder a lot.
It’s not really a problem. She’s a lovely little girl and I know things that she likes. It would be easy to find something she would enjoy. But it’s hard to leave it at that because she is one of those people; she is a really girly girl.
There is a certain color scheme here
I want to respect her right to be girly. I want to respect that she likes pink dresses, stories about daft princesses in pink dresses, pink accessories and pink décor in general, make believe tea parties, play stoves and play cleaning equipment, Barbie dolls, Bratz dolls, and so on. I really should respect that. But it’s hard.
I know that she is allowed to like those things. Even though I think women who don’t adhere to feminine stereotypes are more fun, I don’t want to force them to be “manly” or anything. It is her choice and she can like pink princesses if she wants.
But at the same time I feel like maybe it isn’t her choice. Has society just convinced her that she needs to like those things? Would she perhaps enjoy other things more if she was just exposed to them?
I don’t know, and that’s where my woes originate. It’s hard to decide if I should try to initiate some sort of campaign to let her see another world; a world where women don’t have to enjoy cooking, cleaning and being pretty princesses unless they want to. In short, I’m wondering if I should give her toys meant for boys.
I’m not the only one thinking like this; my sister and I have discussed this before and she is totally with me. She thinks that there is just too much pink, too much cute and too much girly stuff in my niece’s life. We’ve talked about buying her things that don’t adhere to those stereotypes. It seems like an easy enough solution.
It seems right too. She’ll still have her pink and ultra-girly stuff; she’ll just have some non-girly stuff as well, so she can choose for herself. But on the other hand I feel like things don’t really work like that for someone that age…
I remember how it is being a child. If she gets things that aren’t what she already likes for Christmas she’ll be disappointed. She probably won’t see them as an opportunity to explore something new.
I guess I’ll have to think about it some more. I want to give her presents that she is happy with now and not just make some misdirected political statement, but at the same time I feel like I should seize the opportunity to show her a direction she might not have considered.
And of course I do realize that I’m thinking too much about it. With the attention span of a typical kid that age it probably won’t really matter in the long run.
Tags: christmas
t on 11 Dec 2008 at 10:20 pm #
maybe she is going to be the only girl in her class (or generation) that will -not- go against the stereotypes? ;-P
Zabimaru on 11 Dec 2008 at 10:44 pm #
Oh I don’t know if what you imply is true. From where I’m standing it looks like the popularity of stay-at-home-Barbies, fashion queen-Bratz, hapless pretty princesses and so on is as high as ever. Sure, there are more girls nowadays who look at other possibilities, but I do think that there are very many who just go with their assigned role.
The same is true for boys, of course. There are still as few young boys who are into cooking, Barbies and pink horses as ever :)
Helena on 13 Dec 2008 at 2:33 pm #
Why not go with something that is girly and pink outside, but has nerdy potential, like a perfume creation kid, that is really a kind of chemistry lab for kids. Or books about strong and active princesses.
I don’t really see, why it has to be an either-or-choice, why she can’t be girly AND have interests, that are conventionally considered to be manly or nerdy. It’s fun to be female and nerdy. And it’s just suitably for a complex woman to be.
Mandi on 24 Dec 2008 at 4:21 am #
I have a 5 year old nephew and he won’t touch anything pink for fear that it will give him girl germs.
faith on 08 Jul 2009 at 8:29 am #
LEGOS. I was absolutely repulsed by them but Legos has had girly-colored Legos for at least 10 years now. Pinks and pastels, little sets with girls that have more elaborate plastic ponytails and pouty lips instead of generic smiles, that sort of thing. So she’d be building, do all that amazing constructive Lego stuff, but in her favorite colors.
Also, blues and purples are great at feeling girly but giving a welcome break from all the pink everywhere.