Tag Archives: gender typing

Color Me Girly by Miz Pink

I like pink. As if that isn’t obvious as heck with me around here. I’ve always liked pink, even before I embraced my girly side. As a kid I’d pick up the pink squirt gun if there was one (purple was an acceptable subsittute) but I’d be shooting up the place with the guy whether I was the cop or the robber. I’d be sporting some pink lip gloss, but I’d be kicking butt and taking names. I’m toned down the tomboy stuff as I’ve gotten older, and found the joys of periodic dress-wearing, occasional high-heeled shoe toting and similar things.

With Mini Pink #1, I did the blue blankets and rockets and trucks and other male-friendly stuff. I did try to steer clear of the guns but then he started turning the hose attachment into a ray gun and finding sticks he could shoot the bad guys with and I just gave up trying to reign in the testosterone.

With Mini Pink #2, I avoided the pink stuff and frilly stuff because I thought if I couldn’t tone down the inherent violent play in most boys maybe it was because I had still stereotyped him with all the other “male” stuff and gender-typed him. So my little girl got trucks like he did, along with dolls. She got construction hats and tools along with princess caps and fairy wands. And she got a lot of green and yellow clothes. She’s not even in grade school yet and she’s trying to put on my makeup and wear my girly shoes and be all things feminine.

With Mini Pink #3, still just a bun in the oven, I’m just going to stop caring about it. I’m proof that a girl can be a tomboy and feminine, and I have friends who are women and are about as unfeminine as you can get and I have other friends…and a lot of relatives…who slather on every kind of makeup there is and wouldn’t be caught dead in flats. But I don’t know that we can stop our boys from being boys most of the time and our girls from being girls.

And I’m not sure we should.  I still don’t know if Mini Pink #3 will be a boy or a girl. When I find out, the kid will get probably mostly the color that “fits” the gender. At least that will cut down on people putting their feet in their mouth when the kid is still bald. I hate it when my girl got called “he.” I will do a mix of toys like I did with Mini Pink #2 but it will probably trend toward the “traditional” toys for the particular gender.

Basically, I’m putting it in God’s hands. He made us different and he gaves us whole different anatomies and hormones and crap so that we would…most of the time…turn out with certain basic gender based traits. Doesn’t men a man can’t be sensitive and a woman can’t be in charge. Doesnt mean every women will be maternalistic or every guy will by handy with the tools. But basically, we women act like women and those men act like men.

God obviously had a reason for it all. I think that people who try too hard to make their kids gender neutral or who encourage a boy to dress up in dresses (yes, I know such people) for example are just going too far the otehr direction. Just as we shouldn’t try to gender-type our kids but rather let them be who they will be…we shouldn’t be trying to de-gender or opposite-gender them either.

Let’s just raise our kids right, teach them to be good people, and instill values, and let them and God figure out how manly or girly they’ll be.