Pink & Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America

I came across some interesting thoughts on unisex fashion in "Looking Good", published in 1976. The author, Clara Pierre, was writing from the perspective of an industry insider observing what she expected to be permanent changes in fashion. In chapter 10 "From bralessness to unisex", she explains the connection between sexual liberation and unisex clothing as a process of increasing comfort various aspects of sexual identity and expression:

"for whatever reason, we began to feel more comfortable first with sex pure and simple, then with homosexuality and now with androgyny"

That was then and this is now, as they say. Clearly, some people thought that the culture wars over sex was over, even as it was just beginning. So, I wonder: what happened?

I read Devan Corneal's defense of gender stereotyping this morning and have been mulling it over all day. Corneal's main argument in defense of gender stereotypes is that she is following her four-year-old son's wishes, not imposing her own. The flaw in basing your beliefs about gender on your four-year-old son or daughter's world view is that it tends to be based more rigidly on stereotypes than at any other time in their lives.

But where is the harm in indulging their four-year-old fantasies about manly men and girly girls? Here's my take:

1. It encourages them to judge others according to those stereotypes. Little kids are the great enforcers of the gender rules as they see them, and they can be downright cruel to kids who don't conform. When your son hears you tell someone he is "all boy", what is he supposed to think of his playmate who isn't just like him?

2. Stereotypes encourage simplistic ways of viewing a complex world. There is a reason humans use stereotypes. They help us make quick decisions in confusing or chaotic situations. But quick decisions are not always the right ones. Which serves your child better in learning to get along with other people: simple thinking or complex thinking?

3. Many of our gender stereotypes are superficial, arbitrary and subject to change. (This is the main point of my book, Pink and Blue.) Boys 100 years ago wore pink and played with dolls. Legos used to be unisex. Field hockey is a man's game in India. Elevating stereotypes to the level of natural law is, well, silly.

4. Stereotypes depend on our believing that sex and gender are binary (either-or). To summarize the last 50 years of research on the subject, they are not. There are babies born everyday who are not clearly boys or girls on the outside, and our insides -- physical, mental and emotional -- comprise an infinite range of gender identity and expressions.

Stereotypes may be cute in a four-year-old, but think of the stereotypes of teenagers, adults and elders we see in our media. How do we feel about those? Are we equally ok with our children believing in racial stereotypes? Before you let your child embrace a stereotype, think it through.

Rebecca Hains has posted a call for chapters for a scholarly anthology about princess culture. We had a quick Twitter exchange about possibilities and somehow She-Ra popped into the conversation. If you never heard of She-Ra, Princess of Power, you were not a preschool child or the parent of a preschooler in the mid-1980s. Here's a taste:

My three-year-old daughter was heavily engaged in He-Man and She-Ra play for about a year, and owned not only She-Ra and the horse and the castle and a sick-kick or two, but also a She-Ra outfit. The later was a mix of items that were purchased (shield, sword and mask) and homemade (dress from an old slip, silk scarf turned into a cape). For a brief time, trips to the Mall were transformed into "shopping with She-Ra", as she walked a few steps behind me, narrating an imaginative adventure and waving her pink plastic sword.

So take a look at She-Ra. Consider the Playboy Playmate proportions, the girlish voice, the horse, the clothes. If you were a fan, what do you remember being so attractive about She-Ra? What impact, if any, did she have you, as a child or as a grown up? Would you be happy or appalled if your own child  fell in love with She-Ra today? Is she the mother or grandmother of the Disney Princesses? A distant cousin?

Curious minds want to know.