Dear Early Learning Centre,
What a long way you’ve come! From the halcyon days of bright, non-gender specific wooden playthings of joy to the dull two-tone tyranny of Mothercare ownership. My nephew, a bright, sociable, soon to be two-year-old is a great fan of my daughter’s tea set. You know the one, you used to make it – 3 chocolate chip cookies, 2 sugar lumps, tea bags etc. The non-gender specific one? Oh, that’s right, you don’t make such things any more. The tea set that you offer now is very – how shall we put it? – pink. Floral. Girly. Because only girls make tea, don’t they? Oh, your shops now, they move me to tears. One side of ‘blue’ stuff for the boys, and one side of ‘pink’ stuff for the girls. And when I challenge the issue, suggest that something like an organ, or a toaster, or a bike, or a paddling pool doesn’t need to come in pink or blue, but could maybe come in green, or red, or yellow, or anything that doesn’t scream ‘gender’ I am told that research proves that boys like blue and girls like pink and anyway I’m the only person with a problem and it’s a case of supply and demand! Except you can’t show me any research and a quick straw poll amongst my friends shows that I’m not the only one.
You should be ashamed, you really should. Let children be children in a multi-coloured world with multi-coloured clothes and multi-coloured toys. They’ll be pigeon-holed soon enough when they grow up.
Yours sincerely
Emma Walkers
