Pink: A Color or Barrier

As a child, I grew up with the concept that some things were specifically for girls and others for boys. Even so, girls could use “boy things” like wear jeans and play with “boy toys”, but it was wrong for a boy to use girl toys or wear anything girly; a girl could play with Lego bricks and drive Tonka trucks into the sand box but boys could not put on a pink paste crown and twirl like a dancer. I started playing football at six and there were a few girls on the same teams as me throughout the years. They were not big, tough girls like it would be assumed and actually grew up to be very beautiful women despite playing football when they were young. In my house, boys playing with girl things was not really an issue as I grew up with older and younger brothers so there was not exactly exposure to pink paste tiaras. Most of the time my brothers and I would hang out with our cousins who were also boys and we grew up always playing with toys like the Power Rangers and wore typical boys clothes. My cousins, older brother and I were not very far apart in age but my younger brother was three years my junior so he did not really fit in the group. I do not think my brother was like the boys who want to wear skirts and dresses like the guys in “Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?” by Jan Hoffman or “What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress” by Ruth Padawer, because he never wanted to dress like a girl but he did have an Easy Bake Oven. He asked for it for Christmas and from then on he would ask for more and more food accessories and devices from cotton candy machines to a shave ice machine, but it all started with that little pink toy. I do not think he is a gender-variant but that could just be that I do not want him to be. I am not trying to offend gender fluid children but life is easier if you conform to typical gender rules.

Does a pink and white Easy Bake Oven make my little brother girly or does it show that he just likes to cook? In the “Toys Start the Gender Equality Rift” article by Katrin Bennhold, color codes are in all toys and pink is the absolute color for girls. That oven's pink color makes it seem like only women should cook but the profession is dominated by males. Bennhold suggests that if they recolor the toys it could be a good step towards getting rid of the gender specific toy problem (3). Laura Nelson, a neuroscientist explains, “Girls’ toys are often about beauty and the home, while toys for boys are mostly about being active, building things and having adventures” (qtd in Bennhold 1). So it is not just the color that can be noticed but also the fact that the girl toys are pink dress up clothes, ovens, and baby dolls while boy toys are blue trucks, Lego bricks, and balls.

So is that the problem society has with men who like to cook or do home or beauty things, that it is things only women should be interested in? There is even talk about how there are “‘female’ and ‘male’ professions” (Bennhold 1) but cooking is actually a male profession, while women are expected to cook in the home.  It has become increasingly easier for a woman to join a male profession as it has actually been encouraged due to the feminist movement. On the other hand the slightest mention of a male entering into a profession considered strictly female is mocked and judged heavily. Bennhold explains that “breaking down the stereotype of the caring female also means making space for the caring male,” (3). It just seemed in my childhood that girls were the waitresses, nurses, and mothers, while boys could become fire fighters, police officers, and even astronauts; that was simply the norm. I was never told that becoming a cop was only a guy thing to do but it just seemed that most of the police officers I came in contact with were men. This was just one of those unspoken gender rules that I never really thought about until now. I am sure everyone remembers those picture books that showed nurses, fire fighters, and even chiefs, presenting a nurse as female and a fire fighters as male,, but in real life both professions are for both genders.

My whole life I really did not think too much about kids who were gender confused or homosexual, but Hoffman explains that these people have to deal with so many problems at school and a big one is the dress code (1). In my high school most kids wore what they wanted, the only real time the dress code came into play was when girls’ skirts were too short. This is not to say everyone stuck to the dress code as some gender fluid and homosexual kids wore furry tails and collars with leashes, though I do not know if that is why they wore such things. The principal never really seemed to care (at least that is what it seemed to me), but he could have been staying silent for a good reason. Hoffman explains about principals that, for the good of the students, implement dress codes to “protect a student from harassment or harassment itself” (4). I guess kids do not technically have the right to wear what they want even if it goes along with the dress codes of their school.

Fortunately, there were not any camps that emphasized dress wearing or how kids should or should not dress where I grew up.  Those boys Padawer considers to be “gender-nonconforming children” (3) should go to a summer camp so they can be with people that are just like them. This, to me, seems to be a little off. I mean it is like segregating them to their own place, hiding them from the world, and keeping other people not like them from understanding who and what they are. I would think the kids would feel uncomfortable, like they are being pointed out for their differences and shipped off to where only people like them go so no one has to be near them. It just seems to be part of the problem rather than a movement toward a solution. A solution is tough to think of, though, because for so long people thought one way and to change the way an entire society thinks and functions is not a simple task. If only people could worry only about themselves instead of what others do.

Essentially, Hoffman and Bennhold suggest that, as a society, people should not look at gender with such importance as people do now. Before “Toys Start the Gender Equality Rift” and “Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School,” I believed that everything was fine and that girls and boys enjoyed what they did. However, I have come to understand that so many people feel constricted by these so called gender rules and are conflicted on how to function within the confines of them.