Jinjer 45: First a Preacher then a Seminarian

[Carm_88]

I've gone through all stages in life style wise. My parents dressed me in dresses most days as a kid because strangers called me a little boy when I was in my male cousin's hand me downs. I was bald for years, then my hair came in and my mother kept cutting it short because she didn't want to deal with it. By the time I hit puberty, I had no idea how to dress myself, so I went with jeans and tshirts. Stuck with that for a while, and have been moving about and experimenting ever since.

I can do just about anything in a dress/skirt and tights that I can do in jeans. I'm the same person throughout it all, the style just changes and it's fun. Dress how you like and if anyone has a problem with it remind them that you didn't get up this morning to make them happy, you got up and dressed to make yourself happy!

[Abstract]

I honestly think that the genderfication of products is a marketing tool. It’s gotten better in the last 5 years, but when my kids were little, I had the hardest time finding anything that was neutral so that I could pass it from my girls to my boy: sleeping bags, bikes, helmets, water bottles, backpacks, all were clearly intended for a boy or a girl. 

[Rachel333]

3 hours ago, Mama Mia said:

I just really, really wish they didn’t genderfy kids toys to such an extreme degree. It has gotten so much more extreme in some ways than back in the dark ages when I was a kid. I was, and am, an extremely girly-girl. I liked dresses and the traditional home arts ( I could do a 1,000 word rant on how neglected / dismissed those are! ) 

I also played with legos and Lincoln Logs. And climbed trees. And when I was little the boys played house and kitchen with the girls. I never thought of any of those things as particularly “boy” or “girl” or “consciously gender neutral” - but now - it seems like EVERYTHING is grouped that way in the toy aisles, on the boxes, in the advertising. 

You're right, it really has gotten worse. Here's an article about it from last year.

An excerpt:

Quote

She examined advertisements and labelled them as explicitly gendered (“every little girl loves dolly”), implicitly gendered (through words like “fireman” or “mother,” and later, the use of pink and blue), or not gendered.

Sweet discovered that toys are more divided by gender today than they have been at any point in history — a swell that occurred, paradoxically, as western society made significant strides toward gender equality. Even in the 1950s, when many toys were designed to prepare girls for a life of homemaking and boys for future careers in the industrial economy, more than half of the toy advertisements she examined were gender neutral.

In the 1970s, at the height of the second-wave feminist movement, Sweet found a significant shift: explicit gender-based advertising was almost nonexistent, seen in less than 2 per cent of ads in the 1975 Sears catalogue, and implicit advertising had decreased to 31 per cent. But by 1995, the overall percentage of gendered advertising had rebounded to levels seen in mid-century.

What happened between 1975 and 1995? Sweet attributes the regression to a few factors. Regulations in the U.S. television industry enacted in the 1970s to protect children from advertising were dismantled by the Reagan administration in 1984. This move allowed the toy industry to create television shows that essentially served as advertisements for their products — My Little Pony, G.I. Joe, Care Bears.

Advancements in market research told toy companies that advertising directly to children, rather than their parents, and to boys and girls separately, would be more lucrative. Over time, the segmenting of the market into “boy” and “girl” categories became the defining feature of toys.

“The ripple effects of these monumental 1980s-era marketing changes are evident today,” Rebecca Hains, a professor of advertising and media studies at Salem State University, wrote in an op-ed in the Boston Globe. “Now, once classically gender-neutral toys are produced in ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ versions: Radio Flyer Wagons, Tinkertoys, Mega Bloks, Fisher-Price stacking rings, and everything in between come in ‘pinkwashed’ varieties, in hopes that families with children of each sex will buy twice the toys.”

At the same time, Sweet says, a cultural backlash against feminism was gaining momentum and the theory that men and women are equal but inherently different — think Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus in 1992 — began to take hold, which favoured preference over oppression as the reason women gravitated toward certain career and domestic roles.

By the early 2000s, when Sweet became a parent, gender had become the primary way of marketing toys.

“And not just gender,” she says, “but really deep stereotypes about gender. It’s not just that they’re marketing to girls, but that they’re marketing to a vision of girls as very interested in beauty and fashion, and boys as being very active and industrious, to the exclusion of all other types of interests and characteristics.”

Traditional gender roles seen in toy advertisements in the first half of the 20th century — girls as future homemakers, boys as career men — began to morph into fantasy gender roles.

“So you see the princess and the superhero emerge,” says Sweet, now an assistant professor of sociology at San Jose State University. “Ultimately it’s the same stereotypes and ideas about gender that are underneath those gender roles.” The same focus on beauty and domesticity. “But instead of being realistic,” she says, “they’re cloaked in fantasy.”

 

 

[Rachel333]

Here's an article on clothing too. It's interesting that differences between men's and women's clothing -- men's clothing being generally sturdier and more practical while women's clothing tends to be thin and tight and have fewer or more shallow pockets -- are also often found between boys' and girls' clothing. And with children you don't even have the reason that they have differently shaped bodies to explain the difference in cuts.

Quote

Though designs obviously vary from brand to brand, experts say that overall, the gender discrepancies in kids’ clothes are very real.

“Especially in the toddler years, the boys have more pockets, they have more fun active clothes than the girls,” said Francesca Sammaritano, a children’s wear designer and assistant professor of fashion at Parsons School of Design. “There’s leg room for bending your knees.”

The differences in cut — boxier for boys, narrower and more revealing for girls — have nothing to do with differences in children’s frames. Designers even use the same dress forms for both genders, Ms. Sammaritano said. “The body is the same, size-wise. You’re growing and developing in the same way until you reach six years, more or less.”

 

Quote

The gender divisions are a relatively new thing, said Jo Paoletti, a fashion scholar and author of “Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys From the Girls in America.”

“All you have to do is look at the last 30 years of consumer culture for children to see these stereotypes coming out more and more,” she told me. One reason, she said, is the rise in the 1990s of third-wave feminism, which embraced traditionally feminine looks; another is the prevalence of tests that let parents find out a child’s sex before birth, and have led to the trend of holding gender-reveal parties in pregnancy.

“Parents started reacting to that,” Ms. Paoletti said. “But all it means is, it prepares you to buy all the stuff — and prepares you mentally to be able to raise a human being — according to cultural stereotypes.”

A more insidious reason: With declining birthrates, clothing manufacturers have been hungry for ways to keep sales up. “If you can figure out a way to make it harder for people to share or hand down clothes, you’re going to do it,” Ms. Paoletti said.

 

I particularly agree with that last point. I think companies' desires to sell as much as possible is probably the biggest reason why toys and clothing are more gendered than ever.

[Knight of Ni]

I recently saw an episode on Shark Tank that really frustrated me. Two Engineering Masters students from MIT created toys where you could use engineering to design different rooms in a house. It looked really cool in fact I would buy it for myself. It was geared towards girls but looked gender neutral. One of the sharks passed on it because you look at the packaging and can’t tell right away that it’s for girls. I couldn’t believe it. Mark Cuban eventually chose to invest as long as they showed his two daughters around the company. He got what they were trying to do but this other woman did not. That was totally the point of this company, to design toys for girls that introduced them to science and weren’t the stereotypical “girlie toys”. 

[Iamtheway]

On 10/19/2018 at 10:37 PM, louisa05 said:

There is no phrase to designate a male child as too male. No one frets about a boy being a "boyish boy". Because nothing in our culture punishes or denigrates the "boyish boy". 

I spend the majority of my days in elementary schools. Boys are dressed in about four colors (and their non-pastel variations) at all times. Girls are dressed in every color under the rainbow.

In Sweden I would say that the girly girl and the boyish boy are equally fretted about. I would hate for Miniway to feel forced in to the very narrow masculine gender role. It feels like there is a change going on where you’re more free to be a little inbetween. But it’s a slow one. 

Last week Miniway came home and told me only boys can be astronauts. And then we watched ten youtube videos of females in space. 

8 hours ago, Ali said:

My daughter loves science. Not too long ago I saw a cute shirt that had something about loving science and a kid in a lab coat. It was clearly a boy in the lab coat. There was no girl version. I was hoping to find a version with a kid in a lab coat that looks like a girl. My daughter would have loved it. I did find some girl shirts on the same rack with stereotypical girl stuff on them.

I recommend A Mighty Girl. I follow them on facebook and they write about interesting women and have lots of tips on books and clothes and toys for girls. Often about science.

https://www.amightygirl.com/

[Shadoewolf]

Eh the 12 stores I can deal with and honestly she won't be able to drive at that point so not a lot of choice in the matter there. Also my kids school has an obscenely strict dress code for events and most formal gowns are not able to be returned (except at Macy's, I love them!!) so if Middle picks something that isn't appropriate it's likely she'd be stuck with a dress she couldn't wear. 

[DundeeUnFundie]

Something I find really interesting is that traditionally boys wore pink clothing. IIRC, it was because pink was considered to be the younger version of red, which was a 'manly' colour, and even as late as the fifties, children wore more white/blue/yellow than they wore pink and red. In medieval times, both young boys and young girls wore short skirts and dresses as baby clothes until they were considered old enough to wear adult clothing, with this tradition still somewhat influential in how the English royal family choose to dress Prince George (in socks and shorts) for a more traditional/younger look.

It's just a bit surprising to me that in a fundie setting, which is very focused on traditional gender roles, they have insisted on giving their children the blue/pink divide when that's a fairly recent fashion change.

[just_ordinary]

3 hours ago, Shadoewolf said:

Eh the 12 stores I can deal with and honestly she won't be able to drive at that point so not a lot of choice in the matter there. Also my kids school has an obscenely strict dress code for events and most formal gowns are not able to be returned (except at Macy's, I love them!!) so if Middle picks something that isn't appropriate it's likely she'd be stuck with a dress she couldn't wear. 

Sorry to ask- but why does she have to drive? Can she not just hit the mall or go into town (depending on your area)? And doesn’t she know the dress code? I mean she must have experienced it in school and has probably seen what older classes wore. I am confused....

[Shadoewolf]

The closest mall with the right stores is 37 miles away. And no on the dress code because A: she will only be a freshman. They don't do dances at her middle school. And B: the school just got a new vice principal last year who changed the dress code to the monstrosity it is now. My daughters also have two very different body types so what worked for the older one isn't going to be anywhere close to working for this kiddo.  

I will dutifully go and be supportive, don't get me wrong! Doesn't mean in my head I won't be wishing to be curled up on the couch with the puppy instead.

[Mama Mia]

17 hours ago, Knight of Ni said:

I recently saw an episode on Shark Tank that really frustrated me. Two Engineering Masters students from MIT created toys where you could use engineering to design different rooms in a house. It looked really cool in fact I would buy it for myself. It was geared towards girls but looked gender neutral. One of the sharks passed on it because you look at the packaging and can’t tell right away that it’s for girls. I couldn’t believe it. Mark Cuban eventually chose to invest as long as they showed his two daughters around the company. He got what they were trying to do but this other woman did not. That was totally the point of this company, to design toys for girls that introduced them to science and weren’t the stereotypical “girlie toys”. 

Awful that the investor wouldn’t pick a great product just because you couldn’t tell it was targeted for girls! Along those same lines - I get really frustrated with the number of newer STEM toys that very specifically say “ for girls” with all the packaging - marketing, even labeling, being very exclusive. 

I get that they are trying to get more girls interested in STEM fields ( although it can get to the point of valuing the traditionally masculine over the traditionally feminine ....arrghhh) . But it’s very annoying. Some of it - like GoldieBlox, are activities that would be great for boys OR girls, or sibling sets, but the Girlzzz Rule, Boys Drool vibe is very off-putting. I don’t get how that helps sales, at all.

[justoneoftwo]

1 hour ago, Mama Mia said:

Awful that the investor wouldn’t pick a great product just because you couldn’t tell it was targeted for girls! Along those same lines - I get really frustrated with the number of newer STEM toys that very specifically say “ for girls” with all the packaging - marketing, even labeling, being very exclusive. 

I get that they are trying to get more girls interested in STEM fields ( although it can get to the point of valuing the traditionally masculine over the traditionally feminine ....arrghhh) . But it’s very annoying. Some of it - like GoldieBlox, are activities that would be great for boys OR girls, or sibling sets, but the Girlzzz Rule, Boys Drool vibe is very off-putting. I don’t get how that helps sales, at all.

I'm sure it does help sales but I think it hurts our little boys it's not PC to say but being a boy mom in Liberal America is hard. I told her to school with my son and ask the science teacher if they had separate classes for boys and girls as all the kids in the class we saw we're girl. She ranted about how good girls are at science. That wasn't the question and it turned out the kids were just in there at recess which is great but with that attitude maybe that's why only girls came into science class at recess. No one thinks about the fact that you that may harmful to half the population. Boys are falling behind in school and while it's great to encourage girls maybe we should consider the fact that boys falling behind is a problem too

[Lizzybet]

23 hours ago, Elvis Presby said:

As a side note: Since I am 8% Italian I have decided that Nonna will be my grandmother name.  First grandchild (boy) is due in 7 weeks!

I’m 39.7% Italian, and my grandchildren call me Nonna. But, if I were 0% Italian, I’d still have chosen to be called Nonna. I just love the way it sounds!

[Rachel333]

2 hours ago, justoneoftwo said:

No one thinks about the fact that you that may harmful to half the population. Boys are falling behind in school and while it's great to encourage girls maybe we should consider the fact that boys falling behind is a problem too

Eh, I see people talk about this all the time. A lot of the same people who assume that when women are underrepresented in certain areas it's the result of innate sex differences think that now boys are being discriminated against, and even that it's girls' fault somehow when boys underachieve. From what I've read, it's not that boys are doing worse than in the past (they've actually improved on a number of measures), it's more that girls and women are doing really well. 

Here's an article arguing that the crisis isn't really what it is portrayed to be.

Quote

But the truth is far different from what these accounts suggest. The real story is not bad news about boys doing worse; it's good news about girls doing better.

In fact, with a few exceptions, American boys are scoring higher and achieving more than they ever have before. But girls have just improved their performance on some measures even faster. As a result, girls have narrowed or even closed some academic gaps that previously favored boys, while other long-standing gaps that favored girls have widened, leading to the belief that boys are falling behind.

There's no doubt that some groups of boys — particularly Hispanic and black boys and boys from low-income homes — are in real trouble. But the predominant issues for them are race and class, not gender. Closing racial and economic gaps would help poor and minority boys more than closing gender gaps, and focusing on gender gaps may distract attention from the bigger problems facing these youngsters.

If people want to focus on boys I think that's great but I don't like to see people frame girls' achievements as an attack against boys, as is unfortunately common.

[Chickenbutt]

On ‎10‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 1:45 PM, JordynDarby5 said:

Your right about that. I wish you weren't but you are. Once he starts school it will be a losing battle. My nephew before he went to preschool he loved Dora the Explorer and Frozen. He watched them all the time. Sang the songs. He loved both shows. Until he got to preschool and was told by other boys that boys don't like Dora the Explorer or Frozen, those are girl shows. We all tried to convince him to ignore that crap and there was nothing wrong with liking either show. His dad, mom, grandparents, I tried really hard. But nope. He doesn't like them now because he things boys aren't suppose to. It sucks two things got ruined because other boys got it into their head that boys aren't suppose to like them. Only girls do. I want him to like and do things he wants or wear what he wants because its what he likes, he wants to do and he likes to wear and not because of anyone else's idea of what he should like, want and wear because he's a boy. 

I know I am a little late to this discussion, but what no one is mentioning (as far as I can see, I may have missed it) is peer pressure. These kids at aged 5 and 6 don't have the skills to defend their choices. They are still babies. They are learning to navigate the social structure of school and people outside of their family units. They are seeing and hearing things from others that they have never heard before. It is a confusing time for them. This year they don't like Frozen or Dora, next year all girls will have cooties. Your little guy might still like Frozen and Dora, but he has  learned that it's not okay within his circle of friends. Kids this age just want to fit in. These are lessons that kids must learn to navigate and the 5 year old brain is just not equipped to go against the flow. Keep reinforcing the life lessons of being who you are, and when he is a bit more mature, he will remember them and eventually have the skills to stand up for his choices. 

I have no scientific basis for this, but it is simply my experience. I could be completely off base. 

As to clothing, I think that the current style of any given year is what drives style choices. When my boys were growing up, it was neon. Neon, pink, neon orange, neon green. We laugh at the pictures now, but if you look at photos of birthday parties, all the little boys are dressed in pink, orange, yellow, lime green, electric blue etc. It was "the thing" of the times. 

[PennySycamore]

2 hours ago, Lizzybet said:

I’m 39.7% Italian, and my grandchildren call me Nonna. But, if I were 0% Italian, I’d still have chosen to be called Nonna. I just love the way it sounds!

My sister who is 0% Italian decided to be called Nonna after her daughter spent a semester in Italy.  Or maybe, it was her daughter that decided that.  I got my grandma name from Charmed.

[PlentyOfJesusFishInTheSea]

On 10/17/2018 at 6:26 AM, JordynDarby5 said:

 Northern Finland/Russia. T

I see someone else has mentioned that Sami people have interesting DNA and can sometimes look "Native American-ish." The epicanthic folds are an adaption to bright light reflecting off ice/snow in the Arctic.

A little more in depth if you're interested: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/the-men-of-the-north-the-sami/#.W84gZvZRfIU

[VelociRapture]

@Elvis Presby Just a head’s up - kids are really good at picking the names that they want to call their grandparents by, regardless of what Grandma or Grandpa may want. My MIL just experienced that with my daughter. 

[Rachel333]

Yep, I wasn't even the first grandchild and I still accidentally gave my grandmother the name that all her grandchildren now call her by.

[keen23]

1 hour ago, Rachel333 said:

Yep, I wasn't even the first grandchild and I still accidentally gave my grandmother the name that all her grandchildren now call her by.

I was the 4th, and called my grandfather Pop. Everyone else up to that point called him Gramps. Pop wound up sticking. Weirdly, my husband calls his father Pop.

[Elvis Presby]

1 hour ago, VelociRapture said:

@Elvis Presby Just a head’s up - kids are really good at picking the names that they want to call their grandparents by, regardless of what Grandma or Grandpa may want. My MIL just experienced that with my daughter. 

My mom decided on Grandmama for her grandmother name. She persisted and was patient in pronouncing it to my oldest.  We always call her that when talking to the kids about her.  Mine all call her Grandmama.  My sister's son calls her Grandmama too.  As babies and toddlers they didn't say it correctly, but over time they learned to say it.  My step-brothers kids all call my mom Nanny.  She hated it at first, but seems OK with it, 19 years later.  ?

 

My 2nd daughter is named Miranda.  When my 3rd came along he called her ME-mo when he first started trying to say her name.  He adapted a little and called her DEE-da for a couple of years.  He finally could say it right when he was 4 or so.  She is grown and married now, about to be a mom herself.  She still answers to Dee-da.  ?

[VelociRapture]

15 minutes ago, Elvis Presby said:

My 2nd daughter is named Miranda.  When my 3rd came along he called her ME-mo when he first started trying to say her name.  He adapted a little and called her DEE-da for a couple of years.  He finally could say it right when he was 4 or so.  She is grown and married now, about to be a mom herself.  She still answers to Dee-da.  ?

Awwww!!! That’s so adorable!!!

[Satan'sFortress]

Personally, I am glad that I grew up in the 1970s--where there was a huge push for gender-neutral toys, thanks to the feminist movement.  I never gave it a thought until I was in college in the 1980s and learned about it in a sociology class.  In the early 80s, it all went the other way--super gendered toys.

An interesting article about it for those inclined.  In quote, bold mine

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/toy-gender-bias-through-the-years

Quote

It turns out that the golden age of non-gendered toys was the early '70s, thanks to second-wave feminism and the rising number of women in the workplace. "In the Sears catalog ads from 1975, less than 2 percent of toys were explicitly marketed to either boys or girls," Sweet notes. Plus, after looking at many ads from that decade, Sweet found that most advertisements would break down gender stereotypes, showing girls playing doctors, carpenters, and scientists.

But somehow, that all fell away: 1984 saw an increase in the use of gender in marketing, and by 1995, some 50% of the toys in the Sears' catalog were separated out by gender, according to Sweet.

Also, re: skirts while playing sports, all I can think about is the poor women who had to wear them to play baseball in the Girls' Baseball League ala  "A League of Their Own"  Seemed very painful to me watching them slide!!

Spoiler

 

[SapphireSlytherin]

1 hour ago, Elvis Presby said:

My mom decided on Grandmama for her grandmother name.

My mother wanted to be Grandmama. Insisted on it. Called herself that, when she was talking to my daughter. One day, while we were visiting my parents, GryffindorDisappointment went down the hall and yelled: "ME-ME" and my mom went running. And that's how my mom got her grandmother name.

[Shadoewolf]

My kids call my ex's parents Mana (pronounced Mun-na) and Papa per Oldest not being able to pronounce anything else so that stuck. My grandmother was Grannie to me, and after she passed my mom insisted on that title with my kids, which they didn't mind. Hubby's parents Grandma (name) and Grandpa (name). It works.