Oh, the horror. The raspberry-tinted, bubblegum-scented horror. Looking at my four-year-old daughter’s Christmas presents, I realized that I have betrayed all my ideals – well, at least the ones I hadn’t sold earlier this decade. She is getting a doll house, a book about fairies, and some abomination that involves princess stickers. (I hope she’s not reading this – but then she usually sticks to Barbie’s Sparkly Rainbow Pony Adventure on weekdays.)
Yes, I bought the presents, and now I’m ashamed, especially in light of the new Pinkstinks campaign which urges British parents to boycott excessively girly toys for their children, and to resist purchasing gifts and clothes in that insipid colour (beloved of little girls, and generally loathed by their mothers, who were themselves consigned to a wardrobe of hand-me-down orange acrylic sweaters and brown cords.)
On one level the campaign, founded by London sisters Abi and Emma Moore, is about the tyranny of pink, but more importantly it’s about widening the world view for girls and giving them role models apart from pop stars and reality TV contestants. Among the statistics in the PinkStinks arsenal are these: one-third of girls in the UK chose Victoria Beckham as their greatest influence, and one-half of girls between the ages of five and eight want to be thinner. I’ll bet Emily Davison’s glad she threw in front of herself in front of that horse.
Predictably, the Pinkstinks campaign has a large segment of the British public harrumphing into their Horlicks: “What’s the country come to! Political correctness gone mad! Fetch my quill, I must dash off a letter to the newspaper.”
It’s even become a mini political kerfuffle, with the Labour Justice Minister, Bridget Prentice, who supports the campaign, saying it’s crucial to “challenge [girls] to fulfil their potential." In return, the Daily Telegraph branded Ms. Prentice a “humourless feminist.” (What, did they forget how to spell “hairy-legged?”) A former Tory minister (male) branded the campaign “absolute rubbish.”
Ow, humourless. That one really hurts (or how else would it have maintained its popularity for three decades?) The only thing worse is being branded a fe … a fe … a feminist. There! I typed it. And my fingernails didn’t even fall off.
