The Pink Aisle In Toy Shops

I have been putting off writing this article for years now, it all happened after my first and most disturbing encounter with the pink aisle in the local toy store with my daughter, it was so disturbing, I locked it away in the deepest recesses of my mind until recently, when I read an article on the first all-female flight, which enabled Ethiopian Airlines to make history, I think we are centuries aways from that happening here - I hope I'm wrong.

So the need to write this article came about when my daughter had a really good term at school and to reward this achievement on her part, I agreed to buy a toy of her choice. So in the store, I showed her three brilliant and cost effective options, an amazing remote controlled high performance sports car, a train set or a build your own helicopter. To my dismay, her eyes filled up with tears, "What's the matter darling?" I enquired in my best in-store only concerned parent voice. "I don't like those" came a close to tears response. "WHAT?" regaining composure, "What's not to like? This is a very realistic model, the spoiler moves and it is representative of the actual motion of this type of vehicle."

Of course this explanation was so lost on a seven year old who to my absolute dismay showed no interest whatsoever in the array of toys I was holding up. 

"So what would you like?" A big beam of light in her eyes and the biggest toothy grin followed, "I'd like a dolly." "A WHAT!" to be honest, a couple of my senses dropped off at that precise moment, the most crucial one being my hearing, "A what?" I asked again in a more measured tone. Her response was the same, measured tone, a bit like a - YOU HEARD ME CORRECTLY TONE, "I'd like a dolly."

"They don't sell dollies here." I was going to add, aren't they a thing of the past but before I could say that, I heard, 'They do mummy, this is a toy store, they sell them in the pink aisle." Cue all the lights dimming to a harsh spotlight and horror music blaring loudly in my head as we approached the pink aisle. I think my heart stopped beating a couple of times on route, my mouth went dry and my feet became heavy to the point of stopping. 

"Here mummy, here is the dolls aisle." No conceivable language can explain, convert or describe what was going on in my head at that point or even now for that matter. Who on earth decides what girls soon to be young women plays with? She then walks up to me baring a hideous concoction of toys, that wees, cries like a baby and has loads of plastic accessories, I won't even start on the nightmare that was the packaging. So the horror music still playing loudly in the shop or in my head has me flash forward to an earth drowning in pink dolly accessories. "You like that over the toys I showed you?" was all I could muster up without breaking her spirit. Or I could get this one, the latter was far worst. It was a creature that resembled a horse, with colours of the nastiest pink unimaginable because no one could have imagined that, with hair that can be combed and polished toe nails. I'd seen enough. "No way, am I buying that." I was in the midst of the deep blue sea, with horror music playing loudly in the background and something that looked like the devil in my daughter's hand.

So disconnect number one. A parent who delighted in getting power tools for toys and a little girl, totally uninterested in anything remotely cerebral to play with. I stepped back, I inhaled, I looked for a paper bag to bring my breathing back to normal. How did I get here, how did my daughter know this aisle existed when she was much younger than me and I'd never taken her down it?

The penny dropped slowly, my husband, extended family, advertising on the television, children's cartoons to list a few of the reasons. I conceded, she worked hard, most if it sheer motivation, she opted for the horse looking animal or was it the dolly, I can't remember but she has both and she plays with them like there was no tomorrow. So fast forward to this year, we are frequent visitors now to the pink aisle, my daughter isn't me, but this year, I put my foot down. During the last trip to the pink aisle, she picked up lip gloss and nail varnish - "NO WAY - PUT IT BACK!", Opps, we were in the shop, "No way, please put it back." "Why?" Long pause and a longer staring each other out competion. I lost, my daughter's eyes are very big. So I conducted an on the spot explanation. "Lets go the so called boy's toys aisle and see how many toys encourage them to change their appearance, prepare them for domestic bliss and fatherhood." With a promise, if she finds any such toys in the boy's aisle, she can have them. Needless to say, there was none, she came back empty handed.

The revelation on her face was priceless, "Why is that mummy?" "Because if you are busy being preoccupied with how you look, too busy being domesticated and too busy looking after the children, you'll have no time to change or worst case scenario, rule the world." She's still thinking about that one. I also explained to her and she totally understood, the boys toys were teaching them how to be very creative, it was preparing them to be company directors, to think spacial and strategically. It made them comfortable in their own skin and if they get it wrong, they can change the shape and continue. It made them build fast cars, fly planes and helicopters and opened up a world of endless possibilities to them. That's why I only knew of the non pink aisles.

So with the outrageous low or in some cases lack of take up of technically orientated subjects by women. Enter the latest technical toys aimed at young girls. Coded diaries, science projects that enables young women to make perfume, soaps, lipsticks and other appearance changing nonsense. None of it comes through my front door. Since our little talk, my daughter has found and built a transistor radio and a four stroke engine. We do it together and we talk nonstop as we build. 

Her first love is art - today, we sat and watched how to knit on the internet and she's happily knitting away, my house is full of the fluffy stuff and I fear I'll impale my feet on knitting needles, however, she's happy. There is loads of creativity in it and I slipped in some spatial skills along the way. She loves painting, I've invested in a really good easel that will grow with her. As a result, I'm trying to push Architecture through the back door to her but if she's not buying, I'll still love and adore her anyhow. She has been the encouragement to write this article. She knew how upset I was when I saw the lip gloss and nail varnish aimed at seven year olds. It's a minefield out there. I want my daughter to love learning, to be inquisitive and to respect and honour the positive role childhood will play in her life. I still hate the pink aisle, I think its growing and it frightens me. 

Most of the women I meet in engineering were inspired or encouraged by a male significant figure, for me was and still is my father, surprisingly enough, it was he who bought me my dolls, (they all ended up being burnt alive by my brother and I under the hot Jamaican sun. One was an experiment we saw on Mission Impossible about how magnifying glass can be used to exterminate your arch enemy. I do regret those action now, only because I saw recently how much one of those dolls went for on Flog It...If I knew then, what I know now). I know its anecdotal but could there be a possible link in all this? 

The final straw came the other day when I refused to buy anymore toys in a chocolate product, after being pestered to buy two newly branded pink and blue ones. So my son enjoyed constructing his motor bike and my daughter tossed the nasty, cheap, unimaginative bracelet through the window - cue the nightmare plastic vision in the future and a telling off for wasting my monies and polluting the earth.

Most of the female engineers I meet now aren't from this country, they are from every other country under the sun and they are highly qualified and none of them wear pink or had pink toys. There is a chronic shortage of engineers globally and I am not surprised, growing up, we had television programs that actually fed our imaginations and toys to make us dream big, we played with them for hours outside, mixing play with nature. My daughter does that with her brother, they spend hours playing and I teach him to knit and sew and she plays with his toys and they make up stories that last for days - I smile when I hear them. I am not trying to brainwash them (maybe a little, but in a positive way). I am just trying to stop them from being brainwashed by the nonsense that is being sold as childhood nowadays. Companies are busy selling off children's childhood through toys via the parents.

There have been studies conducted on primates regarding gender based toy selection - good for them, they might have been exposed to the pink aisle as well and are in need of vital therapy, or was the additives in the plastics that produced those results? Who knows? 

The second and final disconnect, she describes herself as a tomboy and that makes me laugh, I wonder if she knows what that means, coming from a tree climbing, fighting in the mud predecessor of that word, maybe this is evolution, I console myself with that thought more so than the results from the primates experiments.

Please read the article below, its full of facts and data from the experts whose profession is it to conduct valuable accessible research.

Do children's toys influence their career choices?