Thursday 17 April 2014

16

Calling All Kids: Stars and Stripes (and Soapboxes)

Calling All Kids

I'm really, super excited to be posting for Alida Makes's Calling All Kids Series today!  This is a series about breaking down stereotypes about 'what girls like' and 'what boys like' and instead celebrates kids' individual likes and unisex design.

Calling All Kids

The 'gendering' of childhood is a subject very close to my heart and actually one of the reasons I started this business.  I'm so tired of (and angry about!) the marketing of toys, books, fashions, etc on a gender divide.  At its most explicit we get divisions in shops or the labelling of toys and books with 'For Boys' and 'For Girls', but more pervasive are the assumptions made about kids based on their gender.  That all girls like pink, or princesses, or makeup, or domestic play based on cleaning one's house; that all boys like blue, or sports, or dinosaurs and diggers, or messy play (they're just noise with dirt, amirite?!) or aggression based play.  Insidious messages that tie identity to gender and provide a nebulous framework of the 'right' and 'wrong' ways to be girls or boys damage both genders.

Calling All Kids

I admit that I've found (and find) this a really hard part of being a mother to a daughter, particularly a daughter that identifies with more 'girly' interests than I ever have.  I was considered a 'tomboy' growing up, and had little interest in dolls or princess narratives- instead I was heavily involved in various sports and preferred construction-based play like building forts in the woods or obstacle courses in the garden.  I'm not going to shame or discourage her (you like what you like!) for wanting to play princesses, or bedazzling jewellery boxes, or the million apps about applying makeup that she always wants but I am going to call her out for linking it to her gender.

Calling All Kids

Even as a toddler Maia would verbalise so many 'boys are' / 'girls are' tropes and gender stereotypes that I found it a mixture of terrifying and hilarious in a funny-not-funny way.  I joked to a friend once that I should've named her Patriarchy for all the things she said: from girls don't like science, to boys are better at sports, to telling me I should always wear makeup because I looked prettier with it.  Those millions of tiny messages are getting through, and at a younger age than I expected.

Calling All Kids

It's intense, and it's ongoing, but we've come a long way.  One of my proudest mum-moments was when she and a friend were looking at magazines and the friend said, 'This is a magazine for girls' and Maia said, 'That's a magazine for people who like princesses'.

Calling All Kids

I've spoken about this many a time before, but my mum is an all-around bad*ss and inspiration.  She sews, she's an amazing knitter, she makes glorious stained-glass, she does woodwork, makes furniture- you name it, she can do it.  She officially retired this year, so obviously she's relaxing and enjoying her down-time by building a second house in their upper lot.  Her mum / my grandma was also a bad*ss and Maker of All Things (her furniture making in particular was amazing), and could often be found hauling around huge rocks and building stone walls until she was almost 80.  One of my favourite memories of her was when I was enlisted as a teenager to help her stack a huge pile of wood that had been delivered and despite being in her seventies and all of 4'10" she was OMG SO COMPETITIVE about being faster than me.  A couple of years ago me and my mum were chopping a tree down for Christmas, lying on our stomachs in the snow with a crosscut saw, and she said her mum would be smiling down on us.  Women doing it our own bad selves.

Calling All Kids

So we sat down last weekend and I told Maia about the Calling All Kids series and showed her some of the projects that people had made for it.  We got a notebook out and made a big list of all the things she'd heard about the differences between boys and girls.  She helped pick out the fabrics, and we brainstormed about what kind of outfit would break down bias and appeal universally.  Blue and green- check, star print- check, sporty- check.

Calling All Kids

The top is a unisex Dolman tee shirt with shoulder princess seams and contrasting striped side panels.

Calling All Kids

The shorts have a yoga waistband for comfort and allow a lot of freedom for movement.  I also made some knee socks (which I should've made a couple inches taller in hindsight because the stripes don't have much vertical stretch).  An outfit for movement and action, not a outfit for adornment.  Phew, a bit of a novel for a quite simple outfit!

Calling All Kids

The tl;dr version: gender is not identity.  Maia might like a tonne of things society associates with female-ness (and that's okay) but she should never be limited or defined by it.  For every dress or skirt that I make her, for every princess-print I might use, I'll make her a dozen of these more gender-neutral pieces.  Be strong, be confident, be without limits.


16 comments:

  1. cool! My daughter would prefer it in dinosaur fabric! she loves dresses but i think thats so she can go to the loo quicker so she can get back to helping worms out and building them houses! she says lots of things about makeup and i always tell her beauty comes from the inside. i think she has some 'girly' friends at school :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. what a beautiful and interesting read. thanks for sharing so much about you and your family!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am with you on this. I have 6 children total I am not going into details with every single one, but I am going to point out my twin girls....they are identical twins, just to throw that in, one is the "prissy type", she loves dress up, dresses, pretty hair, sparkles, dancing, she plays loves to play mama hen etc., her counterpart is the complete opposite, she wants to wear sweats and shirts, normally fights me to the teeth on dresses or skirts, tennis shoes not sandals, loves to play ball (specially basecall/TBall), she will get down and dirty when playing outside, no ribbons in her hair. I embrace both their sides, one has long hair the other a bob haircut, one mostly wears dresses/skirts etc., the other pants and tshirts. One funny fact thou, they both have "their" color. That was kind of how we were able to tell them apart as newborns and it just kind of stuck...the girly one has purple the tomboy has pink (irony in that).

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is actually a very interesting post, as I have been brainstorming a similar one. I am also not very girly, nor is my daughter. It is so difficult to find her clothes that aren't covered in glitter and Barbie pink. She prefers her older brother's hand me downs, go figure. We try very hard in my house to break down gender stereotypes if they arise, but since we have believed in the philosophy that gender is not an identity from the beginning it hasn't been much of a problem. My son sometimes wants to wear nail polish and tutus, but he also has a nice collection of dinosaur shirts. My daughter has quite the pink and purple clothing collection (all hand me downs from a friend) that she wears without issue, but her favorite item of clothing is a pair of soccer shorts that my sister brought home from Ireland for my son several years ago. All things are possible, and you are allowed to like what you like!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love everything about this. The outfit is awesome! We are currently struggling with battling those messages with my 3 year old daughter that attends preschool. She has a wide variety of interests but does like girly things and has started coming home saying things like "Pink is for girls" "Superman is for boys" We have discussed but I've struggled to put it into something simple that can be used often and easily understood by a 3 year old. I am totally stealing 'That's a magazine for people who like princesses" Perfectly succinct and effective. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yay, a topic dear to my heart. Kudos to you for doing something about it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Very interesting read, and I agree with you as well. My 4 year old will oftentimes make comments like "boys like this" "girls like" and I find it weird that she picks these things up at such a young age! I know part of is because she's basing it on what she sees around her (I can't drive so she'll say only boys drive, things like that). She likes princessy things but honestly her favourite cartoons are the non-princess ones. She likes nailpolish and her pretend makeup but she'll also go out and dig in the yard (with her hands!) and jump in puddles and play with worms. She likes to play with her babies and her kitchen stuff but also has her cars and trucks. I encourage it all. My nephew, who is 3, is very 'boy' and likes spiderman and superheros (he goes to daycare so I think that's where he picks up a lot of it) but he's also very loving and likes to play with dolls and kitchen stuff and wears nailpolish too.
    It does bother me how hard it is to buy girl clothing that isn't pink or covered in princesses. When I had the baby shower for my first, we made the mistake of finding out the sex and letting people know. Everything was pink! arg. (I'm not a fan of pink although I am wearing a pink shirt right now, haha)
    I think the important thing is doing what you're doing and discussing the stereotypes with her. Love the outfit you made!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I love the outfit you came up with! And I love everything you wrote about it, too! Great insight!

    ReplyDelete
  9. This is so beautifully articulated - I loved reading it! I agree on all points, being of the woods fort-building ilk, myself. :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. This is great - love that outfit! I think that the gender bias thing is so insidious that I don't even think about it any more. I have a boy and a girl like you and my girl is a tomboy who enjoys jewellery and dresses whilst climbing trees with the agility of a monkey. My boy is a terrier natured wee man who will often cut your throat with his pirate cutlass whilst wearing a fairy dress and wings. I have always made the effort to tell my kids that they can be what they want to be regardless of gender. When my girl told my son that he couldn't be a queen because he was a boy, I told him he could be anything he wanted and that I had a best friend who was a total queen! But that's a story for a different age! The point is that we are the people to whom these little beings look to for advice about what is and isn't true about their world. We should always allow them to express themselves in whatever way they wish and breaking down the 'boy' roles and 'girl' roles is an integral part of this. Strong and independent people is what we are ultimately raising. Well done.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I never let my girls feel like they should be bound to gender biases. As much as I make them girly stuff, I make it wacky with pipes and crap and pokemon on it. I never like the princess mentality; you end up with ruffles on EVERYTHING (and they do NOT belong in some places... cough cough PANTS cough cough ;-) and, as a parent, if you give into it you'll probably end up with a brat too. I always want to give my kids freedom... in all that they do. This is one of the many reasons why we get along so well together, Amanda. And the imagery of you with your mum cutting the tree? Tears. So beautiful! xoxoox

    ReplyDelete
  12. Great post. Sometimes I cringe at the strong girl, pink ruffle preference my little one is showing. But she's tiny yet and really I think the great part of women's movement is that we get choose. So she should get to choose pink, and we try to avoid "pink shaming". However, I agree that the choices are SERIOUSLY lacking. And don't get me started on toys. Toys make me insane. The gender bias in types of toys and the options available are maddening. My little boy has a baby doll and she plays with dinosaurs. She likes to build with legos too, and they don't have to be hot pink. Love that you worked together on this project! -Rachel

    ReplyDelete
  13. You made the knee socks? That is awesome! Do you sell the pattern for those or have a tutorial for that?

    ReplyDelete
  14. There is an amazing book called "Packaging Girlhood" that addresses girls and gender directed marketing. It's fantastic and I try to read it once a year as my daughter ages.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Brilliant, brilliant post Amanda. You're actually one of my parenting heroes :-) and I love how the clothes you make and fabric you sell reflects all the things you've written about here. Completely agree on the uncomfortableness of raising a daughter, too - I was a tomboy, am a feminist and a possibly rather naive one at that - it's shocked me how early all this starts and how hard it is to handle well. Kudos to you - the "magazine for people who like princesses" is something to be incredibly proud h-of (her and you!)

    ReplyDelete