My Latest Rant!! Distraction if Nothing Else

‘It’s Pirates or Princesses, Mummy’, my four year old daughter informs me importantly as she hands me a letter from the school explaining that the children can dress up for ‘Children in Need Day’.

My six year old son Ed hands me the same letter, ‘I’m going to be a pirate – I need a sword!’

I ask Martha if she wants to be a pirate too. Ed looks at me as if I’m crazy. ‘She’s got to be a princess. It says on the letter.’ I explain that it doesn’t say that on the letter, it says that they can choose what they want to be and that Martha might choose to be a pirate.

‘I want to be a pirate!’ Martha announces and I privately exult until she comes back the day before the big day. ‘None of the other girls are being pirates, I want to be a princess!’

And princess she is, down to the hastily acquired tiara and pinkest dress she can find in her drawer.

Bloody school, bloody Geordies who love their pink, princess girls, bloody crazy country. Why should a school which seems sensible in all other ways, which has just received an ‘outstanding’ in its last Ofsted Inspection and which appears to think deeply about equality of opportunity for all, assume that the most exciting thing a girl can dress up as is a bloody princess.

This pink, glittery, princess thing is so imbued in our culture. My contention – being a Southerner at heart - is that it is especially alive and kicking up here in the North-East. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this disease at the heart of our society is endemic everywhere. I don’t believe that anyone at the school even considered the message they constantly send girls and boys about what their gender might signify both now and in the future. And parents collude from the earliest they can – princess duvets, fairy wallpaper, pink, pink, pink. What the hell is a princess these days? How can you become one? Who would want to become one? Do we want our daughters to lisp prettily as they shake out their pink skirts. Is this what we want to teach our girls about what it means to be female? We may as well encourage our daughters to dress up as supermodels – that’s a noble, attainable and interesting career. Or a celebrity – how about that? Is this the ultimate fantasy of femininity? If you are reading this as a woman, do you recognise this as a useful and workable definition of your life and self?

It’s a scary thing being a mother of daughters these days. I want my daughters to grow up strong: proud of their gender, proud of their femininity and with a powerful self esteem. I want them to be able to believe that they can achieve the same that their brother can. I don’t want them obsessed with their bodies and their pretty faces, beautiful as they are. I want them to work hard and set themselves ambitions which they can strive for and maybe achieve. You think I’m missing the point and it’s all just a bit of fun? Well, that’s up to you. I don’t believe that it’s healthy or funny for my daughters to want to be a bloody princess or for my son to expect them to be, and I’m constantly amazed that sensible, seemingly intelligent women continue to collude with this rubbish.

New School, New Pink Shoes

Of course alongside all the scary heavy stuff is the everyday stuff. Martha started school last week and is now hopping along beside Ed as I walk them into the school playground. The organisational skills it takes to have two kids at school took me a little by surprise. I find it a remarkable strain of intellect and memory to make sure that there are ironed uniforms, packed lunches and returned notes in book-bags on the right days. My thoughts as I'm in the supermarket, making sandwiches, cooking tea or ironing shirts swirl around in a strange soup. I worry about dying, I return to snapshots of the past year, I wonder when and if and how I could go back to work and I wonder how to make my way back to the ordinary and how to find a happy place there. All this in the car between home and school!! And of course there was a time not so long ago when I could not happily assume that I would see Martha's first day at school, let alone the baby's. This is quite a lot for one small brain to cope with really.

And the pink shoes? The baby finally seemed to be doing enough walking to warrant some sort of footwear. So I took her to the shoeshop to be presented with a ghastly array of gender afflicting styles and colours. The only two shoes in stock which would fit Hattie were a terrible boys' mock-trainer or shocking pink leather shoes. Others with not much more to recommend them could be ordered but I wanted them then. So I bought the pink ones! I sort of didn't have a choice but I'm still ashamed. I cannot stand the way little girls are pushed into the pink, sparkly thing. I've never done it with Martha who wears cool jeans, sweatshirts, pinafore dresses and stripy tights and - at the moment- isn't into pink. What are we telling our girls about what it means to be female? Nothing very interesting, empowering or creative that's for sure. But the baby now has bright pink shoes - at least she's too young to know that her mum has no sticking power in the pink shoes or not pink shoes debate which rages through our land!