I have 3 daughters under 11.

Until starting school the first one didn’t wear pink. As a baby many people thought she was a boy.

But when she got to school it was suddenly pink & pink clothes, Barbies & fairy outfits and more pink. Before the first fairy outfit she was very imaginative with our collection of discarded fabrics (she still is very imaginative).

And you just can’t escape all the fairy, princess, magic kitten / puppy, ballet story books. At least it seems I’ve been spared from re-reading those ghastly Magic Rainbow Fairy books. At the moment I’m reading about the anarchic Princess Mirror-Belle to the middle one.

Naturally of course I blame all the other parents – my daughter was fine until she went to school ;)

And good things like the Fairyland Trust… it’s fairies still!

But it’s not just the girls – boys have a very narrow predictable range of clothing available to them and for them it’s costumes of cowboys, spiderman…

I was looking for new shoes a while back and it’s all boring. I’d go into a shop and oooh! that’s a nice shoe – oh! it’s a woman’s shoe. I’d buy it but they’re not made to fit men.

So it was good to find PinkStinks today where the news is that Sainsbury’s has agreed to end its gender stereotyping of children’s dressing up clothes.

Of course the pink does stop (just) but especially for girls & women the stereotyping and pressures continue – forever.