Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Pink is for Pepto Bismol

Sorry to be MIA for so long.

I started this blog when my little girl was about 4-5 years old princess and now she's an amazing 10 year old monster-rock-diva. She wants to be a spy and work for the FBI, though she wants to first redesign their outfits. She plans to travel the world and live in hotels. She's still a girly-girl with her accessories and fashion, but her tastes are bolder than mine were at that age.

This spy infatuation has been in progress for a year or so, and she begged me to buy spy gear (some glove with special listening and gadgets). She had a gift card for her birthday that she wanted to use to buy the spy gadgets at Target. Looking up and down the racks, she commented about how these are all for boys. The packaging has boys her age with the secret glasses and all. There's no reason it needs to be just for boys, since girls could dig that too!


So, after a lot of begging and pleading, she and I finally went to the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. By the way, the museum was amazing - interactive on so many levels, educational, well-designed and has an expansive collection of historical artifacts.

We found ourselves in the gift shop and were looking around for a small keepsake. We ended up getting handcuff key chain and a pen with secret ink. However, there was a section that had the 'girl stuff'. They had pink moustaches as "disguises" and lots of pink or wallets with 'spy monkeys' on them.She just thought it was lame, though was intrigued by the secret diary with locks. But, her main interest was in the wall of cool gadgets. She commented that the pink didn't make sense because spies need to be in black.

Next stop for being offended by pink overdose was Lego store. Everyone loves legos! They've been around forever. Any reason to suddenly start making pink legos to appeal to girls? They had a display in the middle where people can assemble their own Lego people - take a head, add a hat, add hair, add feet, etc.  My daughter loved it and made female characters, but nobody was pink.

My point here is that you can definitely appeal to young girls without being "pink". Anyone who knows my daughter knows that she loves pink and purple since she was 2 years old. It's insane. I never would've believed it otherwise. However, she's not colorblind and does enjoy everything. One other thing I've noticed about her is that she always gravitates toward the female characters in stories/films - and in play. Girls love the female dolls and female Lego characters. That's more important than having pink paint or tiaras splattered on everything.