PinkStinks aims to counteract the slurry of media obsession on women who are ‘famous’, ‘thin’ ‘rich’ or ‘married to famous men’, by celebrating those women that we see as inspirational, important, ground-breaking and motivating. On these pages we’ll point you in the direction of some of those women … some from history, some just starting out, from all walks of life. It’s amazing how great they are, and when they’re brought together in a list like this there’s a real power to them, that can only serve as an uplifting inspiration.

Also, they showcase a number of “new role models” for girls, while ranting against the feminine stereotyping of girls, dressing them in pink, selling them pink toys and most of all “force them” into stereotypical girly role models. They argue, maybe not explicit that society forces girls with a model on how to behave and how to think and how wrong that is, the current situation that is. What they don’t seem to realise is that they themselves try to do exactly the same, with other role models, other toys and other ways of dressing. It strikes me maybe because it’s all to familiar with me, with my mom being rather feministic trying to avoid the gender stereotyping. It almost seems like they have some issues with girls wanting to be girls, wanting to wear any colour pink, wanting to play with dolls and when they grow up they want to be a teacher, a nurse or wife of some famous person.

Because that is how little girls are. It seems to be something innate, because psychologists have researched this. They tried to find out how much of these behaviours occur by themselves (they call that “nature“) and how much of these behaviours are taught by upbringing (they call that “nurture“). There’s a whole nature-nurture debate going on among psychologists. During the time when behaviourism reigned, many psychologists believed everything people did was hard-wired, nature. In the seventies this position changed, in society the free individual became popular which also influenced the way psychologists were thinking. So from black ‘nature’ they went into the other extreme ‘nurture’. Everything, they argued, was “modifiable”, the “modifiable society” came into existence.
This concept is still popular in socialist and social-democratic circles, at least in the Netherlands. People would be able to change everything according in what they wanted and thus create a perfect society. Along the same lines psychologists started to argue that our concept of gender was created by our upbringing, and thus altering the way of upbringing could help create more equality among genders and rethink gender roles. To summarise it with the words of French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir: “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.”

Needless to say this new way of thinking stirred a controversy, partly because it goes against intuitive reasoning. A whole new scientific field of the Gender Studies was founded, but sadly a lot of people engaged in it, do that with a certain agenda. Feminist scientists want to prove there is no difference between genders, others want to prove it’s all hard-wired  and a third group of people is only toning down things. The interesting thing is, that psychological research on gender fails to “prove” there are no gender differences. They just are there, and that’s just being shown in research time and time again. One study comes to my mind, which was used to showcase the topic during social psychology class, was that they tried to monitor kids whose parents were raising them without “gender bias”. Interestingly, most boys seemed to have an interest for “boyish” things like playing with cars and the more adventurous games whereas girls engaged in more “girly” things without anyone forcing them to do so. Of course this doesn’t mean that all girls and all boys display this behaviour, but most of them do.

To return on the topic of the “pinkification” of girls’ toys. The people behind “Pink Stinks” argue this is because toy manufacturers and de evil society does this to subdue girls to their way of thinking, but what I think is that it’s the other way around. Girls want pink stuff. It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s appealing because its pink. And therefore pink toys are being made, because it increases the likelihood that girls want to have it because they are pink. It’s the other way around. I understand their concern, but I think it’s too bad they are going into the other extreme. What about the idea to allow girls to develop in whatever they want to be themselves? To allow them to develop into a genuine, authentic personality. Yes, some of them may want to become WAGS (wives and girlfriends of professional football players), others may want to become scientists. I genuinely believe it’s not in the girls’ best interest to tell them how to think and what to desire, no matter how sincere your motivations are.

Links:

• Pink Stinks
• Why Pink Doesn’t Stink (Guardian)