"...a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned..."

"That's for boys." These three words have created a lump in throat and a fire in my heart. Why, you ask? Because they came from my 3-year old daughter's mouth with regard to toy dinosaurs. Still seems pretty benign, right? Not to me. To me, it represents a huge problem with the beliefs with which we are allowing our daughters to grow up. It represents something I have and will continue to fight tooth and nail against because my daughter deserves better. Allow me to explain.
Isabel loved her dinosaur flashlight and to talk about dinosaurs (even though she also claimed they were scaring her as she fell asleep in her dark room). On her Thanksgiving project from school was written "I am thankful for dinosaurs." She seemed to really enjoy playing with the dinosaurs at her school. The few times we've watched Dinosaur Train, she was enthralled by it and talked endlessly about it for days afterward. So for Isabel to tell me, "I no like dinosaurs. That's for boys." breaks my heart. When I asked Isabel why she thought that, she told me that one of the little girls at her preschool told her that she wouldn't play with the dinosaurs with Isabel because dinosaurs are for boys. This little girl didn't just come up with that rule, so she must have heard it somewhere. Not surprising since there are no shortage of widely perpetuated, unfounded and pigeon-holing gender-biased rules out there. I've described just a few below.
Purple - it's (not) just for girls anymore: Orin has a hand-me-down generic fleece sleeper that is various shades of purple and adorned with snowmen. I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "Look honey, the baby's wearing purple so you can tell she's a girl." Not to mention today, a mom flat out told her daughter that the reason one of the boys wasn't wearing purple today (that was the colour of the day) was because "purple is more of a girl colour." Seriously? WTF? Is it not enough that we've made camps of pink and blue, but now we are segregating purple too?
99 Princesses in Pink on the Floor, 99 Princesses in Pink...: At the school's Halloween party, in a class containing 9 girls, all but 2 were princesses (except one who was a "witch princess..."). Isabel was a dragon (see the photos of Halloween to see our AWESOME family costume) and another little girl was a cowgirl (she loves Jessie too, as it turns out). Now, I don't care what other people do with their kids, but my problem came in that when photos were taken, the two odd-girls-out were grouped with the boys and the "princesses" all had their photo taken together. Talk about setting the kids up to see what those two girls SHOULD have dressed as in order to be "girls."
"I'm sorry ma'am...we no longer carry the original red Etch-a-Sketch because we felt it was outdated and too gender neutral.": Alright, you got me. The Toys R Us employee didn't actually say that, but the gist of the statement is accurate. When I went looking for a regular ol' Etch-a-Sketch, all I could find was the pink and blue versions and the mini-version. There wasn't even a home for the original red one. When I asked the employee if they had it somewhere in the store, he said that they hadn't had it in the store in quite a while, "but here's a pink one for her" (pointing at Orin in his purple sleeper *palmface*).
I could go on, but long story short, I feel strongly that we are doing our children (boys and girls, alike) a disservice by sending and perpetuating these messages. Today, it is just nonsense about colours and Halloween costumes, but I worry that tomorrow, it will mean that Isabel will choose to be a teacher (if you know me, you know I have nothing against teachers ;), but fully admit that it is a role typically thought of as female) instead of a paleontologist because that is what she thinks/thought was expected of her. I worry my son will choose hockey instead of ballet because "dance is for girls" and most of all, I worry that my kids will somehow come to feel inadequate or weird because they don't fit the norm. Our kids deserve better.