While out with my sister today I was really surprised by a gender division issue when shopping for the most ridiculous things. When trying to buy a birthday badge we were asked oh is it for a male or female, after saying female we were given a pink badge instead of being told colours (never mind the fact this girl is a tomboy). Then again later in the day going for a bite to eat I ordered my sister a kids meal and was asked is the meal for a boy or a girl, again I answered girl and was given an incredibly feminine toy instead of a much cooler car/plane toy which actually did things.

I’m not going on a feminist rant here but it seems really trivial to give girls pink and boys blue. As a kid I may have had a barbie bedroom but I wanted action men too and while the boys played Army in the woods, I was the leader of that army. Even now, it’s only in the last year I’ve been considered ‘one of the girls’ instead of ‘one of the lads’.

I’ve known this divide exists for a long time but twice in one day? Oh and my little cousin saying he wanted a ‘boys colour’ not a ‘girls colour’, I thought that in 2014 we could let kids be what they wanted to be. I’m not saying get rid of all pink and blue and pretend all toys are gender neutral, they’re not. Most, not all, of the time boys will go for Nerf guns over a doll but then girls also became interested and now there are pink ones. With flowers on. I’m sorry what? Another example I saw via Facebook was of a 5 year old boys Frozen themed party, he loved it but other parents thought it was wrong for him to have the theme, deeming it girly. Since when? There isn’t a little kid I know that hasn’t watch Frozen and there are guys in it, Olaf the Snowman is supposedly male…well for a snowman. So why the hell are these kids being told what to like?

I’m hoping that by the time I have kids, way into the future (sorry Mum) people will respect my wishes to let them play with whatever they want. I don’t want to have a girl and smother her in pink or a boy who is only given blue, maybe I won’t tell people at all so I wont get things that are ‘suitable’ for either. I respect parents who let their kids play with what they want and what makes them happy because isn’t that all kids want, to be happy?