The phenomenon of pink is all around us

At a toy store to buy a gift for my daughter’s best friend, I make valiant efforts to find something that’s not pink. A few days before this important event (what is it with almost four-year-olds and birthdays?

My daughter’s biggest threat, uttered in moments of great angst, is: ‘I won’t invite you to my birthday party!’), this adorable girl’s mother and I enjoyed an impassioned discussion about the preponderance on pink in our lives.

“I was such a tomboy. I hated pink. And look at my daughter!” my friend wailed, even as she uploaded pictures of the opinionated little girl and her new pink bicycle on Facebook. Taken to a cycle store to choose a birthday gift, she had refused to look at any other model once she’d swooped in on the pink one.

At least there were other models, I thought to myself as I browsed through the rows of gifts and picked up and rejected kitchen sets, toy cell-phones, purses, wands, tiaras and other accessories — all in a nauseating shade of pink, which, for some reason, is irresistible to most four-year-old girls.

But is it their fault? There seems to be almost a revolution out there to create models of femininity. Clothes for girls are getting fussier and more elaborate, and I bet you’d find it tough to find a nice dress that’s not pink.

Toys and accessories — even gender-neutral stuff like bicycles, school bags, lunch boxes and stationery — come in ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ variants, the latter almost inevitably featuring such heroines of girldom as Barbie, Tinker Bell and Disney Princesses.

My daughter’s preferred brand of shampoo comes in two types: mango and strawberry. The gender association is very subtle, but guess which one she wants each time? Heck, even Dora the Explorer — to be found in scruffy shorts and a chunky haircut once upon a time — has had a girly makeover and is now all grown-up, with swishy, waist-length hair and a distinct curvy figure.

The gender neutral stuff exists, I admit, but is either not given very prominent display by stores that cunningly put all the pink stuff upfront, or is so boring and childish that savvy four-year-olds reject them immediately.

My friend and I worry that all this is leading to our girls becoming grown-up before their time and far more ladylike than we ever were (or still are). I don’t remember hankering for long hair and resisting hair cuts at the age of almost four, and neither does she. But short of dragging them away to live in a cave with no access to popular culture, what can we poor moms do against a world bent on producing a generation of very girly girls?