A friend sent me a link to a website and said I might be interested in blogging about it. The website is called ‘PinkStinks’. “Pink Stinks? I don’t get it” I thought. Surely our daughters look gorgeous doused in pink and playing princesses and fairies? After reading through the website, I realised that I was part of the problem! Our society sets our children up from birth to have totally different ambitions to the opposite sex – or else. Our daughters, as mentioned, are encouraged to play fairies, princesses and house wives, and our sons are made macho by playing with cars, toy guns and sport. We totally separate the sexes and subliminally teach our children from an early age that boys should not play with dolls or show their emotions and girls must be beautiful and find their prince charming to have any self worth.
Abi & Emma Moore, twins from south London, are successful women in their own right. Abi is a film maker and Emma is in publishing. Whilst filming an amazing scientist called Naomi Halas, who was working on a totally new way of treating cancer, Abi finally 'cracked' in disgust at the almost blanket media coverage of the inane and pointless story of Paris Hilton being released from prison. PinkStinks was born.
The below text is from the PinkStinks website:
"PinkStinks - The campaign for real role models
Pinkstinks is a campaign and social enterprise that challenges the culture of pink which invades every aspect of girls' lives.
This site is for parents and non parents alike, and aims to gather support, promote discussion and ultimately to mobilize that support to influence marketeers and the media about the importance of promoting positive gender roles to girls.
Research tells us that self-esteem amongst girls is at its lowest ever and we are asking WHY?
We believe that body image obsession is starting younger and younger, and that the seeds are sown during the pink stage, as young girls are taught the boundaries within which they will grow up, as well as narrow and damaging messages about what it is to be a girl.
We want to be quite clear about what we believe makes someone a role model.
One of the problems over recent years is that the press and media seem to have decided that in order to be a role model, you not only need to be famous, rich and beautiful, but you also need to be a saint. At PinkStinks, we believe quite the opposite ... our role models are people that have achieved great things, scaled great heights, taken risks, done something amazing, challenged stereotypes or overcome huge odds. We think that if girls were presented with images of all kinds of achievements, they might actually start to value themselves, and their own talents and ambitions a little bit more. We also believe that our role models will be role models based on the achievements, and those alone, despite what may have happened to them in the past, despite having human failings and despite being not quite perfect. If we were only looking for perfection, then we'd be on a wild goose chase ... and there'd be no-one on our list. Or we'd be like the worst of the press ... building people up to be heroes, then tearing them down once their skeletons came out of the closet.
Let's enable our children to see the success that is all around them, let's encourage them to value themselves despite their own failings, let's inspire them to want to achieve.
And let's inspire ourselves as parents too ... armed with information, tools and knowledge, to defy the culture of pink ... and build a culture of well... to coin a phrase ... 'yes ...we ...can'
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 our website 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.
(SCARY) FACTS*- 42% of the girls surveyed named celebrities as the greatest influence on girls and young women. 40% also cite the internet as the greatest influence
- 35% chose Victoria Beckham as having the greatest influence, with Leona Lewis at 32%, Kate Moss and Amy Winehouse in 3rd and 4th.
- More than 60% of girls aged 7 to 10 wear lipstick and more than 40% wear eye-shadow or eyeliner. Almost 25% wore mascara and 60% wore perfume.
- 73% of British girls 15-17 say that when they feel bad about themselves it is usually to do with looks or weight (globally 55%), rather than abilities etc.
- 44% (of teachers) said that their pupils tried to emulate their role models through their looks and behaviour, with 32% modeling themselves on Paris Hilton.
- Over half (54%) of all women around the world say they first became aware of the need to be physically attractive between 6 and 17 years of age
- 66% of teenage girls would consider plastic surgery and 20% would do it right now
- 27% of GBR 15-17 year olds said media was one of earliest influences on beauty and body image. This was the top score (above mother, friends etc) and celebrities scored 23%.
- The most powerful influence on GBR girls (15-17) was boys (27%), with celebrities coming second at 21%.
- 44% (of girls questioned) admit they can name more WAGS [wives and girlfriends of professional footballers] than female politicians.
- 66% of young people learn about sex and relationships through the media
- Half of young women feel that society places greater pressure on being thin, than on being healthy.
- Only one-quarter of girls believe that it is cool to play sport or important to be good at it.
- 56% of women agree with the statement that seeing successful female athletes makes them feel proud to be a woman.
- Analysis of the most popular music videos on Black Entertainment Television found sexual imagery in 84% of the videos; the two most frequently occurring sexual behaviors were sexual objectification and women dancing sexually.
- 71% of women in these videos were dressed in mildly provocative or provocative clothing or wore no clothing at all, compared with 35% of male characters.
- In contrast to public perception, these patterns are not restricted to pop or hip-hop videos. In one analysis of country music videos, 42% of female artists were coded as wearing alluring clothing
- Women working full time earn just 87 per cent of the male median full-time hourly wage or just under 83 per cent of the male mean full-time hourly wage
*from research conducted throughout the UK. See PinkStinks for the references. "
Our own Anita Roddick appears on the PinkStinks website, under business role models, and also activist role models. There are some great women to read about and it’s incredible to note that you may not have heard of most of these women before, as they don’t fit today’s ‘Hollywood’ media stereotype, and are therefore deemed uninteresting and unimportant.
The PinkStinks campaign is a great thought provoker, and really challenges the way we think and the way we parent our children. When I have children I want them to be the best they can be, regardless of what sex they are. I don’t want my daughter to think she has to be a house wife if she really wants to be an astronaut. And if she really wants to be a house wife, then that’s ok too. It’s about nurturing the child and not the sex. My understanding and interpretation of this campaign is not that you should avoid dressing your daughters in pink, but to really think about what ‘pink’ represents – whilst the pink fairy dress is gorgeous, make sure that while you are nurturing the ‘fairy’ in your daughter, you also nurture the astronaut, doctor, or mechanic as well.
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