Gender stereotypes easing more for girls than boys

[The Philosopher]

from 365Gay.com

If a girl wants to try her hand at baseball or ice hockey, she’s likely to be praised as plucky. But if a boy likes the color pink?
Well, that’s a toenail of a different color.

Last month, J. Crew unleashed a furor when a promotion depicted its creative director, Jenna Lyons, painting her 5-year-old son Beckett’s toenails with pink nail polish. “Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink,” the caption read.

Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and regular guest on Fox News, didn’t approve.

“It may be fun and games now, Jenna, but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid,” he wrote on Foxnews.com. “This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity.”

In fact, Lyons and her son had stepped on a cultural land mine. Gender stereotypes for America’s children are less rigid than in the past, but they remain a pervasive part of popular culture and a benchmark for parents. Moreover, the changes in recent decades have been more dramatic for girls than boys.

So Ablow quickly found support. One Million Moms, an offshoot of the conservative American Family Association, urged followers to write protest letters to J. Crew and asserted that “nontraditional activities … can be destructive and damaging to a child’s identity and self-esteem.”

...

For Keith Ablow, blurring of gender roles could have momentous long-term consequences.

“It will be a very big deal if it turns out that neither gender is very comfortable anymore nurturing children above all else,” he wrote, “and neither gender is motivated to protect the nation by marching into combat against other men and risking their lives.”

“Maybe we’ll all have shiny, colored lips, though, and pierced ears and perfect eyebrows.”

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