I am a single mother of one boy, and two beautiful girls. This past week at their public school an anti-bullying day was happening to create awareness, and to show your support you were to wear a pink shirt. My 8 year old son wanted to participate, so we visited your store, being Wal Mart, and a huge retailer I thought for sure you would have something for him. After walking through your boys, and mens section I was very disappointed to see that you had nothing pink for boys anywhere! Lucky for me this was one day, and I found a way around it, but it got me thinking what about the parents who have a male by sex, but gender identifies as a female, and how hard shopping must be for them.
Patriarchy started the idea that sex, and gender went hand in hand, and from their determined your role in society, but knowing what we know today being that an individual might be one sex, but self-identify as the opposite gender, it is disappointing that a major clothing distributor like yourself are still supporting this ideology. Stereotypical sex, and gender colors limits equal access to resources for those people who sex might not match their gender identity which only reinforces the patriarchal belief that you are born a male, or female according to your sex, and have set roles in society, ignoring gender identity, so where does transgender individuals fall in this ideology? And how are you accommodating their needs?
When pregnancy occurs the first question people ask is what is it? Referring to the sex, why is society so consumed with sex? And why do we have to color coordinate it? Well my belief is so that they can be labelled, and institutionalized even though we know that not every individual fits into those little perfect boxes that patriarchy created for us. I am not only thinking of children here because parents are also affected by this sex gender color coordination, and separation. How is a parent supposed to shop for a male who is identifying as a female? This goes for clothes, toys, all the way to sporting activities. Do you shop in the girls section for your son, and deal with the criticizing looks, or ridicule from other parents, or do you oppress your son more, and continue shopping in the males section hoping he will conform to the societal norms society has set for us.
Skip forward to adult hood how is a transgender male supposed to feel comfortable going to purchase a pair of high heels when commercials, and high heel ads are full of females subliminally telling our minds that heels are for women, and women only. Also we cannot forget males belong in the work boot section, so a female cannot purchase a pair of steel toes, and head off to the rigs? Why not? This ideology limits job opportunities, and resources, and I posit the group most affected by it is transgender individuals who society has no little box for, so they are just oppressed, and they can either conform, or suffer.
You may think, oh it is just a color, but I hope you can see it is not, and you are influencing a lifestyle, and identity which should be an individual choice not societies. The goal of feminism is to create equality to resources, so this is problematic for me as a feminist because how can we be equal, and have equal access to resources such as clothing, and job if right from birth we are told that the color of our clothes, and the toys we play with determine our identity.
Who started this? Who said girls wear pink, and boys wear blue? Well I posit it is rooted in patriarchy that puts women in the private sphere, and men in the public sphere, from there capitalism, and the ruling class started a class system where certain clothes, and brand names are considered high class, so to be high class you must wear these clothes, and through advertisement young children know names brands, and what is popular which is a way to capitalize on the low to middle class working families who have no choice, but to purchase these