Coloring Outside the Lines

I LOVE to crochet.  I love to make beautiful and practical things for people I know are going to appreciate them.

This is your only warning about my rant.  On facebook, I joined a Crochet Addicts group.  I love it and am inspired by it.  Except when someone goes on and says, how can I make this more girlie or are these colors boy colors.

First, all colors are gender neutral.  It is our society which has deemed girls must love pink and boys blue.  Please spare me this.  I do not like pink.  I’ve never worn it.  I hate getting mother’s days and birthday cards that are pink.  On top of which – there are a ton of beautiful colors – ha ha a whole rainbow of them – that all kids can enjoy.

As for adding flowers or other decorations to make it girlie.  Okay again PLEASE!  Boys can like flowers and often do.  While I love flowers, I don’t necessarily want them on everything.

Can we please stop putting a gender on things that don’t have a gender?  Can we please stop assuming that all females will like pink (or other stereotypes)?

For some of these posts, I don’t say a thing.  It just isn’t worth my time to tilt against a windmill but there are times when I want to smack them.  A woman posted a picture of a beautiful afghan she made for a girl.  It was – shockingly – blue and white.  This is what her customer asked for but she wanted to make it more girlie.

Girls like to play with trucks and cars just as much as they do dolls.  Girls like all colors.  Let’s allow our children (regardless of gender) to decide for themselves what colors they like.

The more freedom we give our girls to do and be what they want the better they become at being themselves.  I would imagine the same could be said for boys – I raised girls so I’m speaking from experience.