We have to take the kids to D.C. Maybe this spring we can swing it. My "Aunt" Kay (mom's college friend) lives in Fairfax, and she's never even met Sara. (And she's been begging us to come down for years -- she can't because her husband has ALS now.)

When I was a kid I wanted an Erector set. Fat chance. I did get the chemistry set. Also Barbie and her Dream House. I'm multifaceted.

I had also heard about the SGK fighting for exclusive rights to "For The Cure". And, personally, I'm getting fed up with the constant ads for the event in October. I'm not especially fond of pink anything, so the marketing of pink this and that doesn't really ping me.

The girl lab comes with a girl minifig.

And the girl lab is purple. The tools are purple the overall color scheme is pastels.

I will note that although the pirate ship comes up on the "girls" page, it is not color-coded for girls the way the bakery, the salon, the dog show, the house, the vet, and the cafe are. The general sense of everything on that page is pastels & purple.

Which is kind of an awful recursive loop: We train kids that girls are into pink/purple and boys are into blue/green, and then get surprised when the kids gravitate towards those colors. If the only toys or clothes ever offered to kids are color-coded by gender, they will of course imprint on that pattern.

It makes me crazy when I go to Target looking for presents for my niece: everything is pink/purple. She should have the option of dressing like a tomboy, you know? But it's hella hard.

And I'm not even a parent: I can't imagine what it must be like to be raising a daughter in this commercial environment.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be raising a daughter in this commercial environment.

It's getting harder and harder to shop for Sara, I'll tell you. So far I haven't set foot in Justice, and even Target has started offering mini "teen" clothes that I don't want my eight-year-old in. The girl next door gave Sara a pair of plaid pajama pants that she LOVES because they're comfortable (and Angelina gave them to her), and they have "Princess" emblazoned across the ass, and I hate them entirely. She's been told she'd not allowed to ever wear them to school for pajama day, or to any sleepovers.

If I was really hardcore, I'd throw them out.

Legitimacy: ___Spurious ____For reals

LULZ

42 st. bernards: [link]

So far I haven't set foot in Justice

I feel like a store with that name should be totally KICK ASS. I assume it's not?

And I'm not even a parent: I can't imagine what it must be like to be raising a daughter in this commercial environment.

There's a lot of pink. And as Amy notes, there's lots of Sassy princess/Diva graphics, and vaguely age inappropriate designs.

She should have the option of dressing like a tomboy, you know?

Honestly, though, girls dressed as pirates have much greater societal acceptance than boys dressed as princesses. If I dress Aeryn in Dylan's hand-me-downs, nobody says a word. If Dylan wants to dress up as Abby in pink fairy wings and a tiara, it's immediately a topic of conversation.

I think it's important that we, as a society working towards equal treatment of the sexes, not let feminism turn into a knee-jerk demonization of anything feminine. The pink Legos aren't inferior in construction to the old school primary colored ones - except for the minifig redesign, everything in the Friends series is still completely interchangeable with any other Lego set.

here's a Mother Jones article about Komen in case anyone is interested. Sorry if I missed it linked above.

This part concludes the piece:

The outcry seems to have helped fundraising at both organizations. On Thursday, both Komen and Planned Parenthood announced large donations, with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledging $250,000 to Planned Parenthood and Brinker saying that contributions to Komen were up "one hundred percent."