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This pink Pritt Stick “4 girls” was spotted in Tesco by a member of our Facebook group.

Alexandra says:

As a primary school teacher, don’t even get me started on the incorrect use of ‘4’, let alone the gendered message this product would send to my 8 year old pupils.

Jess McCabe
Editor at large

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18 Responses

  1. Larla

    I love how the default is considered to be masculine and adding pink makes it suitable for the ‘other’; the feminine. What utter nonsense.

  2. Claire

    It’s bloody glue! Is Pritt going to bring out a Just4Boys version, with manly colours and patterns that leaves ugly blue smudges across kids’ work? Strictly in the interests of equality, mind. My sister’s a primary school teacher and I can just picture her enthusiasm at handing out a glue stick that less than half of the class (I’m sure I wasn’ t the only girl to go through an “ew, pink” stage) would want to use. Kind of defeats the purpose of sharing.

  4. Seph

    Why don’t they just go the whole hog and surgically attatch pink-tinted contact lenses to girls’ eyes? Since apparantly we have no time for any other colour X_X

  5. Anne Onne

    Seph, don’t give them any ideas!

    Seiously, I have nothing against pink, or any other colour, but its use in advertising and products bugs the hell out of me. It’s different if it’s a case of introducing a few different colours, with pink being one of them, but when it’s used as shorthand for girl? It sucks.

    And it annoys me that people think girls are hardwired to like pink because many young girls do, in fact, like pink. You shove a colour in somoeone’s face literally from birth, tell them it’s specially for them, but if some girls like pink, you assume it’s because it’s in their genes or something? Wake up and smell the conditioning.

  6. yeomanpip

    Jeez!

    (please note: the following may contain sarcasm)

    I have begun to notice the use of pink, and it has left me a little bemused.

    Some time ago, ex prime minister John Major was being interviewed on the TV, he was wearing pink socks.

    Driving back from town the other night I saw a guy was being dragged home after drinking too much by (i presume) his girlfriend, he was wearing a pink shirt.

    I’ve seen many other instances of ‘Blokey Blokes’ wearing pink, and no doubt so have you

    I have also seen many ‘girly girls’ wearing blue.

    So, for a second, I began to think that the marketeers have decided that pink is no longer feminine.

    and blue is no longer masculine

    I wish they’d make their mind up, How is anyone meant to know any more?

  7. Leigh Woosey

    I am buying some for my desk. Where it will be visible next to my beautiful man face and neat Tony Stark beard for all to see.

    Hmm also maybe buy and repaint an Iron Man figure in Metallic Pink and gold and then return to the shop and put it back on the shelf…

  8. Carol

    Well, apparently early in the 20th Century, pink was considered to be the boy’s colour and blue the girls’ colour. Pink was thought to be a stronger masculine colour. It seems to have reversed around about WW2.

    And there is a story about the pink for girls association coming from the German Nazis – pink triangle for homosexuals. Tho that may not have been the cause for the shift generally to pink for girls.

    http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=238733

  9. Sarah

    The idea that girls are ‘hard-wired’ to like pink is particularly ridiculous when you consider that ‘pink for girls’ is a relatively recent fashion. I wasn’t aware that evolution worked quite that fast! It’s not that long ago that red and pink were considered ‘boy colours’ while pale blue was thought more suitable for little girls.

    Also young children tend to like bright colours and shiny sparkly things, hence the attraction for some of the ‘girly’ toys for girls. The thing is, little boys often have exactly the same attraction, before they realise they’re not supposed to. I imagine they learn pretty quickly to shun such things given the horrified over-reaction of many parents at the thought of their boy liking a ‘girl’ thing.

  10. Eleanor T

    Ooh! My sister took that picture! Yay for Alex T and her fabulous (non-pink) camera phone.

    I live in America these days and am constantly amazed when walking down the aisles of Target or Walmart that you can clearly identify those areas of the store aimed at girls, and those aimed at boys. It’s all shocking hues of either blue or pink and complete and utter nonsense.

  11. Seph

    I’m not sure which I find more stupid, the idea that girls are genetically programmed to love pink or that boys are programmed to hate it, i’ve had the same exchange several times with people (both male and female) upon them seeing pictures of a pink-haired rock star i’m a fan of.

    “who’s she”

    “he’s male”

    “but…she has pink hair”

    “yes, pink was *his* faveourite colour”

    “but he’s a guy!”

    “yes, and he liked pink, and yellow”

    “oh, he’s gay then?”

    I usually leave the room at this point to avoid breaking something.

  12. Yakoub

    A few years ago, I heard culture jammers were busy secreting ‘Lesbian edition’ stickers onto the packaging of Barbie dolls in toy stores, just to subvert the implied hetero-stereotypical material-thin-girl message. Surely, one of the them jammers must have a few stickers left over…

  13. liz

    Actually, this first thing I thought this post would be about when I read about a “Stick for girls”…

  14. Char

    This is so sad, but I’ve seen them about. And I’ve also seen silver and navy blue pritt sticks that were clearly aimed at boys, so apparently the standard , non-gender-specific pritt stick just isn’t good enough any more!

    I used to babysit for a family with a little boy, and pink was his favourite colour. He has two sisters and they played together all the time, with all the same toys. Then he started primary school and within two weeks, pink was “for girls” and he hated pink. Blue was his favourite colour from then on. It was just kind of sad how fast it happened. They’re only colours!

  15. Jennifer-Ruth

    Yes, I saw this pritt-stick in December when my boyfriend and I were in Toys r Us. I remember being quite surprised that glue was now gendered too. My boyfriend, however, bought the glue…he really likes pink.

  16. Annah

    It is bloody pritt stick for crying out loud. Get over it. But personally, I think there should be a green one. :)

  17. Laurel Dearing

    i saw this in smiths and started ranting about it. costs the same as bloody full size. smaller ones same price in different colours so they can doubly market the same thing.

  18. zoe

    I think it’s cool because it’s pink and it would be cool if they had a blue one and how can people think it’s uncool

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