Girls and boys go out to play

Daughter three has begun the term inundated with invitations for parties. In fact, she got two for the same day. She was very excited about the first as it was to go bowling [essentially known as a big excuse for a slush puppy]. Luckily, the two parties were at totally different times so I said we could probably make both. She was delighted and filled in her 'yes, I'd like to come' form for both and charged into school. However, several hours later after school I noticed that the bowling invitation was still in her bag. I highly suspected that it is because it was from a boy and that her friends are very girly girls [they criticised daughter three for getting her hair cut so she now is insistent that it be in a ponytail so they can't tell how short it is] and said they wouldn't go. "Boys are not an alien species," I said. "Some of them are even nice."

Daughters one and two backed me up enthusiastically. Daughter one had a terrible time at school when she wanted to play football in her first year. The school then went on to form a girls' team about two years later when there was a big push on girls' football. It won a local tournament and daughter one and the entire team were made honorary members of the village, but the team was then disbanded. Daughter one also set up her own website, anti-pink.com, to fight the pink princess mulch. This followed a fancy dress party in which she went dressed as a zombie and every other girl was a princess.

Daughter two loves dressing up, but I think this is more because she likes experimentation in general, be that trying to expand her too tight shoes by putting them in the freezer or creating her own hand gel using Derbac and bubble bath. She told daughter three she recently went to a boy's party and it was great [mainly due to rather amazing party bags].

Boys and girls or primary school age seem to inhabit entirely different planets these days. But it's not just that. The princess/action hero model forces them into certain types of behaviour which is actually damaging. Many girls still see some careers as not being "girl" jobs. Even though more girls than boys are emerging from universities these days, a friend of mine says her local secondary school has a hairdressing and beautician centre especially for the girls who are not academic. The damage all this gender separation will do long-term to relationships between men and women will also be interesting to watch. I fear we have gone hopelessly backwards in the last few years as the princess model has spread almost silently into every crevice of children's lives.

Everywhere you look in the media are girls packed with make-up, strapped into very tight clothes and with very little apparently going on in their heads except bagging a rich bloke [the amount of time they must devote to their looks surely means that they can't have much time to develop their minds]. Look at Celebrity Big Brother. I heard a discussion on the radio about it. The women seem mostly to be there because they have big tits or because they have slept with someone famous. What about I'm a Celebrity - the only two young women were both there essentially for the bikini shots. What message does this send out to young girls?  It feels sometimes as a parent as if you are fighting an unstoppable flood.