shoes

["Susan Tomalin" <susan_tomalin hotmail com>]

Hi All,

I took my two shoe shopping yesterday and they had lots of fun looking at 
all the shoes.  Both of them seemed particularly keen on a pair of bright 
pink shoes with butterflies on.  My immediate reaction was "you can't 
possibly have those, they're GIRLS shoes".  They both ended up with 'boys' 
shoes- dark blue.  It struck me that there were no gender-neutral shoes in 
the shop- they were all either fancy with sparkles and pink bits, bows etc 
or blue/black with dinosaurs/robots etc.

Any thoughts?  I'm in the UK so I don't know if American shoe shops are less 
stereotyped!!  It's not a huge issue, but it just made me think about the 
culture we're in that keeps boys and girls think so separate, even for 
toddlers, and my own attitude towards the pink shoes that I assumed were 
inappropriate for twin boys.

Susan in England,
Joshua and Caleb, 19 months.

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