Would fashion retailers lose money if they banished gender-specific clothes?

Traipsing round my local supermarket the other day I decided to go looking for Christmas gifts for my nephew.

My sister reliably informs me the little cutie pie needs various key pieces to complete his on-trend capsule wardrobe for SS19 – after all he’s going to be two soon and needs to look the part.

Dazzled by the impressive array of footwear, apparel and accessories I had no trouble whatsoever finding various standout items to help ensure the adorable little rug rat continues to wow his Insta followers and secure huge sums of money to grace the cover of ‘Toddler’ magazine.

Now all I need to do is style up the various looks with designer soothers, reins, changing mats and other bambino-related paraphernalia.

Needless to say, the aisles were strictly regimented by gender.

There was a clear differentiation between clothes for boys and clothes for girls.

There was not, as far as I could tell, any attempt to create gender-neutral zones containing gender-neutral product.

The merchandise was clearly intended either for boys or girls, not both, giving parents and other customers very little choice about conforming to pointless gender stereotypes that manifest in product type and colourways.

I guess retailers would argue their ranges are all carefully devised, developed and displayed according to incredibly clever marketing techniques based on even cleverer audience insights and market knowledge.

I can imagine them claiming sales and profit margins could be negatively affected if they decided to take a stand against the blue/pink narrative so prevalent in our society, because their customers are intent on perpetuating it.

Which means if we want things to change, we need to vote with our feet – and our wallets.

I did consider buying up vast swathes of girls’ stuff as an act of rebellion, but realised the logic’s rather flawed, so came to the conclusion a more powerful protest would be taking my business elsewhere and writing this blog post.

Why are we still making girls wear skirts to school?

It’s that time of year again when my Facebook feed becomes a steady flow of now-obligatory ‘back to school’ photos.

Happy, smiley, excited, slightly trepidatious school kids grinning at the camera as they stand proudly in front of the mantelpiece, adorned in their new-term finery, beaming ear-to-ear like the cat that got the cream.

But as well as the fun aspect of all these adorable images, they also leave me tinged with sadness: Why oh why are we still making the women of tomorrow wear skirts to school?

I remember being outraged by the concept when I was little. There’s an inherent unfairness in making females wear flouncy skirts while boys get to wear practical trousers. It’s sexist, it’s discriminatory and it’s unnecessary.

So the fact the practice is still carrying on today, as though 20 years of emancipation and equality struggles never happened, is somewhat baffling.

If we want equality to become fact rather than fiction, if we want our kids to have equal opportunities and equal chances in life, surely it begins with the basics? Either you allow both sexes to wear both garments, or you scrap the ‘both’ aspect and plump for just one.

I’m not dissing skirts and dresses – anyone who knows me will tell you I rarely wear anything else myself. But there’s a difference between making your own choices and decisions about everyday life and being forced to wear a certain type of gender-specific garment in a controlled environment, such as a school or other be-uniformed place.

I was similarly irritated by the fact I had to wear a skirt and tights when I worked as a hotel receptionist.

The men didn’t.

Does a business really have the right to tell you what to wear based on your sex organs?

Apparently so.

If the recent furore over gender-specific dress codes is anything to go by, it’s OK to fly in the face of commonsense thinking and act in an unlawful way that amounts to discrimination under the Equality Act, because no one can actually stop you.

Confused?

You might remember specific headlines about a receptionist who turned up for work only to be sent home without pay for refusing to wear high heels.

No, it wasn’t me, but the receptionist was indeed a woman. [I wonder what the company’s official party line would have been if the job had gone to a transgender person, or if they’d even be able to get past the application process let alone the interview in the first place, but that’s another story.]

Some of the arguments and language that came up on the back of this wronged receptionist’s plight centred around things like ‘job requirements’ and ‘similar levels of smartness’.

There was also talk of blatant discrimination, failing to move with the times, sexist dinosaurs, prehistoric attitudes and unnecessarily painful attire that could compromise your musculoskeletal health, but turns out the government and big businesses don’t care too much for all that.

This isn’t about giving kids the freedom to run amok. It isn’t about me campaigning to scrap school uniforms. It isn’t about allowing people to look scruffy in customer-facing work environments.

It’s about waking up to the reality that reinforcing gender stereotypes in such an institutionalised way is setting a precedent for a lifetime of unfair and sexist conformity, perpetuating the myth that women should behave and act a certain way.

Think about the inherent (albeit subliminal) messages we’re sending out to our children with this kind of attitude:

• Boys and girls are not the same and must wear different things in a supposedly level playing field such as school.
• Boys and girls are expected to be as polite as each other, as committed to learning as each other, work as hard as each other and have the same ambition to go far in life but we will still put them in totally different pigeon holes from a very young age – beginning with skirts and trousers and ending who knows where?
• Boys should be allowed to run about at lunchtime without fear of flashing their undergarments but girls shouldn’t.
• Boys can be boisterous and physical and competitive but girls should sit quietly in the corner and contemplate their destiny as second-class citizens who will earn less, get harassed more, do most of the housework and be unable to get a divorce because their husband won’t let them.

Skirts are fine. Trousers are fine. Ambition is fine. Difference is fine. Heels are fine. Flats are fine. Getting a job on merit is fine. Doing it well is fine.

What isn’t fine is this.