Non-pink Baby Dolls

I was just asked on Twitter to recommend a non-pink baby doll.

Most of the high street stores just seem have a sea of dolls in pink dresses, with pink furniture, pink prams and pink accessories to go with them. But I figured they couldn't be that hard to find on the web, so I went looking.

It turns out that most non-pink baby dolls are sold as baby boy dolls and are (obviously...) dressed in blue. Boy dolls generally come with anatomically correct genitalia, which is all well and good....

But what if you want a unisex doll that your toddler can assign a new gender to every few hours? What if... [pauses for gasps of shock and horror to subside] you actually do want to buy a girl doll, just not one that wears frilly pink?

My favourite of the non-pink girl options is this Gotz Doll. The babygro does have a pink stripe, but it's not too offensive. The dolls look cute, not scarily super-real, are made of organic materials and are suitable from birth. Gotz make dolls in a range of skin colours too.

Rubens Barn also get an honourable mention for a fab range of dolls which wear refreshingly non-gender specific colours. They even offer non-blue baby boy dolls!

Other options are:
1. Little Mommy Electronic Cuddle & Coo Doll (That pink bow WILL snip off!)

2. Beauty Club Baby Doll & Accessories - again, the only pink is on removeable accessories.

3. Vilac Petitcollin Baby Calin Doll - in unisex green (although worrying the doll comes "in 5 pieces"!

4. Little Mommy Bumblebee Doll - avoid the gender debate altogether, and dress the doll up as an insect...

Grr! Things that really annoy me!

We have a lovely book of colouring, shape and number exercises which my Mum found in Lidl. Small one adores it, doing her "homework" sitting next to her brother and sister.

I was really annoyed this morning to find this exercise:

That's right... it says, "Draw a line from each of the objects to the child which can best use them". The last one had a boy in swimming clothes and a girl in outdoor clothes. This time, the only clue is that well... the girl is a girl... and the boy is a boy... And to be fair, there is no reason except my own cultural stereotypes that suggests the one on the right is male!

Things like this annoy me on two levels. Firstly, that whoever wrote this book clearly thought that girls can "best use" prams, dolls and mirrors, and that boys can "best use" cars and trains... Secondly, that if you bring your child up to believe that there are no girls and boys toys, just toys that particular girls and boys like to play with, then there are no clues at all to help them decide.

My daughter is a fairly imaginative child, but does like to get her answers "right". In the end, she decided that the girl would like the doll and the train, and the boy would like the pram and the marbles. I think she chose them to go with their clothes, as the rabbit in a red jumper on the next page wanted to play with the car...