Colour me disgusted. I read this morning on Dr Isis’ blog about some exceptionally shitty marketing: (girly) pink microscopes and telescopes of lower power than their (manly) black or silver brethren. 
One of the commenters on Dr Isis’ blog has mentioned that in fact the black/silver microscopes are also available in the lower power 600x … but that doesn’t make it ok. I suspect very strongly that while the “boys’” microscopes are indeed available in wussy configuration, the frilly girly pink ones >_< would not be available in the higher power configurations.
Now while I agree with Dr Isis' point about giving girls realistic images like the final two in her post - neither of which include pink microscopes (though they are B&W photos...) - we must take into account that colour is attractive to kids - and even if girls don't like pink naturally (my daughter certainly seemed to, despite us dressing her in black and blue and brown and yellow and red ... yes, and pink ... not all at the same time though 
) they get socialised very effectively into it. Consequently they re fairly likely, when faced with a black one or a pink one, to want the pink one. They then have the weak one - just right for girls, apparently. >_<
It’s hard for me to not see this has deliberate, faced with the evidence of stripper poles for toddlers, “MILF in training” t-shirts, and so on. These seem to represent our society’s desperate and deliberate attempts to return women to their “rightful places”: on their backs, in the kitchen, or in rap videos (and if you can pull off the hat trick, you’re the frakkin hero of the age).
And you know what’s really sad? At some point we’re going to have to teach our little girl about sexism 
We will have to tell her that a sizeable and influential lump of (fuckwits/idiots/arseholes) people will see her as inferior – or even irrelevant – simply because she is a she. She will need to know that no matter what she does or how well, some people will ignore or diminish her. How do you do that? It’s not something I really want her to understand (because it’s so shitty) but if she doesn’t she’s likely to fall foul of it 
What a wonderful way to start a morning – and almost a new year.
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