Boyshave short hair, girls have long hair. Boys play football, girls dance or ride horses. There are so many stereotypes of girls and boys that actually make a difference in the way people think. Children’s books are a good source to find these stereotypes and reading them will eventually make us categorize different things for different genders. I went through some children’s books to see how much gender stereotyping can be found in them and what stereotypes are the most commonly used. Have you ever wondered how much these stereotypes really affect our every-day thinking?

Let us begin with some very general and simple stereotypes of boys and girls. Colours like green and blue have always been categorized as boy’s colours, and colours like red and pink as girls. This is very well seen in children’s books from which a majority used these stereotypes. An example is the book “Minnies Bike” by Pratima Michell in which Minnie’s clothing is mainly red and her brother is blue. Some books did break these stereotypes and use the “wrong” colours for wrong genders, but these were mainly a bit harder books that older children would normally read. You will see this very much in real life e.g. in your home economics class, the red aprons are meant for girls and the blue ones for boys. In reality, boys who wear a lot of girl-coloured clothes are often referred to be “gay”. Another very usual stereotype is that girls have long hair and boys have short hair. In children’s books you will very rarely run into a long haired boy. In reality this is of course not like this, but if you are a long haired boy, thanks to these stereotypes you will many times be referred to a girl.

In children’s books, boys are usually bigger, stronger and taller than girls and play football. Girls on the other hand are smaller, usually younger (there are more little sisters than little brothers) and do sports like riding horses or dancing. In the children’s book “Vuodenajat Pellen, Pian ja Pepin kanssa” by Mario Covi, you can see only the girls dancing and only the boys playing football. In reality, dancing has also built up to be a “girls” sport even though these days a lot of boys dance. Something funny that is very noticeable in books is that when children have pets, the boys more often have dogs and girls cats. This can be seen in for example “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” by Michael Rosen and “The Rugrats Versus the Monkeys” by Luke David.

There are too many stereotypes to be listed here, but finding them yourself is very easy. Simply think about the two genders in books and see what differences they have. Some things are so obvious to you that you don not even realize that it is only your own thinking. When opening a book like “Arthurs Birthday” written by Marc Brown, only and almost all girls are wearing ponytails. Your brains process the thought and soon you build up an idea that it is the girls that wear ponytails, not the boys. Generally, yes this is true, but there are millions of men that wear ponytails. Some unnoticed stereotypes like this really do make these strong thoughts in your head that you somehow learn to follow.

So how exactly do these stereotypes influence our thinking? And what is so bad about them? Well, they are not really bad, but they have a lot of effect on our thinking that we do every day. You see someone with long blonde hair from behind; of course you think it is a woman straight away. You watch football team and flick through the games. First you see a woman’s team playing, then men’s. Most people will automatically assume that women are worse than the men. This is because stereotypically men are better at sports. People can also get offended as a result from stereotypes e.g. been called “gay” for wearing girls colours or a girl for having long hair. How about if you are a woman who wants to buy blue, loose jeans like those hip-hop artist have? You will rarely find a pair from a woman’s clothes store and many, especially young women or girls shop in men’s stores. Why, once again is this? Because clothes designers assume that women don not wear clothes like this. And these are once again only stereotypes making the difference.

Simply living your life will build up many stereotypes between girls and boys in your head. These can be seen very clearly in for example children’s books. The stereotypes have a lot of effect on our thinking and this has a lot of effect in the world we live in. People make decisions according to these stereotypes, and often they end up being unfair or somehow negative to either gender. I personally think that if we did not have these stereotypes, it would pretty much leave us with “one gender” which I think is pretty unwanted since both genders need some individuality. We all have our own view of boys and girls and I say let us keep it that way since if you want to escape from these stereotypes, do so. But next time you draw a girl, think about the picture. You will probably be looking at a drawing with long haired, some colourful probably red, yellow, pink or other “girl” colour clothed and maybe some earring-wearing girl. You think that these describe the girl best and that they are features of a girl, but you are wrong. They are just stereotypes.