Opinion: pink for boys mainly colours John Lewis' image

British department store chain John Lewis will only carry gender-neutral children’s clothing. Pants, skirts and dresses, pink or blue, every single one will get a “girls & boys” label.  Parents have rejoiced and protested, but what do the children think?

Against gender stereotypes, for free choice

John Lewis’ children’s department will no longer distinguish between clothing for boys and girls. The chain quietly removed every gender indication last year and launched a unisex baby collection earlier this year. No one cared about it, until the chain publicly announced it recently.

John Lewis prefers neutrality because it does “not want to reinforce gender stereotypes within our John Lewis collections and instead want to provide greater choice and variety to our customers, so that the parent or child can choose what they would like to wear”, head of childrenswear, Caroline Bettis, said. As probably expected (and wished), the reactions quickly followed. People on social media wanted a boycott, while others have called John Lewis a shining example.

Goal: to charm millennials

It remains to be seen whether children actually care, something no one wonders because it is all about the parents. Looking at it from that perspective, things make commercial sense for John Lewis, because the British chain wants to appear trendier and younger, just like any department store chain.

It wants to access the increasingly larger group of young parents, part of the millennials. It are those people that are conscious about things like gender, because women have proven their equality during their youth; LBGTQ have received more rights and transsexuality has become more accessible as a talking point. These values are now instilled into their children. 

Children that do not like that girl toys are only available in pink and that boys are proudly dressed like a Disney princess for Halloween often go viral on social media. The people behind clips like that are usually middle-class families with two highly educated working people, an economically interesting target audience for retailers like John Lewis.

Teenagers do not believe in m or f

Generation Z, the current generation of teenagers, have taken it a step further. Actor Will Smith’s son, Jaden Smith, already posed in a dress for Vogue Korea and also became the face for fashion label Louis Vuitton, even for its women’s collection. It points to a wider-spread phenomenon: more than half of the American teenagers apparently knows someone who does not want to be identified along male / female names and who prefers to be addressed in gender-neutral terms. Not a “he” or “she”, but rather “them”.  

Remarkable is that only 44 % of teenagers buys clothing for his or her specific gender. 54 % of millennials also indicate they only buy clothing for a particular type of gender. A growing part of the youth believes that genders are not binary (male or female), but that they are a range of identities, like agender, transgender and androgynous.

Will this trend pass? Probably not, far from it actually. Turning it into something visible and debatable, specialists forecast more people, from all ages, will soon “come out” with a different gender identity. The young are paving the way and John Lewis will persist: the (temporary) boos will not offset the possible long-term profits.