Platform 51

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Categories: woman of the week
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Women of the week – Abi and Emma Moore

Challenging gender stereotyping and giving young girls a voice

Abi and Emma Moore, the founders of Pinkstinks, are our women of the week. Pinkstinks is a campaigning organisation that confronts the damaging messages that bombard girls though toys, clothes and media. Something that we know all too well at Platform 51 affects girls as women.

In the run up to Christmas it is almost impossible to walk into a toy shop without being bombarded with aisles of blue and pink, blue for boys and pink for girls. Pinkstinks describes this as the 'pinkification' of girlhood. This gender segregation starts from the day we are born and Abi and Emma are fighting back and saying that there is more way to be a girl and it is not just about being "pretty, passive and obsessed with shopping."

Pinkstinks was started in May 2008 by sisters Abi and Emma, since then have run various different campaigns to raise awareness of the 'pinkification' of girls and to challenge the damaging effects it can have on girls. Pinkstinks has challenged major retailers such as The Early Learning Centre, Sainsbury's and most recently Hamleys toy shop in London. Hamleys changed their famous blue and pink floors last week for more gender neutral red and white and have moved their toys to be organised by type rather than gender. The triumph for Pinkstinks was documented in The Observer.

Emma Moore said to us: "People ask me why I keep on doing this as well as having a full time job. It's because we get letters from eight year old girls telling us that we give them a voice." At Platform 51 we hear from our girls and women on a daily basis how much they are affected by the pressure they feel from the media. For example one of our young women Alex, aged 13 said: "Images in magazines make me feel that I want to be like those girls. It makes my confidence go down- look how pretty they are. But I know that it's not real and that we are all different. We should be happy with who we are."

Abi and Emma Moore there is more than one way to be a girl and we love that you are giving a voice to young girls and fighting gender stereotypes. Keep up the good work.

Pinkstinks next campaign is called SLAP. Slap will focus on the steady proliferation of make-up aimed at little girls and the damage that this normalising of make-up can do to the self-esteem of young children. Follow Pinkstinks on Twitter to keep up to date with their campaign.