In our family of there are our two boys and our princess in the middle. I say princess because gender stereotyping dictates that we call her that. She is something of a tomboy princess however, if that exists. With two brothers, one older and one younger, it's natural.
As our first and only girl, so far, she has drawers of pink clothes and princess dressing-up clothes. Name a Disney princess and she has the dress, complete with tiara, shoes and bag. Perhaps we did go a little crazy with the whole clothes-for-a-girl thing. But after almost two years of the same blues and greens and browns of little boys clothing, I was longing for some princess pink.
Most of the time she refuses to wear any of the dresses. The shoes she will wear sometimes; usually at the most inappropriate times. Every day we pick her big brother up from school. It's a walk that involves several flights of stairs, crossing several roads and walking through a park. This is when she insists on wearing the plastic princess shoes with little plastic heels and bows.
At first I gave in to her and let her wear the shoes. I figured she would realise how uncomfortable they are and she'd never ask again. But she still asks and I still end up carrying her pretty much all the way and there back because she just cannot walk more than a few metres in those ridiculous shoes. So now I have hidden the shoes away and play dumb when she walks through the apartment asking for them.
When it comes to dressing up, she will usually only wear one of her big brothers' superhero costumes. Fortunately, she has long hair so never gets mistaken for a boy but I usually put a big pink bow in her hair to complement the superhero costume. Not that she cares and I suppose neither should I.
Her boxes of girls' toys go largely untouched from day to day. The dolls, the ponies, the delicate pink china tea set. She plays with them sometimes when other girls come to visit but she is soon distracted by her brothers' more energetic games with lightsabres and pirate swords.