Wendy Norris is a freelance writer from Denver, Colorado now working on assignment for RH Reality Check. She was previously a New Journalist Fellow for the Center for Independent Media and managing editor of The Colorado Independent. She is editor/founder of Unbossed.com. 

They're marketed as "extremely funny" but the underlying message is much more disturbing — baby shoes resembling stilettos and "ima shopper" embossed on hot pink-colored rubber teethers designed as mock credit cards.

Sadly, girls, even at infancy, are being subjected to messages, both direct and subtle, that their worth is inextricably linked to attractiveness and stereotypical feminine behaviors.

One would hope after decades of social progress in the workplace, at school and home that the gender stratification of toy stores, clothing racks and extra-curricular activities would be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Not so. And according to some experts in cultural studies and biology the influences that perpetuate gender stereotypes are as pervasive as ever.

The pink and purple princess mafia

Melissa Wardy became so frustrated with the clichéd "ubiquitous pink and purple princess-diva-drama queen" clothing options for her pre-school-aged daughter that she founded Pigtail Pals, a T-shirt company to redefine the term "girly."

"I've done many amazing things in my life but I've never met a princess. I've never met a real ballerina," said Wardy, who was a cold case homicide investigator before deciding to become a stay-at-home mom. Her designs promote girl-affirming messages about non-traditional career options, healthy body images and being brave, intelligent and independent.

But it's not just girls that are being bombarded with formulaic identities ripe for Madison Avenue exploitation. Wardy, who now has a son, also finds that boys clothing is as fixated on unattainable muscle-bound physiques, sports and macabre figures.

Navigating the local discount super store makes it even tougher for parents trying to raise confident, socially-aware children. The friction between families' urging their children, especially girls, to pursue their dreams is directly contradicted by the virtually inescapable consumer-culture mores of prescribed clothing styles, overtly gender-based entertainment and the annual onslaught of holiday toy commercials that reinforce strict role expectations.

Try as we might to avoid these mini-Men are from Mars/Women are from Venus dichotomies, there's growing evidence that we're actually inadvertently hard-wiring some of these stereotypes into our kids' brains.

Nature versus nurture or both?

Until about age two, most young children are unaware of gender roles and exhibit no toy preferences between trucks and dolls until cultural pressures kick in.

Neurobiologist Lise Eliot argues that despite conventional wisdom, "We don't have evidence that the brain is different at birth but we do know that the brain is strongly affected by learning."

In Eliot's new book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain, she also posits that if there are behavioral differences between boys and girls there must be a correlated neurologic difference — ones that are frequently incited by cultural influences.

For instance, Eliot's research confirms that certain play activities favored by parents and schools for young children help to create neural pathways that magnify minute biological differences between boys and girls that augment learning stereotypes. Encouraging boys to play with building toys, sports and video games improves visual-spatial acuity that is linked to math and science performance. Diverting girls to language dominant and small motor activities, such as reading and coloring, builds another set of skills more commonly associated as feminine.

While the strides made by the implementation of Title IX to ensure equal access to academic and extra-curricular educational activities, most notably female athletics programs, are undeniable in their benefit to girls' spatial skill development there still exists cultural manifestations of gender-restrictive toys and play that curb such learning.

The complex duality of nature and nurture's affects on children's gender identity and embrace of stereotypical behavior, says Eliot, creates as an intersecting and self-perpetuating Venn diagram rather than two distinct ends of a spectrum.

That new thinking stands in contrast to the bookstore shelves that groan with tomes on raising boys and reviving Ophelia. To which Eliot takes aim at the stacks of popular parenting guides which she warns are too often "simply making stuff up" to substantiate preconceived perspectives on differences between boys and girls that are not supported by scientific research.

Taking sides in the 'pink wars'

While parents suffer conflicting messages about how to best raise their children, Elline Lipkin thinks that girls are encountering their own complicated set of social expectations that's engendering contradictory behaviors.

Lipkin, an author and researcher at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, mentions that the groundbreaking study, "Packaging Girlhood,"  by Lyn Mikel Brown and Sharon Lamb deconstructs the "selling of pink" or mass clothing marketers attempts to sexualize young girls based on the intensity of a pink hue chosen for clothing — light pink connotes the innocent good girl while hot pink signals a sexy diva.

"That's a very confusing conundrum for a lot of people who don't realize it," said Lipkin. "And girls are often left feeling these pressures coming at them from all sides but they can't articulate the disconnect. It's really confusing and really, really frustrating."

In her forthcoming book, Girls' Studies, she examines the impact of pop culture and media on young women. One effect of those pressures is the trend toward revealing, age-inappropriate clothing and cosmetics for pre-teen girls designed to attract male attention, that evokes the derisive term, "prostitot."

"From birth onward we are being shepherded along a gender spectrum and there's very little choice involved," said Lipkin about the unrelenting cultural mixed messages that assail girls.

And that moment now seemingly begins as infants when they slip on their first pair of high heels.