Right back atcha, sweetie. Via Chris and Jenni @ Flickr
If aliens were to do reconnaissance on humans by browsing a children’s clothing store, they’d conclude that the males of the species love animals and physical activity whilst the females enjoy sitting around looking pretty. Butterflies and bunnies are as wild as it gets for the girls. Not that there’s anything wrong with butterflies and bunnies, but the narrow range of images on baby girls’ clothes serves to perpetuate the myth that girls are made of sugar and spice (and unfortunately, sexiness), in opposition to boys.
I’ve had the opportunity to shop for baby clothes a few times in the past couple months. Nowhere is the gender policing stricter than in children’s clothing and toy stores. Adults project narrow roles onto children before they’re able to hold their heads up. Puppies can only be found on boys’ onesies and overalls; the same goes for jungle animals. I suppose that’s because boys are uniquely playful and adventurous whilst girls are dainty and demure. Oh, wait…
Girls like puppy dog tails, do they not? Generally they can choose outfits and toys in colors ranging from rose to fuscia. Boy clothing ensures that no one will ever question your little baby’s masculinity. “This tot loves construction machinery! Don’t dare mistake him for a GIRL!” the t-shirts scream.
The gendering of color is particularly interesting when you consider the fact that pink was once considered a boy color and blue a girl color.
But heaven help you if the recipient of your baby gift does not know the sex of her gestating baby. You will have to venture into the miniscule section of newborn clothes not designated “boy” or “girl” (based on color and theme, of course) to choose something yellow or green. Those who later come in contact with the newborn will be terribly confused by the absence of clear gender signifiers; it’s amusing and depressing.
Of course, one can always cross over to the other sex’s section to broaden one’s selection. But wouldn’t a more gender-neutral, diverse array of clothing for all children be preferable?
I think that all infants should have baby clothes with tigers and harpy eagles on them. They must learn from early on that the are in constant danger of being devoured.
All right, wait, though–serious question.
The problem that you’re describing is actually a pretty easy fix–you just start making baby clothes in neutralish colors, with tigers and harpy eagles on them. You could even market a specific, you know, “for badass baby girls” line of onesies or whatever, that had pictures of women with rocket launchers on them.
This is not a joke. I would 100% buy something like that for my daughter.
But. What do you do if no one else buys them? I mean, if the principal isn’t sustainable? Like, you make them, but you can’t sell enough of them to stay in business. What’s the plan, at that stage? It seems like a pretty small issue for legislation–are we talking about some kind of a non-profit or charity-based baby clothes manufacturer then?
One of the interesting little factoids I’ve stored into my mind is that originally pink was reserved for baby boys and blue was reserved for baby girls – the rationale, I believe, was that pink was pale red, and thus the color of blood, and little girls were FAR too dainty to be associated with such a gruesome color.
Which just goes to show how much bullshit this whole thing is. There should be more gender-neutral clothes than there are, and I suspect if I ever have a girl, I’ll be buying a lot of clothes in the little boys department or the small gender-neutral department. I also think this is a growing sentiment out there – and while I can’t say anything anywhere near certain without substantial market research – I think you’d find that gender-neutral baby clothing, and badass baby girl clothing (as braak has suggested) has an audience. Is it a big enough audience? I don’t know.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Why do colors have to be associated with certain genders? And who cares if a little girl is wearing a blue shirt with a racecar on it? I’ll bet she’s one badass chick.
Though worse than mistaking a girl baby for a boy is mistaking a boy baby for a girl. Because there is nothing worse in this society than being a girl (or a sissy boy or a pussy… you know, girlISH).
Something I’ve always appreciated about my sister is that she refused to reveal the gender of her kids before she had them, thus FORCING people to buy gender-neutral clothing.
I have two adorable nieces, just FYI.:)
You left out cats on the “animals acceptable for girl clothes” list! I had a dress that had a cat face on it when I was wee. I think the dress was grey and purple.
Anyway, back on point: I think more clothing should be gender neutral, for kids as well as everyone else. I had two older brothers, so I ended up getting their hand-me-downs, and I still go shopping in the men’s section every now and then. Their pants have deep, useful pockets! It’s amazing.
After shopping for my baby niece, I have started to suspect that it is all part of a larger plot. Most people have more than one kid, but often that second kid is not the same gender as the first kid (or the third doesn’t match the first two, or whatever). Thus, all clothes being gender-specific means MORE BUYING OF CLOTHES.
But maybe I’m just paranoid.
As a mama, the insipidness of children’s clothing and their gender-specificness is really silly. minisparks mostly had hand-me-down clothing and I put on her whatever we had.
See, owning the ridiculousness of giant bows and/or dinosaurs/trains/whatever you put on boys clothes really works. minisparks wore boy baby clothes and girl clothes, too. If you don’t give a shit, then no one else can.
Also, I second DangerMouse. I think that crap is all about sales, and people being afraid to dress their boys in My Little Pony onesies. Fact is, all babies are generally cute and can wear whatever the hell. It’s more of a reflection on the parent and how rididulously hung up they are on gender identities.
Braak, the idea has crossed my mind, and there is some cool homemade gender-neutral stuff out there. I would definitely make it a point to buy it for my own kids (or make it myself).
As a child, my parents mostly dressed me in gender-neutral clothes from the Salvation Army; I’ve never seen a picture of myself in frilly pink anything. But I think the early 80′s were a different time in that regard – not nearly as much pressure to stick kids in obnoxiously gendered crap.
But in the end, this phenomenon will never end until girls and boys are viewed as equal and people get over their hangups about sex/gender.
See how I’ve given myself a promotion.
Just for clarification, little girls are actually into a puppy dog ears for a some reason. I did an exhaustive survey and 100 percent of the little girls who live in my house say so.
My dad was determined to dress me in gender-neutral clothes. I still ended up loving purple dresses, and I think he regarded it as a personal failure. My son, however, will definitely have some stylish purple duds to reflect his mama’s favorite color.
SarahMC:
I guess that’s the question then: what is the best way to view girls and boys as equal people?
Is it: Do [X] and people will stop buying and making gender-specific baby clothes?
(Where X is something like, I don’t know, legislation or something, or more books…)
Or is it that making gender-neutral baby clothes is part of a series of small actions that [X] includes?
I mean, I don’t know; it seems like a kind of a chicken and an egg question: do you change peoples’ minds in order to change their buying habits, or do you change their minds by changing their buying habits?
Of course, the chicken and the egg question is pretty answerable if you believe in evolution, since a chicken has to hatch from an egg, but something genetically slightly dissimilar could lay an egg with a mutant in it that would turn out to be a chicken. I guess it’s pretty answerable if you believe in creationism, too, since God didn’t make eggs, but created whole adult animals, whole cloth.
So, maybe “chicken and egg” isn’t a good metaphor here.
I’m going to start asking the gender of the child even when the child is dressed in gender-specific clothing, just to fuck with people.
What is with the construction equipment? Why can I not find little boy clothes without them? Does Carters really think my infant needs to wear a backhoe on his shirts?
DangerMouse: You are dead on. If all baby clothes were neutral no one would buy anything new.
Braak: There are lots of cool, gender neutral baby clothes on the internet, so SOMEONE must be making money off it. The problem is they’re all either European, thus very very expensive, or from sites my mother wouldn’t be able to find with a compass and a guide dog. I have little hope Target will start selling tiny Rolling Stones onesies.
Well, companies are not going to stop making them because – people ARE buying them. It bothers me that there are Girls and Boys sections for newborn clothing. IMO it is so inappropriate to project narrow stereotypes on brand new people like that. I would like one general array of clothing for newborns with colors beyond blue and pink.
I don’t know the answer.
I’ve noticed that the offerings in low-end stores are dramatically gendered, and more sexualized. The high-end stores still separate clothes by color but at least there aren’t as many trashy, suggestive messages written across everything.
Another problematic effect of all this gendering is that a lot of it prohibits little girls’ movement. Girls like to play just as much as boys, but a lot of the shoes available for girls are hazardous! The outfits are more physically restrictive. And of course as we’ve already discussed, the images on boys’ clothing emphasize action (sports, cars, contruction equipment for goodness sake) whilst the same is not true for girls’ clothes.
when a dear friend of mine had twins, a boy and a girl, i went shopping with her to get gifts for them, because who knows better what the babies already have than mommy?
do you know how hard it was to find something that didn’t look like a pepto bismol explosion?
i settled on two onesies and two crib toys, and the onesie for her daughter was brown (!!!!) with a chocolate chip cookie on it and the word “smart” in pink (oh well) written above it. i figured i would acquiesce to pink lettering if the garment wasn’t itself pink. her son got a green onesie that said ‘will cry for food’.
SarahMC: Yes, I agree that it’s a silly thing to do. So, I figure there are a handful of issues here: in the first place, what are the reasons that this is perpetuated? And, in the second place, what are the best ways to stop it?
There are two reasons that this gets perpetuated: 1) because people think it’s correct. 2) because people can’t find anything else.
Obviously, most people think it’s correct because it’s what they’re used to–I think that that’s why most people think most things. The solution, then, is to disrupt what people are used to, by creating a plurality of options early on. Babies, in this regard, are the best avenue of attack.
You need…hm. What do you need? A network of people that includes buyers at target, I guess. People that have specialty baby shops (that sell rolling stones onesies for boys & girls), too, so that you can demonstrate sustainability.
Is there some kind of “feminist product network” or something? Like, a website, or a newsletter (I’m thinking of “Daily Candy” or something), that lets people know where to go to get good gender-stereotype-inverting stuff?
I don’t have human kids, but I dress my fur child in a pale blue collar in support of my college basketball team. Therefore people always assume that my cockapoo is a boy, and I want to scream at them, “She’s a GIRL! A pretty, pretty GIRL who just happens to love Tar Heel basketball! Can’t you see that?!”
A college friend took her baby daughter to a football game, donned in the customary pale blue onesie. She put a tiny bow in the child’s wispy hair to prevent comments like “Oh, he’s cute!” And people STILL looked at that bow-bedecked baby and assumed it was a boy, just because of the pale blue color — even in a sea of pale blue!
I hate to say it, but I don’t see this pink/blue/green problem going away anytime soon. Perhaps we’d have a chance if a few big retailers like Wal-Mart and Target started bucking the trend…
I deal with this constantly with Little Penguino. Her favorite color is Communist Red, which I find hilarious because she’s Chinese. I’m happy to dress her in red from head to toe. My issue is with pajamas. I end up buying her boys pajamas because they’re thicker, better made, and warm. The girl pajamas are made out of thin material or worse, rayon, and are not made for actual sleeping!
I was thinking about this today. If much of the point of gendered clothing is to avoid having to clarify whether your child is a boy or a girl… well, I still don’t see the point. Who cares if someone doesn’t know the sex of your baby? Aren’t they all basically the same until the age of 5 anyway?
Britni, therein lies the very root of my frustration. Why is a baby’s sex important? Why does it matter?
I’m pretty sure it’s because even when we’re dealing with newborns, people want to know how they should treat the little tyke: as a boy (tell him how strong he is, “man up,” encourage him to play rough) or as a girl (tell her how pretty she is, treat her as more fragile, call her a princess). People are sexist; that’s the crux of it.
@SarahMC: I just tell every baby how cute he/she is and how I want to nom on their noggins. That kind of nonsense talk is totally gender neutral. Others should follow my lead.
@Mama Penguino: It’s all part of getting girls used to the idea of impractical lingerie and nightwear. You’ve got to start young!
Truth be told, my parents (who are recovering hippies) dressed both my sister and me in either gender-neutral or boys’ clothes as children. My mom loves to tell the story of the bright yellow corduroy overalls she got me when I was about 3. It took her about 2 weeks to realize that the overalls had a zipper fly and were therefore for boys. I wore them anyway.
“I’m going to start asking the gender of the child even when the child is dressed in gender-specific clothing, just to fuck with people.”
Ahaha @Khrushchev. Awesome.
[...] As I’ve said before, I am not keen on the ridid gendering of childhood. This product, and the language on the website, is especially revolting. On the homepage, underneath the before (androgynous and unlovable) and after (properly femme) pictures, it reads, “I’M NOT A BOY!” Why is an infant’s sex important? Is everyone who encounters her buying her diapers? [...]