Thanks to Sociological Images for exposing me to one image that’s burning my retinas and hurting my heart.
“Baby Bangs.” Wigs. For babies.
I am aware that I’m the last blogger on the planet to cover this but I’m forging ahead anyway.
The Baby Bangs! website might be funny if it were intended as satire – a commentary on the beauty standard imposed on women and girls. Instead, it’s completely in earnest and really, really disturbing (both for the content and the offensive grammar).
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?
Both baby girls and baby boys are often bald. A girl’s lack of hair is not a flaw. But as per usual, girls (and women) are the ones who “require” adornment to distinguish them from the opposite sex. According to the site, the creators “believe in the beauty of childhood.” Right. Childhood means bare baby heads. What it should not mean is conformation to gendered beauty norms before one can walk. But the Baby Bangs creators are doing their part to raise the bar for even fresh-out-of-the-womb females.
My, that beautiful child is clever, but how ever shall I compliment it?
Now I know she's a girl! Aren't you beautiful...
We are clearly meant to find the second image more appealing than the first. Not I. In-your-face gender cues are supposedly “cute;” and without them, people actually get agitated. I’d think a synthetic wig affixed to my head and doused with hair-spray (yes, really) would be agitating. But I suppose little girls should learn that beauty is pain as early as possible. What next – baby high heels? Oh, wait.
I was a bald baby. My little sister was basically born with a baby mohawk. Neither one of us retains any scarring from our non-fairy-princess baby hairdos. How anyone could look at a tiny baby and see FLAWS instead of perfection is beyond me. Maybe because I spent two hours last night rocking a tiny wee girl in the special care nursery, and all I could do was marvel over her delicate perfection, her tiny yawns, and her little stretches. (Oh God, I’m totally going to get knocked up soon, aren’t I??)
Also, just a solution out there when you don’t know if the baby is a boy or girl: Talk to the baby. “Aren’t you cute?” doesn’t necessitate the use of gender.
Or just don’t talk to strangers’ babies….
I determine baby gender by their puke. If it’s pink and smells like sunshine and rainbows and puppies and angels, then it’s a girl.
That’s just the thing, DM. Many people will interact with babies differently depending on the baby’s sex. They use the sex of the baby as an indicator of how he/she should be handled and spoken to. Messed up.
Girl babies puke?
Can you imagine how horrified you’d be, in twenty years, to look at the scrapbook your mother had made in which you’re wearing these wigs for two years? And that little girl looks cute, and her eyebrows seem to be red, but what if her hair doesn’t grow in that ginger color? What if it’s light blonde, or black?
And for heaven’s sake, they put her in a pink tutu. As if that weren’t a big enough clue that she’s a girl. And as if it mattered!
The only way I interact with strangers’ babies is to smile at them foolishly. Parents must really hate me. I just smile and wave and then, if a mom or dad is looking at me funny, I say “your child is positively adorable.”
Kithkin: I bet they don’t hate it. Once, a mom at the aquarium THANKED me for making googly eyes at her baby until the baby smiled and giggled. She said it had been a rough day and the both of them had needed a smile.
I like that the babybangs weren’t enough. They had to have a floral headband. And a tutu. AND a bunch of flowers. Shouldn’t she be riding a unicorn? With a bow in its hair?
Bald baby head smell is the BEST. Why would you want to cover that up with synthetic hair that inevitably smells like BarbieNeck?
oh…I may have answered my own question.
@funnyface: baby mohawk! I love it.
Girl babies have to be adorned because they are the marked form of human. Boys are the default, and girls are the other ones with the barbie hair and high heels.
oh the existential PANIC it must cause parents when strangers don’t know the sex of their child! am i an alien or something? did i miss an important memo on why genders must be so heavily policed?
One more thing! If parents really really want people to know the sex of their baby, and get terribly hurt when a stranger mistakes their daughter for a son or vice versa, wouldn’t it be easy to say “Say hi, Jenny (or Jacob, or whatever)!” Problem (as if it were a problem) solved.
i think they do make baby high heels, i sorta remember seeing something about it on feministing. i was born with a full head of uncontrollable hair, but if i was born bald and my mom put these stupid wigs on me, i’d be so pissed at her in my adult years.
it’s like parents saying their children AREN’T beautiful enough. let’s give girls beauty complexes at the youngest possible age, yes?
Ok, but where do you get the kids that don’t pull these off? I practically had to duck tape hats to my son’s head when he was a baby.
As for the tutu – my toddler boy cheerfully dresses up in the girl next door’s princess clothes every chance he gets. For his birthday, we got a fireman hat and a tiara and they traded back and forth all day. I’m just saying – the tutu could be a boy.
Rachel, I linked to the baby high heel site! Sorry, our hyperlinks are sorta hard to see.
My son had SO MUCH HAIR as a baby that one old lady in the grocery store argued with me: “Oh, no, that’s not a little boy, that’s a little girl!” If I had been a good parent, I would have shaved his head.
blue_streak: I would totally say “OMG, you’re right! Thank you for showing me what my OB, pediatrician and child’s anatomy couldn’t! I’ll have that penis removed immediately.”
I am hoping for a blond baby, which I understand means he’ll look totally bald for at least a year. But if you were really concerned about baldness, isn’t that why they make adorable baby hats in gender-appropriate colors?
I was bald until age 4 or so. My parents were scared that I would go to Kindergarten bald, actually. Yet, they still dressed me in mostly gender-neutral clothes and let me go around bald-headed. I’m not ashamed, and neither were they.
For the record, I have enough hair now to make up for it.
I LOVE bald babies, come on it’s adorable!!!! and no matter how much pink you have draped about your baby, no matter if she’s got a ton of curly blond hair up in pigtails, someone will still say “Oh isn’t he cute!” it happened to my goddaughter. Just say thank you and walk away, does it really matter???
also I smile and wave at stranger’s babies, I love babies.
I don’t have children, but I babysit my friends baby frequently and I will tell you, any kind of sock, or hat, or headband, or hair clip, will be promptly removed by any baby. I can’t imagine a baby keeping a wig for any amount of time, maybe just enough time to snap a picture, but that’s it.
Am I the only woman in America who thinks babies are adorable no matter what and doesn’t feel the need to ask/care about gender? I’ll usually ask their name so I can talk to the baby…but overt gendering of babies bothers me. When see women carry their newborns around the store with large bows and frilly dresses…it bothers me, and I’m sure the baby isn’t too happy either.
[...] women. I’m sure baby bikinis also serve the same purpose as frilly headbands and… baby bangs: signaling that the child is a girl rather than a boy. As usual, it’s the girls who [...]
This may just be me being nuts, but does anyone else see the sadness in the second picture? I don’t think the baby understands what’s going on, but just that something about the wig or maybe the old people’s treatment of them made it sad.
Anyway, I’ve seen boys with that hair, so it doesn’t really mean much.
On another note, why do we use words that tell of our sex in everyday conversastion? “She” “he” “her” “him”… confused.
”On another note, why do we use words that tell of our sex in everyday conversastion? “She” “he” “her” “him”… confused.”
I totally agree, and wish the English language had gender-neutral words such as “hu” [as in, human], or perhaps “xe”.
Before the rise of the “Ms” title, women were always referenced by their marital status – you were either a “Miss” or a “Mrs”, and whichever one you were had a substantial bearing on your worth in society.
It’s time for another gender/value revolution!