If violets are blue, why can't I get flowers on my baby boy's clothes?

[beetiger]

So, I've got this baby. And it's got a penis, the main function of which right now is to spout urine impressive distances whenever I get the diaper off. It's also got XY chromosomes, since we happened to check when we were getting genetics work done for unrelated reasons. So, even though we'll be happy to change our opinion on this if he tells us otherwise, we're working on the assumption that he's a boy.

Baby clothing comes in pretty much five colors: blue, white, yellow, green, and pink. And certain culturally gendered decorations only show up on certain colors of clothing, like the correspondences in some big magical text or something. Ducks and farm animals, and insects (including bees) and astronomical features are gender-neutral, and thus show up on the yellow/white/green stuff. Bears and wild animals and dogs and cars and construction equipment are somehow male, and thus show up on the blue stuff only. The pink stuff displays flowers, and hearts, and princesses, and the words "pretty pretty", and cats. And here is the problem. Though I'm willing to be moderately nonstandard on lots of stuff, I'm not quite up for dressing my infant boy in pink, but I really really would prefer he have feline decorations rather than canine and ursine ones. Rar! He does have one jumper with a lion on it, which is the closest I could get. But I really want a onesie in a deep deep purple, with an applique of a sprightly housecat with a mouse caught in its jaws, with the text "Mighty Hunter" under it. That's what I want.

A note to the relative who sent us the blue blue card showing the baby boy sitting by a computer, thinking of a car, a plane, a baseball, a sailboat, and a duck, with the caption "You've got male!": adding a note that you were "tickled blue" about the new arrival is not only serious overkill, but implies that when you heard the news, you stopped breathing.

Also, a note to the US government, when you guys aren't busy protecting heterosexual marriage or something: This whole breastfeeding objective as part of the Healthy People 2010 initiative is pretty cool, since we pretty much know that getting people to breastfeed their babies for 6 months or a year is really good for American health, especially in minority communities. However, if we're making women go back to work after 2-3 months because that's how American corporate culture structures maternity leave, and the economy stinks too much to expect companies to go do better on their own, telling pediatricians to inform moms that breast feeding longer is a good idea isn't going to do squat.

Comments

Prepare for a rant :-)

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

I could go on and on and on and on about this. So I'll indulge myself, but just a little bit.

I too am mystified and irritated by the absolute rigidity of the genderizing of children's clothing. You've got the boy side of the aisle, and the girl side of the aisle, and ne'er the two shall meet.

First, I agree that the lack of color range is indeed striking, though it gets better as your kid gets older. When Ilana was an infant, I looked for something - anything - for her in black, as I knew that with her coloring, she would look fabulous in black. Also, she was a pretty serious and intense infant, so I thought it would complement her that way. There is nothing in black in sizes under 12 months. It's almost like people think that if you dress a baby in black, you're inviting the Angel of Death to come and take him or her away or something. Also, all the infant clothes were either white or in soft little pastels, as if bright colors would somehow hurt the kid or something. Why is it that the toy manufacturers have figured out that babies like bright colors and striking patterns, but the clothing manufacturers are all designing soft gentle boring kinds of stuff?

As for the genderization, it drives me batty. Girls clothes are all about flowers and kittens and hearts and rainbows and lace and ribbons. Boys' clothes are all about trucks and wild animals and tools and, oh, other manly things. Why can't boys like flowers and girls tools? Boys can be gardeners or horticulturists or flower arrangers. Girls can be carpenters, plumbers, and fix stuff in their own houses. I would love to design clothing that deliberately fucks with people's gender stereotypes, like pink overalls with trucks on them, for instance.

Why is it so very important that everyone who encounters your child know what equipment he has between his legs? It sure as hell doesn't matter to the kid. By the time it matters, the kid can either choose to dress as culturally expected (my daughter, almost 3, is a very girly girl - I had nothing to do with this), or to dress however the hell he wants and he can deal with those who have a problem with it.

Anyway, I'm sure there is plenty of gender-neutral children's clothing out there, if you look for it. I bet a lot of it will be expensive, but hey. I have also bought Ilana stuff from the boys' side, like pajamas and mittens, when the girls' stuff seemed too pastel or too boring to me.

And I'll leave you with a quote from my friend hawkegirl's son, Gregorian, who I'm guessing is around 8 or 9, on what he would do if he became president: "I would like to make it so that just because you wear a dress, people don't assume you're a girl." (Gregorian recently attended some common friends' housewarming wearing a very frilly pinafore over his sweatshirt and jeans! Amazing kid.)

[fangirl715.livejournal.com]

There's a Usenet group called alt.gothic.parenting where some of these issues have been discussed in the past (although it's been damn near dead lately), and you could try googling on "goth baby" to see what you could come up with. (OK, Ilana's not a baby, but I'm reasonably sure you can find clothes for toddlers and older children through some of these sites as well.)

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have no problem finding her nice clothes NOW.. It was only when she was an infant that I found the options so limited.

Re: Prepare for a rant :-)

[opadit.livejournal.com]

There is nothing in black in sizes under 12 months. It's almost like people think that if you dress a baby in black, you're inviting the Angel of Death to come and take him or her away or something. Also, all the infant clothes were either white or in soft little pastels

Spit-up is white or off-white. Light-colored baby clothes don't need to be changed nearly as often as black baby clothes would be, since the spit-up shows up less. Ariel Gore mentioned this dilemma in the Hip Mama Survival Guide book of hers.

Despite all our best efforts, my four-year-old girl likes to wear pink, pink, red, and pink, especially if it involves Hello Kitty (hand-me-down, I swear), butterflies, or flowers.

Re: Prepare for a rant :-)

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

The spit-up explanation doesn't wash with me, so to speak. Else why would so many children's clothes - and especially bibs - come in white, a color most apt to show stains? I really think it's a cultural association of black with death.

Re: Prepare for a rant :-)

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

It's kind of sad that the world has changed this way, since I was a child (in the 1970s.) Back then, there was a trend towards unisex toddler clothes with primary colors and cuddly-looking barnyard animals. And tie-dye...we all wore tie-dye and denim. This rigidity of programming gender roles for very young children isn't conservative, exactly, not in the sense of keeping to the same pattern that's been unbroken for generations. It's making a new pattern, trying to move away from the sense of implicit flexibility previous generations grew up with.