Rachel’s Tavern- Shakesville Comment on Whiteness and Racial Awareness
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- John Hope Franklin Has Died
- Bottles, Breasts, and Mothering “Choices”
- NAACP Class Action Lawsuit on Subprime Loans
- We Have a Future Blogger
- I’m Afraid President Obama, Himself, is a Bit of Coward on the Race Issue
- Highly Skilled US Immigrants are Emigrating: What’s the deal?
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Sep
13
Gender and Baby Boys Clothes
Filed Under Baby Blogging, Gender and Sexism, Original Essays and Analysis, Photo Blogging, Uncategorized by Rachel
This is baby blogging, but it’s also a post about gender. As most of you know by know, I have two little boys, and one thing I really like to do is dress them in cute little outfits. Over the past few months, as I’ve perused the baby departments at numerous stores, I came to the conclusion that I like the clothes made for boys clothes better than I like the clothes made for girls. It’s not that I don’t like frilly dresses and ruffles. What I like about boys clothes is the bright primary colors that are more common in clothes marketed for infant and toddler boys and the themes used in both boy clothing and gender neutral clothing. My favorite themes are usually animal themed clothes, and above all else I like ducks and frogs–probably because yellow and green are my favorite colors. In my view frogs and ducks are generally androgynous, but many animal themed clothes are marketed for boys. For example, dogs, dinosaurs, lizards, bugs, and turtles are often found in boys clothing. I’ve also noticed two other common sets of themes that I like in baby boys clothing–occupational themes and activity themes. As I was looking through my little guys clothes, I noticed several outfits that had themes related to predominantly male (and mostly working class) occupations. The outfits they are wearing above are firemen themed. In the first picture, Mark’s shirt has a firetruck on it, and in the second picture Eli’s shirt says, “Chief Fire Dog to the Rescue.” I’ve also see baby boy clothes with policemen, construction worker, mechanic, pilot, and soldier themes. Activity themes involve clothes the promote going on safaris, hunting, fishing, eating, playing sports, and one outfit my little guys have promotes making robots (which could also be construed as an engineer’s outfit).
What strikes me about baby boys clothes is how much they promote activity and paid labor force work. Even as infants, we start to socialize baby boys into occupations. You rarely find occupation themed clothes for girls. Little girls clothes often have flowers, frills, and some animals (i.e. butterflies), but they don’t have occupational themes. They also rarely have activity themes outside of shopping or cheerleading. In fact, to me the worst subset of little girls clothes are those that say princess or diva. Diva is oftten used in a derisive way to indicate that the girl is overly demanding, and unlike the fireman or construction worker a princess doesn’t earn her title–she’s born with it or marries into it. Princess themed clothes also seem to play up baby girls looks–looking like a princess means looking pretty. I’ve seen a few shirts that have messages about boys being handsome or cute, but those are much less common.
One of the reasons that baby clothes are so strongly gendered is that babies themselves are often androgynous. If you put them only in a diaper, it’s often hard to tell what sex the baby is, but that androgyny doesn’t fit well into our gender polarized society, so this is where the clothes come in. Those clothes have underlying and blatant messages. Baby boy clothes have subtle and not so subtle messages. They say–be active, be bold, enjoy the outdoors, and get a paid job. It doesn’t seem that baby girls clothing has similar messages.
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39 Responses to “Gender and Baby Boys Clothes”
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I have two boys as well. It gets harder to dress them the older they get because clothes get boring and ugly. I’ve been lucky in my finds. But I get frustrated in stores where the girls’ section is 3 times the size of the boys. That said, I 100% agree with you that boy clothes are better and for all the same reasons. If we had been blessed with a girl, she’d be sporting fire trucks as well.
Also: here are some great gender neutral occupational clothing. My older son wants the paleontologist shirt. http://www.baby-potential.com/store
I’m going to have a baby girl later this year and my first two children are boys. I used to think there weren’t as many boy clothes available to purchase but looking at what’s on the racks for girls I’ve been thinking that there are more girl clothes available but they are all the same. Pretty much, at least. I’ve saved some of my favorite baby boy clothes and think I will have my new baby wear them, some of the time at least. And I told my 4 year old today that I love his pirate pajama bottoms so much that I’m going to save them so his sister can wear them.
shopping for clothes for my girls has been extremely frustrating for all of the reasons that you mention @ Vicki, Firemom, and Rachel
the worst part about the implicit affect of material socialization is that people just accept it…like little girls SHOULD be divas that demand to be taken care of. one reason why i’m so madly in love with my littlest one is that she has embraced the diva tag…but only on her terms. she uses it to assert her independence in dressing, socializing, and the like. her older sister, on the other hand, is diva’d out as well and has accepted the paradigm that people can and should make her life easier.
the littlest one is, however, completely fascinated by legos, laptops, and cellphones. takes em apart on a regular basis. Maybe i’ll make an engineer out of her yet….
They even have camo colored clothes but they have a green and brown colored camo and a pink and gray camo. Now just who do you think the pink is marketed towards? They also have pink camo for women.
I have deliberately bought “boy” clothes for my daughter. It’s the only way I can get sea monsters, dinosaurs, trains, and real life animals that aren’t pink or kittens.
Thing that pisses me off the most is when I DO find frogs (which the kid and I both like) on “girl” clothing, they HAVE to have a clear gender identity. She has PJS with 2 frogs holding “hands” on them. Yes, and one has a freaking pink bow on its bald head. Because heaven forfend there be 2 non-gender-specific cartoon animals holding hands. They might even be *gasp* 2 boys!!
What saddens me is that my 18 month old has been in 3T-4T clothes for a few months now (she’s 1 inch shy of 3 feet tall), and that means she’s at the upper end of the infant/toddler clothes sizing. When I glance over at the “girls” department, I shudder.
I think there are a lot of overalls in her future. Wear the pink and purple sparkle shirt, sure… now place some OshKosh over them so you can stomp in puddles and dig in the dirt with mommy.
I so agree with this post. I have three boys and have found the very same patterns of gendering. In thinking about ‘trying for the girl’ I often wonder how I will cope with the absence of bright colours and the introduction of ‘the princess’. I also noticed that most women I talk to say ‘I wasn’t very princessy when I was a little girl – was more of a ‘tomboy’, but my little girl is.” I think that tomboy is a problematic term by the way, but it also speaks to the increased marketing on the part of Disney and others to princessify girls and keep them in this dream state. So when the realities of relationships hit them they’re unprepared. I also hear younger cohorts at my university still talk in princessy terms. I get another gray hair every time I hear them.
Great commentary and good points. I see a marketing opportunity here.
I love the pictures!
Keep posting,
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[...] Gender and Baby Boys Clothes. [...]
Spinster auntie here. This has been a major point of frustration when shopping for gifts for friends’ baby girls, and for my soon-to-be-baby neice. Is it so hard to make a baby girl baseball sleeper set?!?! I don’t mind buying “boy clothes” for girls, but often they also have gender-specific logos and embroidery, especially if they’re in sports themes. Why can’t it be “Mommy’s little slugger?”
Great analysis!
I’m due to have a girl in February and am insisting on gender-neutral colors, but didn’t consider the depth of the meaning within the clothing. She may just be attracted to the “pink pretty princess” (help me) items and I don’t want to dress her in things she’ll be dying to rebel against, but I do want to be more conscious about the choices, and you’ve definitely given good insight. thanks!
as a future mom (i hope), i’ve thought a lot about this. it’s one of the reasons i’ve decided to take up sewing. my mom made a lot of my clothing when i was a baby/young child. sure, i had some frilly-silly stuff, but most of my clothing was in bright, funky patterns and very kid-friendly (i.e. washable and durable).
for those not as inclined to hand-making, there are a lot of cute options on various etsy sites.
check out a few of these.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=cat2_galley_19&listing_id=11749537
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=cat2_galley_9&listing_id=15254140
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=cat3_gallery_2&listing_id=15094102
Boy, do people get confused when I dress my twins in the “wrong” colors. My daughter looks great in blue, and my son looks pretty awesome in pink, and people do not like that at all. I, however, think it is wonderful and enjoy snickering at the bafflement of others.
I too was very struck by the extreme gendering of baby clothes when shopping for a crop of new babies recently. What’s also very revealing, though, is that we’re very socialised to conform to those prescribed dress codes. Really, there’s nothing gendered about baby clothes in terms of wearability – we could easily dress our little boys in pink dresses and our little girls in khaki and car logos, but I have found that most people are very uncomfortable with this (especially dressing boys in ‘girls’ clothes – it’s much easier to cross-dress in the other direction). Even friends who are very politically oriented and who rail against the way small children are assigned gender roles would never consider dressing their boys in pink, for example. It’s very hard not to buy in to what the marketers are telling us.
I remember back in the eighties when one of my nieces was little and she wanted to drive a garbage truck when she grew up. I got her a pair of overalls.
I too dislike the princess bit. But I like pink and my new grandniece has red hair so she looks pretty cute in pink. I guess I am not all into work clothes for babies. Not that it’s wrong, but it’s just not my thing.
My suggestion is to get and learn to use a sewing machine. I learned to sew when I was thirteen, back in the sixties. I’m still using that same machine, a machine my dad bought my mother when we lived in Japan in the late fifties.
I’m sort of dippy about my grandniece. Of course I was dippy about all the kids. But I’ve been deprived of little relatives for some time now, and so I’m going overboard.
I tend to like children’s story themes. Ducks, Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, lady bugs, frogs and comical monsters. I just made a dozen cloth diapers for her and was thrilled to find Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny on flannel! There was pink background and blue background. The pink couldn’t hold a candle to the blue. Just the way the fabric was. So I got the blue. But she has pink diapers with yellow ducks and white flannel with comical kitties in teacups, too.
I don’t like to make her outfits with ruffles and lace on them at this point. She is still only six months old. I hated lace when I was little because it itched and I still don’t like lace because of that. Flat cotton lace sewn down flat is another thing.
Ruffles are uncomfortable when the baby lies down to sleep. Nobody wants a bunch of stuff crumpled up under them like that. When she is older, if she likes ruffles, then we will do ruffles. If she likes denim, then we will do denim. Hopefully it will be a bit of both. Right now I’m going for comfort and “sweet” because I think all babies are sweet.
Did I mention I’m sort of dippy about this little baby? I may spoil her.
Anyway, a long-winded post to say, get the sewing machine and learn to use it. It’s pretty simple and you’ll never regret it. You can make curtains, mend clothes and dress your children as you and they wish.
Oh! You can dress yourself, too! And make Halloween costumes!
I hope I can post this picture. It is of a quilt I’m putting together for my grandniece. It’s brightly colored comical monsters in space. It’s flannel, because that’s soft. I’ve never tried to put up a photo before. Let’s see if it works.
Rats.
It’s marketing — the more they fragment the market, the harder it is to pass down good classic clothes to the other gender. If they could get away with coding clothing to the year, they’d do that too.
I once bought my son a pair of plain white sneakers that he wore for nearly a year before I found out they had a flower pattern on the bottom. Fortunately he was only three or four, and none of his friends had noticed either. But really, how stupid, something no one will even NOTICE and it has to be gender-coded!
If it were only the color-coding, I think people would start putting pink on boys a lot more readily (my dark-haired, pink-cheeked boy looked *adorable* in pink), but nearly everything that’s pink is also flowered or ruffled or lacy or ….
Your statement about babies in diapers being androgynous is so on-target. My first child was a girl, constantly mistaken for a boy, my second a boy, constantly mistaken for a girl because I didn’t always provide the visual clues. When asked what I had, or what the baby was, I would answer “a human”.
[...] really appreciate this posting on Rachel’s Tavern? about how clothes for children are so gender specific, and the? implications for how we socialize [...]
Great post!
The problem is… if there are boys clothes in primary colours, that’s great… but wait… as soon as they’re beyond a certain size… it’s no longer bright red, it’s brick red. And it’s not sunshine yellow, it’s mustard yellow. Bright green? Nope, forest green etc etc etc. And try finding tees with no sports theme…
My eldest -a girl, 11 yesterday- was dressed in loads of bright colours, both boy and girl clothes. My son, poor boy, wore alot of jeans and white, since for his age group… sigh… it was pretty depressing, colour wise. My youngest, now 5, is a girly-girl, we’re not sure where she came from. She wears pink, more pink, and would you like some pink with that? Her choice, not ours, she has plenty of hand-me-downs in bright primary colours available!
And… cute kids! :-)
For God’s sake people, don’t let Wal Mart tell you how to dress your children! The Clothing Police will not come knocking on your door.
I find it interesting that we need to approach the aspect of putting “pink frilly” things on boys, as if it were somehow a mediating factor for putting “boy” clothes on girls. Could we tender the possibility that “pink frilly” clothing is basically unfit for human consumption?
Bear in mind that women have sometimes been subjected to norms that are unfit for both male and female.
Grandpa
I’m a dad, and my daughter is 5 months old. Because my wife and I dress our baby in browns, blues, and greens (she has red hair and those colors set it off!), we are constantly told how cute our boy is. We think it’s funny and often don’t correct the complimenter, but have noticed that anything that is not explicitly gendered as girl (via pink, frills/ruffles, or an explicit “girl” theme like a butterfly) is assumed to be a boy. Barring that, you stick a ribbon or clip in her hair and voila! instant girl.
We went into a Gymboree to exchange a hideous pink lamb sweatsuit for a cute orange onesie with bugs on it, and the salesperson said, “oh, so you had a boy instead of a girl?” “No — we had a girl.” “oh, so you *wanted* a boy?”
We have a bunch of Danish baby clothes (long story) that ARE gender neutral — shapes and primary colors — that we love. It makes me sick that only high-end brands here in America (tea, zutano) seem to get the idea that girls can dress in blue!
Babies are just babies — there’s no reason they should be gendered one way or the other from the start. They’ll have plenty of time to figure out who they are…
I am in Australia so it might be slightly different (not too much though). I actually found when shopping for my son that boys clothes became completely obnoxious once he hit about 4yo, ie, no animals or bright primary colour. Instead it seems I am expected to dress him in sombre colours like black or navy or khaki with motifs like skulls or skateboards or hotted up cars. He actually asked me once why all his pyjamas (mostly hand me downs from a friend’s son) had scary pictures on them? Not sure what this is telling us about the role of boys in society. Perhaps that childless pursuits need to end by the time they are school aged so they can concentrate on the serious business of fixing cars and being scary?
I also hate those messages on girls clothing. I actually saw a pair of toddler girls socks once with the message “You can’t afford me” on them.
What I find comical is that regardless how he’s dressed, people in public unanimously call my 1 yo son “she” because (I think) I have yet to cut his curly blonde hair. Whether he’s in orange and red (my favorites) or the blue hand-me-downs, people see the hair and disregard the clothing cues. We put so much emphasis on dressing babies “appropriately” and people don’t even pay attention. I even know some women who pierced their 3 month old girls ears because people kept calling them boys in public (despite the frilly pink things). Gah! And anyone notice that only higher-priced clothing stores carry true gender neutral items?
I actually rather like frilly clothes (not the color pink, though…) and I have no objection to my daughter wearing pretty frilly things. I wish my son could wear the same stuff, but the gender police do get in your face.
I was distressed with my little boy at how all the clothes that didn’t have animal themes (which are great; I loved Carter’s little whale) had sports or blue-collar professions like fire truck. Where are the robots? Where is outer space? *My* boys love robots and space. For that matter my girls like them too. And my older girl is athletic; why wasn’t I able to dress her in pretty sports-themed clothes in attractive colors when she was little? Why can’t I dress my baby girl in whales and frogs — it has to be kittens and butterflies?
My son wants to be Iron Man for Halloween. I looked into superhero costumes for girls. There *aren’t* any. *Maybe* you could get a Supergirl (short short skirt, might even be pink, whereas the real Supergirl wears blue.) There are plenty of female superheroes. I am trying to make a Phoenix costume for my little daughter, but I am so bad at sewing I may have to break down and buy her Dora, which is probably what she wants anyway.
When my only child was an infant I dressed her in either boy or girl outfits as my mood dictated. The strangest part was that it effected how I saw her. She’s 19 months now and has been wearing girl clothes all summer but is about to move into a much more mixed wardrobe. We live in MN and it seems like boys clothes are made of thicker, warmer fabric and styles. I have yet to see flannel lining or re-enforced knees on girl’s overalls.
I found your website via feministing.com which I found only a few days ago. As a future mom who happens to be a queer woman, I’m extremely concerned about this. One of your commenters said she’s taking up sewing – I am doing the same. It really irritates me that people have to put everything into a labeled box. Thanks for pointing this out!
seriously.
when my best friend had her son, we were both pretty freaked out about his clothing options. we are both queer, and i’m trans, so gendered clothes were something i had been complaining about in a general way for years – but when it came to clothing a kid i really loved, i was disturbed on a much more personal level.
she was living out of town when he was born and i had traveled across the country to stay with them for a month, so i had a bunch of time on my hands and i started making him clothes myself. he’s turning five in december, the three of us have been living together as a family for several years, and i’m still making him clothes.
over the past few years i’ve been giving my baby clothes out as gifts and selling them here and there, but this past month i finally launched an etsy site with lots of gender-neutral and gender-bendy kids clothes. i use recycled clothes and i try to keep my prices reasonable, cuz i don’t want anyone going broke trying to keep their kid from having to wear uber-gendered clothes!
you can see my stuff at: http://www.simonsayscrafts.etsy.com
does the term “gender-polarized” imply that there are no distinctions to be made between male and female?…i’m the father of 20 year old son who’s looking forward to having a couple more; hopefully a lil’ girl…is “frilly and “ruffled” suppossed to be a bad thing now?.
I can get with more variety in color and equal durability in fabric, etc. but are trying redefine what a boy or a girl is?
clarify this for me.
correction: “but are we trying to redefine…”
Why don’t boys get to be attractive and feel special?
Why do boys have to earn everything they get while girls get to rely on their vagina/baby factory for their lively-hood?
Why isn’t the prince just as lovely as the princess?
Being self-reliant comes with a price. Being forever separated from all existence and struggling to to keep from destroying all else to maintain oneself.
Your adherence to social definitions of gender and appearance only enforce the devision of male and female.
Please allow these people to choose their own tastes before you make their decisions for them.
Your boys might like butterflies much more that steamrollers. I know I do.
Pink for girls and blue for boys is a fairly recent development. I grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and I don’t really remember wearing pink — I wore a lot of green, yellow, red and blue (a lot of blue, now that I recall). I notice that I (subconsciously?) dress my son in colors other than blue. This is a really interesting topic, and I’m enjoying reading the comments!
Check out this related link: http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2008/02/08/the-pink-and-blue-project-by-jeongmee-yoon/
[...] been a couple articles about gender & children’s clothing that recently got me thinking. One of my sisters has [...]
I am so relieved to have found this page. I’m expecting my first baby any day now (it’s 4 days late already) and I do not know whether it’s a boy or a girl. I am amazed and appalled at the amount of gender specific clothing available. I’ve been buying whichever clothes I like the look of- mainly ‘boys’ clothes because I like bright colours although I don’t see why a 3 pack of onesies in green, orange and white is only for boys.
If I have a girl and she is bought lots of pink ‘princess’ clothing I shall either exchange it or dye it lol. I think it’s awful that girls aren’t encouraged to have a career in the same way boys are.
One of my favourite outfits I have bought is a Ferrari racing driver outfit and if I have a girl I will still dress her in it and if she wants to be a racing driver, then great!
I’m sure all this gender specific stuff wasn’t around as much when I was a child (early 80s). I know my mum let me have whichever toys I asked for so I had He-man as well as my little pony. I don’t understand why society seems to be going backwards.
Thanks for writing such a great article, it’s nice to know I’m not alone!
Wouldn’t it be great if someone would start a line of girl baby clothes with a *new* message that doesn’t promote princesses and divas? It’s only a matter of time!
I have a 3 year old little boy – hopefully by the time I have a daughter (if ever) I have a different selection than described above!
[...] for our “blog love” post, I noticed that Rachel at Rachel’s Tavern had been thinking along similar lines in [...]
To Ronnie Brown:
You betcher knickers we’re trying to redefine what “boy” and “girl” means!
Is there anything inherently wrong with ruffles or frills? The answer is “no, but.” Explanation? Well… would you put them on your boy? If the answer is no, please think hard about what the image is, exactly, that those ruffles are supposed to project to the world about your child.
The current definitions of the genders, as they stand now in our society, set limit after limit on who and what our children are and can be. I long for the day a boy can wear a ruffle or a frill with a joy equal to a girl’s, and nobody will question his sanity, sexuality, or gender.
Imagine a world where boys and girls are wearing any color they please, and have designs available to them of any animal or activity they like, not based on what parts they were born with, but based on if they have an interest in it. Did you know lots of boys like unicorns? Lots of girls like sports? Lots of boys like cooking? Lots of girls love snakes and frogs?
You know what the current world tells those boys and girls? It tells them, too bad, kids. You can’t trust your own inner judgment. Your interest is misguided, because it’s actually for the other gender. Sucks to be you.
That’s garbage, frankly. A parent should be able to dress their child in a way that is pleasing. If that means frills, frills should be fine for girls or boys. If that means dinosaurs, dinosaurs should be fine for boys or girls.
And for people who then moan, “but how will strangers/ people in general TELL WHAT GENDER THEY ARE?!” my answer should be obvious: WHY DO THEY NEED TO?
Seriously. Why is the gender of your child so important that people need to know it at a glance?
To the OP:
Thank you for this! My sis and bro have one baby and one on the way, and NOBODY got me when it came to dressing the kid. Katie lamented not being able to dress in frills and pinks that she loves, I said, “well crap, he’s too young to know any better, put him in them sometimes if you like them so much,” general horror ensued.
And when I dared to say that my future children (if I do end up wanting kids), regardless of gender, will be dressed in blue because it’s my all-time favorite color, I was told I should never have children, and that their emotional well-being was in question. Because surely, what I dress them in as infants is at least as important as whether I intend to beat them with a club?