I have only just noticed how strongly a binary vision of gender is codified in baby clothes. Of course, this profoundly limiting view of gender is still everywhere around us. But in baby clothes it's particularly strong and incredibly jarring.
When I enter a baby clothes store, I always intuitively feel that something is wrong. On closer inspection, I realize that it's the nearly total absence of any space between the pink for girls and the blue for boys (plus matching gender-codified paraphernalia). Among the inundation of pink and blue outfits, you can find things in different colors. These clothes, however, go out of their way to signal gender in some other way.
This is sad because we are talking about very little kids. Why do we have to tell them from the very day they are born that there is no space we are willing to allow for anybody but girly girls in pink with frills and pictures of fluffy kittens and manly boys with pictures of racecars, footballs, and bikes on their shirts?
Enlightened parents (such as the couple for whom I was trying to buy baby clothes), who cringe at the idea of moving exclusively within the blue/pink dichotomy, have real trouble finding decent clothes for their baby that don't scream gender.
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11 comments:
Whenever I buy baby clothes for my family and friends, I always go for white, yellow, green, red. They are harder to find, but the pink and blue chromatic binarism drives me so crazy it makes the difficulty of finding these clothes worth it.
On a personal note, I remember my mom once bought me a pink shirt. I was 5 and I got so upset about that pink shirt that my mom had to go back to the store and get the shirt reimbursed. Somehow at that tender age I already knew boys don't wear pink.
I'm glad you know what I mean. Today, when I'm 33, am an embodiment of a "girly girl" (just in the way I look). But when I was little and my mother tried to get me to wear girly frilly dresses, I had fits of rage. :-)
Let's just let kids tell us what they want to wear, how they identify in terms of gender. And before they can do that, I think we should just avoid deciding this for them.
I agree with you on the issue of baby clothes... Wife's brother's family is expecting a child, so I know...
But I would also say that going to the other extreme and actually trying to grow kids up in a more gender-neutral way may have its consequences as well. Sometimes those consequences are quite hilarious, if you look at them in retrospect. My mother, for ideological/pacifist reasons, tried to avoid buying toy weapons for me while I was a kid. As a result, I made toy pistols out of every imaginable things, and diligently watched "Serving the Soviet Union" military show on TV every Sunday... :) :) Which, in turn, did not interfere with me developing distaste for any army later in life, as well as a healthy dose of pacifism...
V.
Congrats to your wife's brother!
When I was a little girl, I always wanted a toy gun but nobody would give it to me. I still have a dream to go to a shooting range and to learn to shoot.
"Serving the Soviet Union?"
I am sure that a little Soviet kitsch pleases us all, boys and girls.
Anonymous,
I am not that young. :) :). So when I was a kid, Soviet Union was still relatively alive and well, and everything about that show was serious. It is now, not then, when something like that would look like a "Soviet kitsch", especially for a westerner...
Clarissa,
---I still have a dream to go to a shooting range and to learn to shoot.
Yes, and for some odd reason I want to shoot from AK74... :)
V.
True. Something becomes kitsch after a couple of years. It is precisely the mixture of seriousness, grandeur, and ridiculousness of the military display that makes it kitsch. In my view, any kind of military parade is kitsch. I remember watching the changing of the guard in Washington DC as a teen and laughing really hard at the soldiers' posture and accoutrements.
Remember how we had to march and sing military songs when we were little kids at school? It sounds very weird but I have to confess that I kind of really enjoyed it. I'd gladly march and sing even today. I'm scared to analyze what it might mean. :-)
Clarissa,
By the time we had to do all that stuff at school I was not enjoying it any more. Even though our military education teacher was the most intelligent one in town, since he got civil education as an electronics engineer and dealt with radars in the army... Not a typical retired colonel...
Anyway, I was not enjoying it because there was quite a real perspective of having that "army romantics" for two years in a row, not just two hour a week. My year was actually the first who got back the chance not to go to the army if one goes to the university.
V.
You're right, that's the real gender difference. What a horrible practice.
Hey,
Thanks for this post, it was an eye-opener. I have a baby clothes website blossombabyclothes.com/ and I always divide the clothes into boys and girls sections. I may have to reconsider.
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