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Not a fresh or original rant, I know. But:

I went to the mall today because Alex needed pajamas, and we had a gift card for the Carter's outlet. They had racks and racks of toddler girls' pajamas: pajamas that said "Princess" across the chest. Pajamas that said "Mermaid." Pajamas that said "Hula girl." Pajamas that said "Sun kissed." The handful of pajamas that didn't outright label the wearer as a purely decorative object were covered with flowers, except for one pair with an extremely feminine cat. (And flowers on the pants.)

I spent a few minutes trying to find the least objectionable pair, and then mentally smacked my forehead and went across to the boys' aisle. There I found pajama sets with fish, jungle animals, brightly colored tree frogs, dogs, dinosaurs, rocket ships, sports equipment, sharks, and so on.

It's not that I object to dressing Alex in gendered clothes. I don't have strong feelings in any direction, when it comes to her future gender expression. She wears a lot of girly clothes, actually, because her fair complexion, blonde hair, and blue eyes look particularly good in shades of pink, pastel orange, and pastel yellow. (Dark colors often make her look pale and washed out.) I don't object to hearts and flowers and butterflies, per se.

But if we're going to divide up the world by gender, does it have to be so lopsided? Does every single thing other than "looking pretty" have to belong in the boys' category? Don't little girls get to have any topics to be interested in at all?

We left the store with the cat pajamas, because Alex liked them. But also stegosaurus pajamas, rocket ship pajamas, and, also at Alex's request, dogs playing baseball. I like all four pairs just fine.

But sheesh.

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"But if we're going to divide up the world by gender, does it have to be so lopsided? Does every single thing other than 'looking pretty' have to belong in the boys' category? Don't little girls get to have any topics to be interested in at all?"

You might be interested in a book I recently read called _Packaging Girlhood_, which goes into this issue at considerable length.

Of course, I picked it up because I was already prone to ranting on this issue, and I don't even have kids. (Last week, the sight of the bright pink baseball glove that you daren't get dirty in Target drove me around the bend.) Even as an adult, I end up buying a fair amount of men's clothes when I want something that's comfortable, sturdy, and doesn't show dirt well.

I'm often puzzled by "infant boys' clothing" on freecycle.

What, it has underpants with a door?

When Z was a baby, I got given a lot of "first size" clothes for him, nearly all of them babygros in white, and some of them white dotted with adorable little dinosaurs or farm animals. There was also one pink babygro and one peach one, after his cousin Laura. I thought of the white and patterned ones as gender-neutral and the pink and peach ones as feminine. (Other than the colours, they were identical to the others.) We only used the coloured ones when everything else was dirty (a lamentably more frequent position than one might wish...) because every single time we put him in them, people started saying how pretty "she" was. This didn't bother me for a while until I realized that every single time he was wearing white or white-dotted-with-adorable-animals he was addressed as "he", and there was no neutral.

This got worse when he was about three and started to express strong preferences for what he wanted to wear -- and his strong preferences were for bright colours. He had a brown shirt with brightly coloured cars on it which he wore until he couldn't get his ears out of it. He had a pair of black trousers with brightly coloured embroidered cuffs (bought at WOMAD). He had a bright purple t-shirt and a bright green t-shirt and shorts set that said "Ocean Explorer". And that was it in 1993 in Lancaster for bright clothes for three year old boys -- everything was either muddy or princessy... or actively tarty. (I find "sexy" clothes on under tens actively offensive.)

There's something wrong with this extreme gendering of clothes from the cradle.

And that was it in 1993 in Lancaster for bright clothes for three year old boys -- everything was either muddy or princessy... or actively tarty. (I find "sexy" clothes on under tens actively offensive.)

Oh good lord, yes. Alex does wear a lot of sleeveless tops and so forth, because when it's perfectly normal for summer temperatures to top 35 C one wants to dress one's child in as little as possible. But there are minimal-coverage clothes that look like a little girl is meant to be wearing them in hot weather, and then there are minimal-coverage clothes that are obviously meant to ape adult styles. Little girls are not glamorous, damn it.

But even clothes in little-girl styles so commonly carry explicit messages that the wearer is for looking at, not for doing things. It drives me mad.

Re: muddy colors, I forgot to mention - probably because I didn't consider buying them for even a second - the wide variety of boys' pajamas in camouflage. Because what's cuter to evoke than child soldiers?

It's not that unusual to see small boys with near-shaved heads, combat trousers, and camo jackets, playing in the park. Sometimes I think I'm the only person who is made queasy by this.

total and complete sympathy with this rant. It is just gruesome trying to shop for girls' clothes.

Are those the white glow in the dark stegosaurus jammies? I love those!

It often seems to me that a boy can't be a boy without liking sports or race cars. I just want cute clothes without sports or racecars on them, and I can never seem to find any.

It does seem really moronic that the nature stuff gets thrown into the boys dept.

It's kind of expensive, but one of those catalogues that I always get and drool over and never buy anything in has gorgeous printed little girl clothes. I sigh at how colorful the girls' clothes are, and how relatively boring the boy toddler stuff is.
http://www.hannahandersen.com/

Are those the white glow in the dark stegosaurus jammies? I love those!

They are lime green with thin horizontal navy stripes. But the stegosaurus applique on the front does glow in the dark! I didn't realize until I was cutting the tags off.

For Hanna Andersson, ebay is great. Stuff is still relatively expensive, but it wears like iron.

Agreeing with all that's been said...and what about "adult" clothes? I probably wouldn't want dogs playing baseball, but I have to admit that glow-in-the-dark stegosaurus pajamas would be fun. OK, not for work, but for hanging out or exercising? I wear t-shirts with dragons, bought at at conventions of course; my local clothing stores have plain t-shirts or flowered, or maybe the cutesy feminized cats. (Or is that because they're for "plus-size" women? Because of course we want little-girl designs, just like we want pastel polyesters. But I haven't noticed that "regular-size" women fare much better, and they certainly get more of the "Princess" t-shirts and such.)

Sorry, I'll stop ranting. But I will note that when I was just a little older than Alex, I had a toy Tonka jeep--which was pink, with a pink-and-white striped roof, and a ruffle.

(Just to be clear: I'm not arguing that adults need non-specifically-gendered clothing more than kids do, at all. Just that the problem continues throughout life.)

I get so annoyed that stuff like glow in the dark star sheets are never in queen or king sizes :(

What drives me absolutely insane, aside from not wanting to put my daughter in anything that says "diva," is that girls' clothes are so much flimsier than boys' clothes. When I go someplace like Target and get K shirts of the same brand, the girls' shirts are made of a thin cloth and have just a thin edge of ribbing at the neck sewed on with one line of straight stitch. If it's summer, they often will have a bit of ruffle instead of sleeves. The boys' shirts are a much sturdier cloth and have a nice thick ribbing around the neck sewed on with multiple lines of stitching. They're often bigger as well, and have sleeves. The necks are particularly important to me because K pulls on the necks of her shirts as she's falling asleep, which means she needs very sturdy shirts if the stitching at the necks isn't going to give out. But even if she didn't, are girls not expected to run around and play like boys? Don't girls deserve to have clothes that provide them as much protection and are as sturdy as boys' clothes? Apparently girls don't need tough clothes because they sit around quietly playing with dolls and tea sets all day.

And don't even get me started on how most girls' pants these days are low rise hip huggers, which means it's nearly impossible to pull them up over a cloth diaper.

Boys' UNDERPANTS have more fabric than girls' underpants. You know, training pants, for toilet training partially continent toddlers. Boys get more fabric. Also undershirts, for, you know, keeping warm in. Boys get warmer ones. And boys' H-width shoes are wider than girls' H-width shoes AND they get more colours to choose from AND they don't have to wear as much suede.

Argh. I am so angry.

Yeah, I think this is the last year we'll be able to get unisex snap-crotch undershirts in her size. The little girls' undershirts are really camisoles - sleeveless V-necks of thin material, and plainly more about femininity than warmth.

The boys' vests linnea is in are just plain white unisex things, it's just that they're from the boys' department.

Gnash teeth, grr, etc.

I put her in the girls' pajamas tonight. The boys' set have loose trousers gathered with an elasticized cuff at the ankle, and a loose shirt that hangs down to her hips. The girls' set has tight leggings and and a tight, shorter shirt that keeps riding up to show her bare belly.

Boys and girls are pretty much the same size at this age, right? At least, the weight range on the tag is the same.

It's standard cloth-nappy-using advice to buy boys' trousers, because they are more generously cut.

And they are less likely to have hipster type waists.

And it extends to adults: Yesterday's WashPost Travel section reveiwed a razor that had shaving cream in the handle. It comes in two colors and names. The gray is called Titan; the pink is called Diva.

Not only that, it's expected that they'll buy new clothes every (fashion) season, so they don't have to last more than a couple of months or so.

but you might get some benefit from:

http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_main_kids.jsp

There's a lot of the toddler stuff that only ships to Canada, but generally they do ship to the States. (And the amount of children's clothing seems to be generally increasing.)

-- Graydon

Kid clothes shopping is annoying. Girl clothes are too darned slutty, and boy clothes are almost impossible to find in dress-up versions.

Everything you said, and on top of that, WHY does everything have to have licensed characters on it? An infant does not need to wear licensed characters!

Heh. We do the same thing--shop from both racks. Tamsin has gotten a few really gross articles of clothing from family members that have gone straight into the donate bag unworn. The cheerleading outfit with "Princess" emblazoned on the top and on the ass, for example. Though, in a similar vein, I was in some store the other day and they had a sweatshirt intended to be worn by toddler boys emblazoned with "Little Bully" with a picture of a bull on it. I get where they were headed, but oy veh. The whole thing was all "here's the line: fragile beauty on this side and aggressive roughhousing on this side." Argh.

I find that avoiding anything with words on it helps considerably- then at least the "labeling" isn't explicit!

My six year old loves to wear (well, actually insists on wearing) dresses) but also insists on climbing trees in them (good for her- I just wish she'd wear her jeans!) so I spend a fair amount of time keeping my eyes peeled for cotton jersey dresses and leggings that are sturdy and wash easily. They're not easy to find unless you want to order from a catalog. I usually buy them big to make sure they go below her knees- I can't stand the thought of dressing little girls in mini skirts!

I was just about to recommend Land's End when I got to the part about "unless you want to order from a catalog." Although I think their clothes are also available at Sears now.

For very, very little girls - the kind who might still be crawling sometimes - I think that very short full dresses are a classic look. Like this one (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rivka/409404319/), on Alex, although it was getting a touch short for her at the time. But there's a big difference between that and miniskirts. (And that's not a silhouette you put a six-year-old in anyway.)

A small selection of Lands End stuff is available at Sears, very far from their entire selection.

Fortunately she has not yet developed my hips, but goodness does she have her giant daddy's legs. So we buy pants from the boy section and skirts from the girls (she loooooves scooter shorts). She is a Leo, so she has been encouraged to identify with not only lionesses but also big cats her whole life. The result is a kid who can spout statistics about the gory feeding habits of leopards while wearing (proudly) a pink sparkly leopard-print set of pj's and clutching a book on new behaviors discovered about cheetahs lately. She also has been known to scare her mom by using "kinder-whore" as an adjective while clothes shopping ("Wow, Mom, how kinder-whore is this pvc miniskirt?"). She know what sizes will fit her from the boys' section and what will fit her from the girls, and is perfectly ok with buying one tshirt with a tiger and dragon from the boys and one with sequined butterflies from the girls. She hates labels like "Diva" and adores things that make the point that girls are capable, especially if it's pink and sparkly ("Sugar and Spice Beats Jimmy Twice"). My point? The message that she is not *just* beautiful but also capable and strong and smart and brave comes from her parents, her interpretation of that message is something we leave up to her.

She also has been known to scare her mom by using "kinder-whore" as an adjective while clothes shopping ("Wow, Mom, how kinder-whore is this pvc miniskirt?").

Heh. I've also heard it called "prostitot."

I'm extremely glad that my girls are now all in the small adult sizes (except R's trousers which are Teens because those have a small waist and long legs). Somehow, the industry seems to think that petite women need less imposed sexiness than preteen girls.

I hear ya. Hooboy do I hear ya. I have a very physical, not at all girly, daughter. Jeans that stand to last more than a couple of wearings? Boys' aisle. Any sort of trousers (or, for that matter, tops) with no bling, rhinestones, embroidery, bloody flowers and butterflies? Boys' aisle. Anything that isn't white, pink or pale blue? Boys' aisle. Plain black or white t-shirts that come down past her waist? Guess where.

It's utterly ridiculous.

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Don't have a kid, so am guessing...

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My kid is 10 and a 3rd generation feminist..

Re: My kid is 10 and a 3rd generation feminist..

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