Beyond the Pink and Blue Parenting Blues: How to Resist Confining Gender Norms’¦ and Save Money
‘œWhat a cute little boy!’ says a well-meaning middle-aged lady in a tight pink coat.
‘œThanks. She’s a girl, actually.’
‘œOh!’ The lady looks disapprovingly at our daughter’s green dino onesie and matching pants, and then decides to smile.
We get this about twenty times a day. Why? Well, we’ve decided to dress our daughter in stripes of all colors, pants in everything but blue and pink, and those cool A Little Lark onesies with trees, bikes, and other groovy graphics in gender-neutral colors.
We don’t do pink, frills, lace, or dresses (except for parties). Nor do we do blue, sailor outfits, paramilitary gear, junior banker outfits, or any of the other outfits that conventionally mark a baby as male in our culture. Dresses are uncomfortable and constricting for babies; our daughter tends to pull them up over her shoulders’”surely not the ‘˜ladylike’ look they’re intended to create!
We buy most of our daughter’s pants in the boys section for three reasons: she’s big for her age, and the boys pants fit her better; the boys pants are made of studier, more natural fabrics; and yes, the boys pants are cheaper. Recently, we went to Buy Buy Baby (after searching fruitlessly at the Goodwill for quality used stuff in her size) to pick up some pants for our baby girly-q, who’s growing at a crazy rate. The ‘˜boy’ pants in her size were about a third cheaper than the ‘˜girl’ pants. And they came in comfier fabrics and a wider range of colors.
As our daughter gets older, we’ll continue to offer her a selection of gender-neutral (but adorable and stylish) outfits. Once she develops her own taste, we’ll accommodate, within reason: no free advertising for Disney or other products, no uncomfortable or poorly-made outfits, and no inappropriately adult gear. Other than that, her clothing choices will be entirely up to her’”as long as her desires fit our budget, which we’ll include her in creating.
So what’s all the hoopla about pink and blue, anyway? Why does our culture insist that baby girls must wear pink (and pay twice the price for the privilege), while boys must wear blue?
Babies usually look rather androgynous, and because of our homophobic, sexist culture’s discomfort with androgyny (or any other disruption of the gender binary, such as queerness itself), parents race to mark their babies as unequivocally male or female. What amazes me is the number of parents who buy their daughters nothing but pink, frilly, constricting clothing from day one, and then can’t stop telling everyone how their daughter just ‘˜naturally’ was always a girly girl, who would NEVER wear pants. Gee, I wonder why?
This is how gender gets produced and reproduced. And you know what? We’re not buying into it. Or buying it. I’m not about to pay more for pink, when there are stripier, sturdier, CHEAPER options out there.
I’m a bi-femme who is obsessed with ecology and economy; my partner is a lesbian who passes as a guy, and wears men’s clothes exclusively. We think critically about every consumer choice we make. We’ve been resisting gender norms all our lives, in our very different fashions (in every sense of the world). Why would we suddenly become Stepford Moms once we had kids?
I think queer parents sometimes feel extra pressure to participate in the reproduction of gender norms. We feel like the gaze of the media and the culture is upon is, forcing us to prove every three seconds that we’re just like every other parent. But if the norm of parenting is to reproduce sexist, constricting, expensive behaviors in our children, then I’m only too happy to be deemed ‘˜abnormal.’ And don’t worry’”we’re not advocating some sort of drab ‘˜70s-style unsexy unisex approach to clothing. We choose colorful, graphically interesting, fun clothes for our daughter. And I don’t object to adults’”queer or not’”who play with gender-marked clothing; I love nothing more than fishnets on a femmy guy or a butch gal in a tie. But adults are adults, and are able to make informed choices about their gender presentations. Babies are’¦babies: androgynous, unformed, and, once they’re a bit older, easily coerced into following gender norms.
I’m only too happy to respect my daughter’s preferences (within reason!) as they emerge, but if she’s pressured to only wear clothes marked as ‘˜girl’ from day one, is it really credible to then call it a choice when she inevitably ends up wearing only the girliest of outfits? I want her to have real choices, which means real exposure to multiple possibilities for her performance of gender (also known as clothing selection!)
Of course, this is all made a little easier by the fact that my daughter is a girl. The repercussions for gender non-conformity for boys (and their queer parents) are far greater in our culture. If my daughter were a boy, would I put him in dresses? Probably not, truth be told. Then again, I’m not too keen on putting my DAUGHTER in dresses, for the reasons I’ve enumerated.
And at the end of the day, my cheapness trumps all: as long as ‘˜boy’ clothes are cheaper and better-made than girls’, I’ll keep shopping in the boy’s aisle. And I’ll keep avoiding blue’¦ or pink.
I’m surprised how little discussion I’ve seen of this in queer parenting circles. Feminist blogs such as feministing have had some discussions of the issue, mostly in relation to truly heinous gender-marked toys, but I have yet to see a full discussion of the issue of gender-marking of baby clothes on queer sites.
So enlighten me, fellow Queercents parents (or parents-to-be). What choices do you make for your babies and young children about gendered clothing, and how do you think about these choices? Have you met with any resistance from family members and random strangers? How do family finances play into these choices?
Jennifer: This is interesting and you did a good job with the tie in to the finance topic. I agree with you about the implication of pink and blue, but I plan to utilize hand me downs and with seven nieces I’m likely to get a lot of pink in the care packages.
Now if we get a boy… well, that will make for some interesting conversation. I suspect my family will be heading to the boy side of Baby Gap instead of passing along their pink onesies.
I think the trying not to conform to gender was ultimately more expensive for us as a family- but this was mainly because of my eldest daughter’s strong feminine identity. Let me explain–
We too started out with the idea that we would not push our ideas of gender and the whole pink/blue on our kids. I spent many hours painting my eldest’s bedroom when she was a baby- the colors were red, blue and yellow stripes on white with white wainscoting. Lovely- bright, basic and almost circuslike. By the time my daughter was 3, she was screaming out for pink and wanting the girly girl, Disney princess stuff. As much as we want to think we can be above it, our kids live in a world influenced by other forces. We geave her the choices- she went for the pink. All my work, all our purchases trying to avoid the princess pink was for naught. Her drive for tiaras and fitting in with the girly crowd was stronger than our desire to fight gender non conformity. At some point it really does bacome about the child and not the parent.
My eldest son on the other hand has thrived in our non conformist household. He loves motion activity- karate was okay- but it wasn’t dancing. We finish the year of karate next month- then he will be starting dance classes as he wants in the fall. He is all about dance. He has made up countless ballet moves to the Harry Potter soundtracks– he is the Billy Elliot of his kindergarten class. He has also been known to dress in drag princess. Yet, somehow, I think the influence of his older sister has more to do with his donning the princess costumes than his true desire. (In other words- playing with her meant playing princess- so he pretty much HAD to wear a cinderella wig and dress once in a while). As a wee lad, he enjoyed coming in and getting some makeup applied as I got ready for work. Is it because of me being such a femme or his true calling? WHo knows- but we let him be the one to decide.
What a great commentary. I wish more people would think like that. I just finished making a sweater I was going to give as a shower gift, that I think would be good for a baby (either gender) but I know the parents and know that if their child is a boy, he wouldnt ever get to wear it. Its a wonderful mix of very bright colors (no pastels) but one of those colors happens to be pink. I say so what, but I know these people, they would sooner ‘die’ than put a boy in pink. Grr.
Dresses on babies can only ‘work’ before they start to crawl, after that, they get in the way and dont protect knees. But be ready, no matter how you dress her now, your daughter might want to be a girly girl who wears only pink.
Boy parakeets have blue noses and girl parakeets have pink ones (one of those handy facts from having too many pets). That’s the only explanation I can think of for associating those colors with gender.
When pregnant, I’m going to ask for gender neutral clothes—if nothing else because they make more sense. They’d work for my baby regardless of sex and they’d work for any future babies as well. Or I could give them to friends with any babies.
I’ll remember that about boys clothes.
As they get older, I’ll try to feel out what makes them happiest like my mom did. My butchish little sister always wore dress slacks and such on fancy occasions. I wore dresses. We were both happy. I think my parents did a really good job with that.
If you *really* want to make a statement, why not cross-dress your baby?
I have the same visceral reaction to the gender-typing of kids’ clothes. In some ways, however, it’s been easier being the mother of a boy, because I’ve also always found boys’ clothes to be sturdier and more comfortable to wear myself, as I discussed a while back. Not that I won’t support my son as he develops his own style, but it was a pretty easy to choose his toddler gear because it matched my own style as well (not to mention the interests my partner and I share–sports, space, engineering). We did stay away from anything that reeked of hypermasculinity, though (e.g., t-shirts with monster trucks).
As the daughter of a feminist hippy mom, and born in 1974, I certainly had my fair share of gender neutral outfits, toys and stories (anyone remember the one about Baby X?). But as the mom of two boys and a girl I have to say that I do delight in buying pink stuff! Maybe it’s that she’s my third… The boys have dolls, doll houses and cooking stuff, and won’t ever have anything military ever, but when it came to putting my daughter in some of their outgrown outfits? Well, there were some I handed down to friends instead.
Too bad about the blue – it’s my favorite color (and I’m a girl).