Boy Wonder launched and oh boy, was it magical! Many eager parents pre-ordered sparkly rainbow solar system pants, a unicorn shirt, or one of five other pieces designed for our boys. Boy Wonder is Princess Awesome’s sibling brand and the founders are often asked why they made separate girl and boy brands. They explain here: Why Not Gender Neutral.
“….a photo of a boy in a trucks dress might easily be understood as a dress intended to appeal to boys because it has trucks on it. Because as much as we like it or not, trucks are typically thought of as a “boy” thing and primarily only on “boy” clothes.
This is exactly the opposite of what we’re trying to do at Princess Awesome. We started Princess Awesome because we wanted all kids to see trucks, dinosaurs, math, science, trains, and more as just as much for girls as they are for boys. We did that by explicitly putting these topics on clothes usually worn by girls, and we show girls wearing them.
The goal at Princess Awesome is not to make our clothes gender neutral, but to take topics that have been gendered by the world around us and return those topics to neutral by applying them to places where they have been absent in children’s clothing – namely girls’ clothing.
That’s why even as we are thrilled for a boy to wear and love our dresses, we have not shown boys in our photography. And that’s why, when we decided to take the idea of Princess Awesome and apply it to boys’ clothes, we intentionally did not make our new brand gender neutral.
With Boy, Wonder, we want to explicitly say, “Unicorns, cats, colors, and sparkles are for boys just as much as they are for girls.” We want to change the thinking that says otherwise.
If we created one large brand for all of our products, an individual would read their own understanding of gender onto what we offer – just like someone might do with the boy in the trucks dress in their Facebook feed. “Purple unicorn shirt? For girls. Blue flamingo pants? Also, for girls.” We want to disrupt that reading. We want to deliberately change the traditional, gendered view of the subjects and colors of Boy, Wonder clothes by showing them on clothes worn by boys.”
Here are selections from their debut collection:
whatsaboymom 