It’s That Time of Year

It’s that time of year – back to school clothes shopping. My inbox is bursting with ads, sales, doorbusters, and suggestions of clothes I can buy my little one. If you’ve read my other posts, you know that kids clothes here in the US makes me equal parts sad and pissed off. There is a thick line drawn, on one side are tight fitting purples and pinks, sparkles, varied styles and fabrics, and every print imaginable and on the other side is gray and blue, stripes, and sports. I rarely purchase clothes for my son from the “girl section” because the clothes fit so tightly that he is not comfortable playing in them. So, I’m stuck scouring through the limited “boy options” to find the least boring picks. You might be thinking, boys are bigger than girls so their clothes need to be bigger – but that’s not the case, not for our little ones. So, clothing companies make and market clothes that mimic adults. From birth, girls clothes are tight and offered in ever-widening options of content and styles while boys clothes are looser and limited in every capacity. And yes, this matters. We are placing our boys in boxes and ltelling them what their preferences should be and placing them in rigid boxesby assigning gender to everything from animals to colors to softness of fabric.

One mom, published in Motherly, talked about the difference in the edging of clothes, you read that correctly – the edging, and backs me up on the “from birth” thing:

“Even the edging on garments are heavily gender coded. Remember earlier when we were talking about onesies? I said the boys’ onesies and girls’ onesies were the same, right? Well, that’s only partly right. I had expected to see onesies for girls with kittens and pink flowers, and onesies for boys with frogs riding motorcycles. I was more or less ready for that, but I wasn’t ready for decorative edges.

The edging for a piece of clothing intended for a boy was plain, but for a girl, it never ever was. Starting in newborn sizes, a multi pack of onesies labeled “girl” featured teeny-tiny bows made of teeny-tiny ribbons with scalloped edging around the neck and sleeves. Baby pants for boys were simple and utilitarian. Girls’ pants featured ruffles or lace around the ankles.

In larger sizes, the trend continues. Girls get ruffles and lace, tiny decorative details constantly differentiating them from their male peers. And while I have nothing against a cute pair of jeans with lacy trim (I’d wear it!), I do wonder about the prevalence of such details. To have nearly all of your clothing – or absolutely none of it – adorned with decorative edging for as long as you can remember is a very particular experience.”

This year, some of the shirts I found that I’m most excited about are: ‘give pizza a chance,’  purple with an old-school headphone print around the neck, mustard with black triangles, giraffe with fringe on the neck, reversible sequin dinosaur, bright yellow with cartoon dogs, and a purple dinosaur shirt. Throw in a handful of Mickey Mouse and Paw Patrol, which my son adore, and his wardrobe of “regular fitting” shirts is complete.