Boy clothes and gender roles/sexism

penguinem · October 2011

I am so disappointed by boy clothes!! With DD I often thought that the things girl clothes said were silly or indicative of how we "expect" little girls to be (little sweetie, mommy's girl, daddy's cutie, little diva, etc) but mostly could avoid stuff I thought wasn't for us. The boy clothes I have scouted out ALL have sports references or rock and roll references (Daddy's little slugger, Mommy's football star, rock star...) or imply that boys are inherently rambunctious or rotten. I know I am over-thinking it, but it's frustrating! I am going to custom make onsies that say things like "future girl's basketball star", "or sensitive and creative boy", LOL. I guess if I want more neutral clothing I should shop somewhere besides Once Upon a Child!! This DS may be clothed in ducks and stars, exclusively.

HopingForOne · October 2011

I'm not really into sports or quitars, so I get a bit frustrated too shopping for our future mister. But I don't worry about it too much in terms of social pressures to be a certain way. As parents you can send a good example regardless of clothing...and honestly, I think those type of clothing themes are worse for babies than for older boys (at least you can buy plain stuff then!). So there's hope!

I love pink, and I don't mind princess stuff, but sometimes there is just too much of it for girls.

I also hate how hard it is to find anything for a girl that says "i love mommy" or for a boy that says "i love daddy". I guess you're only supposed to love the opposite-sexed parent.

bethios · October 2011

Shop on Etsy! There are so many cute, creative and modern kid's clothes!

SheenaNash1 · October 2011

I am with you on this! I can't stand the horrible sayings like "here comes trouble" and "lady killer" and all that. I also don't really like the dump trucks, sports stuff, etc. I'm so much more drawn to the animals and the solid colors or patterns but you can only get so much of that before everything looks the same. Sigh. Boys clothes aren't that much fun.

FeetOfFlames · October 2011

I completely agree. I am a choreographer by trade and I made a joke to one of my dancer friends that I should dress our little boy in ballet shoe socks and ballerina onesies haha

JPS · October 2011

Try Old Navy. They had some precious boy clothes when I was in this weekend. And I second Etsy. We're not finding out the gender, partially because I want to avoid pink and blue for as long as I can- ok, moreover I want the surprise...but the pink and blue is a part

I've found that shopping online gives me more gender-neutral options than in stores (even baby Gap had more neutral stuff online than in the store). I LOVE fawnandforest.com, but most of their stuff is too pricey for me! Have you tried zulily.com? You have to sign up, but they have some amazing deals that are different each day.

KRISTA555 · October 2011

HopingForOne:

I'm not really into sports or quitars, so I get a bit frustrated too shopping for our future mister. But I don't worry about it too much in terms of social pressures to be a certain way. As parents you can send a good example regardless of clothing...and honestly, I think those type of clothing themes are worse for babies than for older boys (at least you can buy plain stuff then!). So there's hope!

I love pink, and I don't mind princess stuff, but sometimes there is just too much of it for girls.

I also hate how hard it is to find anything for a girl that says "i love mommy" or for a boy that says "i love daddy". I guess you're only supposed to love the opposite-sexed parent.

Really? I've had no problem running across "I love mommy" things for my daughter. Now, you'll have me paying attention to see if I find anything "I love Daddy" for my son. :P

KRISTA555 · October 2011

I don't mind the princess, cutie, sweetie, little tough guy, etc ones.... The ones that bother me are, like you said, the ones that indicate bad behavior... "Here comes trouble" or "Dear Santa, define good" etc. Those are annoying, IMO.

HopingForOne · October 2011

My biggest pet peeve is actually when cats are only on girl things, and dogs are only on boy things . How the hell are animals assigned as masculine or feminine?

CTri17 · October 2011

I think you can get a lot of "plain" (with nothing on them) clothes.

Target

JcPenny

etc. you just have to be willing to look for things that you find to be ok

JosF21 · October 2011

Starbuck128:
DH and I saw a bunch of infant girl shirts at JC Penneys that said stuff along the lines of "Single and loving it." We couldn't believe it. Little duckies are all the rage for our team green baby.

Seriously? I think a lot of the sayings I see are cute or funny, but single and loving it is a bit much IMO.

erinms · October 2011

miniBoden

crewcuts

Old Navy

babyGap

etsy for bowties and suspenders

argyle socks (trumpette lil peewees are cute)

Target has cute little boys stuff, graphic tees with superheroes, etc

Oshkosh striped overalls

"boy" themes not sports-or-truck-or-guitar-related: robots, motorcycles, woodland animals, pirates, superheroes, monsters, dinosaurs, trains, any animal (including cats!), circus, boats, space, nature/science, travel, maps, art, horses/cowboys,

Made By Rae's "celebrate the boy" month has tons of craft ideas for boys

Check this blogpost out (sorry I can't make it clicky):

https://xoelle.com/2011/02/dressing-up-a-guide-for-the-little-man/

I LOVE dressing my son. I think little girl clothes are fun, but honestly little boy clothes are pretty amazing too.

Have fun with it!

treble_clef · October 2011

I'm not a fan of those clothes with writings, so my son doesn't have any now. He had one when he was 6 months old that said my dad is cool or something like that.

But, I understand your frustration. When I was pregnant and found out I was having a boy, I wondered why a lot of boy clothes had firetrucks on them. I thought I would never buy stuff like that...until he was born and fell in love with red firetrucks at first sight! At that point, I started buying clothes with firetrucks because they made him happy... lol!

med380 · October 2011

I think that Old Navy and Gymboree have a lot of really cute boy clothes that aren't super cheesy.

nonoemily · October 2011

I'm team green, and it is sad how blah the gender neutral choices are. Why do we need to color code the gender of our babies? It's a BABY. I can understand that little boys and girls have color preferences, but babies only care about textures. I wish they made newborn clothes gender neutral. The selection is really grim.

I hate those baby clothes that say silly/funny/cute things on them. The worst one I saw is "I'm with the band". Umm, my baby is not a groupie.

Luckily, my favorite colors are orange and green, and there's a lot of that out there. I have a lot of cute animal onsies; dogs, elephants, bears, etc. I don't understand why boy clothes have a little more variety in colors, but girl clothes are always pink, white, or purple....

I got some cute, gender neutral things at Hanna Anderson outlet last week. Cute monster/alien creature things on PJs.

PhysChic7685 · October 2011

I agree that it's much harder to avoid this sort of stuff in boys clothes than in girls. We even wrote at the top of our registry, "Please no sports or cars on clothing!" since we'd never put him in it if we got it. At any rate, I've had to work a bit harder to find good clothes for him, but it wasn't entirely impossible. I got a lot of good stuff through Target, Children's Place, and Crazy8 (on clearance!). I've gotten a little carried away with getting him little polo shirts so he can match his daddy, but almost none of his stuff has any gimick on it whatsoever (one or two rock&roll because I do like music).

elizxu · October 2011

I agree that clothes for both girls & boys are very stero-typical. What bugs me is that I am the sports junkie in the family, but all the sports stuff is about dad..."Daddy's little slugger", Daddy's MVP", "Daddy's all-star"...why can't he be Mommy's All-Star? I like Carter's - lots of animals, elephants, & jungle themed clothes.

sapphire1983 · October 2011

A friend of mine dressed his year-old son in a shirt that said something like "Hide your daughters". Really? We're sexualizing one year olds? I think it's icky, not cute.

Julia_JJ · October 2011

HopingForOne:
My biggest pet peeve is actually when cats are only on girl things, and dogs are only on boy things . How the hell are animals assigned as masculine or feminine?

This! We have cats, and want "boyish" cat stuff. Everything for boys has dogs!

Ivana_Stolichnaya · October 2011

I just found out yesterday that I'm having a boy and wanted to celebrate by walking through the boys section to pick out an outfit. I probably walked around for about 20 minutes with nothing in my hand. I kept looking over to the girls side because their stuff was so much more cute. The boys was dinosaurs, sports, rock star, puppy and trucks....boring! I finally found something with zoo animals on it but I'm sort of sad.

Also we have 5 big storage boxes of infant girl clothes...my FIL doesn't understand why we can't re-use the girl clothes on him. I''m not trying to enforce gender roles on my kids but I'm not dressing my son in butterflies, flowers, ruffles and hearts. Sorry not going to happen.

sarahlyn · October 2011

Actually I'm having a girl and I just can't get excited about girls clothes, I find it overwhelming. Everything is princess/ballerina, and even though I know I wore this stuff as a little girl both my husband and I really don't like the color pink. I find all the cutesy stuff slightly nauseating - I'm really more into classic styles and colors myself (J. Crew, Anne Taylor, etc.). We both agree when our little girl is old enough to have preferences she can wear whatever the devil she wants, but for now I'm completely overwhelmed! Sure it's cute, but I really wanted to find some clothing that isn't bright pink, purple or pastel. Even the animal stuff is cutesied up - poodles with pink bows, tutus on pants, etc. I really want to find some cute neutral clothing. And forget the nursery! I think we are painting it green or beige so that we don't have to re-paint it if we have another girl. Sure the accents like wall art can have fairies or whatever on it, but I don't want it over done. Ultimately our baby is not going to care what color her sheets/wall hangings/curtains are but it would be nice to reuse them if we have a little boy at some point in the future.

Mamasaurus · October 2011

I am not so fond of the gender-specific clothes I am seeing either. Those plain white onesies are looking more and more appealing!

soralette · October 2011

nonoemily:
I'm team green, and it is sad how blah the gender neutral choices are. Why do we need to color code the gender of our babies? It's a BABY. I can understand that little boys and girls have color preferences, but babies only care about textures. I wish they made newborn clothes gender neutral. The selection is really grim.
I hate those baby clothes that say silly/funny/cute things on them. The worst one I saw is "I'm with the band". Umm, my baby is not a groupie.
Luckily, my favorite colors are orange and green, and there's a lot of that out there. I have a lot of cute animal onsies; dogs, elephants, bears, etc. I don't understand why boy clothes have a little more variety in colors, but girl clothes are always pink, white, or purple....
I got some cute, gender neutral things at Hanna Anderson outlet last week. Cute monster/alien creature things on PJs.

Absolutely this. It's pretty sad to me, that the boys get basically the whole rainbow and girls just get pink (and sometimes purple). :-/ I want my kids, no matter their sex, to have the whole rainbow!

JayeWo · October 2011

My own husband caught me falling prey to gender roles today....I jokingly asked him if it was okay to hope it's a boy because that meant I wouldn't have to re-paint the guest room! It's got a blue accent wall. He looked right at me and said "Says WHO?" I didn't even realize what I was doing! It's something that is so strong in our society today. I think if it's a girl I will just do an ocean theme or something fun and gender-neutral...

rwong53 · October 2011

omg...this is exactly what ive been going through and it has caused a major rift between my mom and me. i am finally beginning to embrace the fact that we are having a baby boy and have told everyone explicitly that i do not want any of the cutesy clothing that i typically see for sale. i dont like the puppies, jungle animals, dump trucks, and dumb sayings on everything we have come across. i have, however, found some cute clothes like plaid shirts, jeans, t shirts, and tennis shoes that i would like to see on my son. when i showed these types of clothes to my mom she said they look ghetto and thuggish. they are all really preppy in my opinion...plus, the hubby and i are both nowhere near being thugs. i work at a police dept and he is in backgrounds to get hired as a cop.

my mom has said that if she is watching my son she will do whatever she wants with him and will dress him how she wants whether i like it or not. i know she would be helping us out by babysitting, but am i wrong for being upset about how she is blatantly going against my wishes in regards to clothing, etc?

it has already been tough for me to get used to the idea of a little boy and when i finally found clothing i was excited about i feel like my wishes are being disregarded by her.

thanks for listening to my venting...i hope you know you are definitely not alone when it comes to disliking the typical cutesy boy clothes out there.

on a side note, the hubby and i found some iron on patches that are more our taste so we will be creating our own custom baby onesies for our son. maybe an idea for you, too?

saturdaysuiteheart · October 2011

i dont mind boys' clothes, they sell clothes without writing on them. i have only had boys but if this ones a girl i will not be dressing her in tons of pink. i hate that almost everything is pink. its tacky looking to me. black and white are good colors. ive had people say one of my kids was a girl even with a complete boy outfit and super short hair.

Boy clothes and gender roles/sexism

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