http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2337814/The-death-gender-neutral-clothing-New-book-details-history-blue-pink-gender-synonymous.html
Children clothing is my favorite thing to look at in stores! I love all the little dresses and overalls they have for babies. My fiance always tells me "just wait a little longer." I never put much thought into boys clothes being certain colors and girls clothes being another set of colors. They are never mixed. Paoletti, a historian at the University of Maryland, says this was only so after the 1940s. Before then, the clothes were all the same color. I would have always thought everything was always pink and blue with the occasional green and yellow. For some reason people seem to think if boys and girls were dressed the same or in opposite colors they will grow up gay or perverted. I do not think this is the case. Babies can hardly see beyond a couple of feet for a while after birth. I doubt they will remember what color they are wearing. I don't remember things I wore until around age 3 or 4. Even then, I only remember a few times. In the Women's Lives book, it discusses a dad with their baby and how people were smiling at him for taking care of his child. It also discussed the baby's clothing. You could not be sure if the baby as a boy or girl because it was wearing all white. After the dad put a baseball cap on the child, it was thought that the child was a boy. However, they soon saw the earrings, flowery sneakers and lace socks. Then the child was perceived as a girl (Kirk, Okazawa-Rey/p 65). It is very interesting to see how people assume and try to put a label on if a child is a boy or girl. They are still cute and still the same age. How does figuring out if the child is a boy or girl change things?
In the book Women's Lives Multicultural Perspectives, the article I feel goes very well with this post is The Social Construction of Gender (1991) by Judith Lorber says it all. "Why is it still so important to mark a child as a girl or boy, to make sure she is not taken for a boy or he for a girl? Well it all comes back to traditions, religion, laws, science, and the society's entire set of value"(Lorber, pg. 65-66).
ReplyDeleteLooking at Children's clothing is a very fun thing to do. So many cute opinions, but not enough gender neutral options. Clothing has become so gender specific in the newborns up to preteens it is ridiculous. And the worst part is, if pink or blue are not your colors, you as new parents are going to have a hard time finding a lot of those different gender neutral colors. I found something on Buzzfeed that I thought fit well with this post, its how basic items have become generalized.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/erinchack/pointlessly-gendered-products
Whenever I see babies clothes it is very simple to identify boys and girls clothes from each other. I feel that as a society we have come to this, it is what we now expect. If all of the sudden unisex clothes were put on the shelves, society would not know what to do; confusion would take over. To reflect on what I am saying I would like to refer to the article The Social Construction of Gender by Judith Lorber, "Gender signs and signals are ubiquitous that we usually fail to note them- unless the yare missing or ambiguous. Then we feel uncomfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status."
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Lorber has said in her article. Yes, unisex infant clothes were popular at a point in time, but know society is to absorbed in labeling babies by gender I don't think we will ever be able to turn away from blue is for boys and pink is for girls.