Babies 'R' Us is a dreadful place

[etakyma]

So I went into Babies 'R' Us for diaper pins. Its to complete a project ... well, that isn't really the POINT of the story. I was sucked into the grim land of pink and blue for a quick errand, and discovered a lot of what is wrong with gendered society.

It begins at birth when your binary choice is externally obvious, and all of a sudden boys are "tough guy"s and "daddy's little hero" and "I ♥ firetrucks!" Girls are stuck with "I'm Cute!" and "daddy's little princess." What the fuck? What the fuck is WRONG with a society where we label our kids right off the bat with gender stereotyping. It isn't stereotyping because it is true - it is stereotyping because we've all been BRAINWASHED SINCE INFANCY.

Kind of glad my parents had literally nothing when I was a baby - I might have had six different outfits total and lots of those were hand-me-downs either from my brother or neighbors- or my mom made them for me (I should also point out here that it was the very early seventies when I was a baby - so the color palette for fashion was dreadful - mom-made clothes were far preferable to some of the stuff that was out there).

Heck, when he was born my brother was breech. Back then they didn't actually KNOW he was breech until he was already partway born. My tiny, petite, small-framed mother delivered all nine pounds six ounces of him backward (butt first). Because all the birth-bruising and odd shaping happened to his back end and not his head, people always complimented my mother on "such an adorable girl" even when she dressed him in all blue.

I escaped with the diaper pins I went in for - I got the pins that were neither pink nor blue. They're mostly yellow and green and orange!

If I had a baby I would totally dress it as gender neutrally as I could. And I'd totally get any daughter of mine the "I ♥ firetrucks!" outfit.

Comments

[coffee-n-cocoa.livejournal.com]

Although my daughter had her share of pink clothes when she was tiny (mostly due to hand-me-downs from a one-year-older cousin), I intentionally bought clothes without cutesy sayings on the front, in colors other than pink whenever possible. Now that she's six, she still likes pink, but she'll wear her Lightning McQueen tennis shoes and her NASCAR t-shirt (her grandfather's doing) with her pink shorts.

[eibbil-libbie.livejournal.com]

I actually found the store to be a saving grace when I had my boys. If I needed a lot of different things, it was one stop shopping. And when you're carting 30 pounds of baby + carrier (as well as that along with a three year old) the fewer times you have to get in and out of the car the better. They also had a knowledgable staff that helped with everything from strollers to car seats to diaper rash remedies.

I didn't really give much thought to gender roles when I dressed the boys, to be honest. But back then, I was basically a single mom and doing it on my own while my husband was deployed, so I was more worried about whether or not their clothes had strained peas all over them rather than what color they were.

[hedwig-snowy.livejournal.com]

Not sure...most of the 'baby' toys we got weren't pink or blue or boy or girl...but he did sort of gravitate toward cars and pirates and...

How much we did that on purpose or what is societal vs his own nature...

Yeah, but I still don't think that it the fire truck t-shirt would make a huge difference.

There is the nature/nurture argument...but could you really make a child be that different? Forever?

Sure there are 10,000's of PhD dissertations on the subject...I'm only concerned with one and I don't point out stuff for him to buy at the store...if anything...I try to dissuade him. :)

But he still can't pass a stack of Mattel cars without pointing them out to buy....