For Pity's Sake

 We've talked about the apparently booming market for cheerfully crass slogan onesies ("iPood,"  "Boob Man," et cetera),  and the "celebrate the brat" cultural current that produces sparkly pink "It's All About Me"  tees. There's obviously an audience for baby products that celebrate a sort of pseudo-unsentimental air-quotey approach to early parenthood, albeit an audience that does not include me or anybody I know on purpose. I can understand crudely jokey kid stuff, though, even if I don't care for it. I cannot, however, quite manage to wrap my head around another current trend, crude cutesiness. But I am fascinated by it. 

Crude cutesiness does show up on the clothes themselves sometimes, but is best exemplified by the names of product lines and companies. The names of cloth-diapering accessories are always cutesy-crude, for instance: "FuzzyBunz," "Happy Heinies" (and  while we're on the subject, who could forgive the truly nauseating, purely cutesy-cutesy "Kissaluvs?"). Who would name a (fairly expensive) children's clothing line "Pukies?" And why? Is every expulsion of effluent from our children so darling that it must be celebrated in the marketplace?

I really thought that we had, with "Pukies" reached the logical furthest extent of the nauseatingly cute references to body fluids trend, but I was, of course, wrong. Meet "Pitty Shants."

Pitty Shants. For pity's sake.

 I may shudder at the over-the-top sugariness of product lines like "Angel Dear" and "Twinkle Toes." But I'd rather be angel-dear'd to death than pat ushon by Pitty Shants. 

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