Go Get Your Jacket

The Wrong Trousers

This is a pair of "Boyfriend" jeans from The Gap. They're cute, and the slouchy shape would certainly be more flattering than the page-adjacent "skinny" jeans (featuring gratuitous crotch-whiskering), especially on someone with a bit of a belly. Like, say, a two-year-old. These are toddler pants.

I'm wondering if the Gapfolk really thought this one through. As I understand it, the "boyfriend" garment is supposed to evoke a specific sort of scenario. The waif-like ingenue sleeps over at the boyfriend's bachelor pad, all very spontaneously, and in the morning she shrugs into his pants/blazer/sweater/over-sized white shirt with tails that flap charmingly about her slender thighs. They go to brunch. She looks all insouciant and gamine and all that French stuff. Adorable! But surely the "sleeping over" part is key? Why does a two-year-old need boyfriend pants? Does this not seemat least  borderline icky?

Next up: the "Walk of Shame" holiday line at Gymboree: sparkly, but wrinkled. The "last night's party dress" look, come to think of it, pairs perfectly with a boyfriend jacket. It's a classic. 

If I had a pink hammer

I enjoyed this post at  Sociological Images,  which does for (reputedly) grown-up products what we've been doing here for the last year and a half with kid stuff-- collecting and being entertainingly (one hopes) irritated by the currently rampant unnecessary sexual dimorphism of random consumer goods, 

I'd thought pink vs. non-pink ("boy" colors being the 

default ) strollers and carseats were just silly at first, but they're now ubiquitous to the point that it seems obvious that if you have a girl you buy pink everything, duh. Even if you don't like pink, and your kid's too young to know the difference. And even if you already have a carseat and a stroller, but they're beige. A caring mother of a baby girl buys new ones. Pink ones.

Once I'd adjusted to conspicuously gendered baby gear, along came the extreme genderification of standard older-kid goods, especially sports equipment, which once all looked like... sports equipment, and now looks like this. Because girls can't play with boy's balls. 

Although they were obviously more of the same, for Adult adults this time, I did kind of enjoy the two samples of personal lubricant once sent to me by the friendly sex-toy suppliers at Babeland: one was called "Pink," of course,  whiile the other, presumably aimed at a different demographic, came in a brown-and-camo bottle stenciled like a military footlocker and called "Gun Oil." You could easily see yourself acting out romance-novel scenarios with the two bottles:  

Gun Oil (gruff voice): "You are impossibly beautiful and innocent, not to mention unobtainably well-born, but I, a lowly soldier, will have you! "

Pink (falsetto) "No, no! Although your open shirt and brutish disregard for my virtue have made me weak in the knees, I must resist! Leave me be, I say!"

What? You wouldn't?

I can't say I got the same amusement value out of Mars's attempt to market a candy bar exclusively to women ("Fling", with the nauseatingly coy tagline: "Naughty... but not that naughty"), a campaign and product here deservedly ground to powder beneath Jezebel's stilletto heel. Like the ladies'  tool-kits in the  Sociologic Images  piece, the worst thing about the Fling bar is not that it was meant for women, but that it's an obviously crappy replacement for a better, gender-neutral product  (Fling is a low-calorie bar. Plus, it contains mica, which is rocks, to make it sparkly). That, and the ad campaign's implication that women are and ought to be a little bit ashamed of buying themselves a chocolate bar at all.  Not like men.

But we're big girls, and can just say no to pink sparkly chocolate. I suppose I worry more about the effect this sort of segregation and stratification may have on the tender brains of innocent tots. Sure, if we're honest we must admit that many little girls would be entirely happy in an entirley pink world, and many already live in one, on purpose. But you don't want little girls thinking that the regular stuff of life is somehow off-limits to them unless someone thinks to create and market a specific girlie version. Guys. We don't need to be pink'd literally from cradle to grave:

 

At least we can hope that, unlike the chipable pink flowery hammers and underpowered powertools featured in the article, the walker is not flimsier than the "masculine" default version, only pinker. 

Hey, that's not funny

This post, from about a year ago, is a lot more "sex columnist" me than "mommy blogger" me,
 but if people are going to dress tiny babies up as tiny Jayne Mansfields, that's going to happen.
-Andrea

Hey, that's not funny

by Andrea Nemerson in Hate , Wearing

“Little girls can get a jump start on their strut and be top-models-in-training before they leave the crib”
- Bobbi Thomas
The Today Show

I knew this post reminded me of something but I couldn't place it at first. What could be nearly as offensive as porn-gear for babies but is in fact not a parody but an actual product? Finally, I got it— high heels for infant girls, of course. Have you seen them? Did you know they're called "Heelarious?"

I suppose the effect is vaguely comic in the way sticking a chimpanzee in a business suit and giving him an attache case is traditionally considered comic, but while such images are alleged to lampoon the viewer more than the subject, I've never been convinced. 

Finally, though, this image just doesn't strike me as particularly funny, and "hilarious" is surely pushing it.

I've been writing about sex for over a decade, during which time I've quoted Andrea Dworkin's famous warning, "I'm a radical feminist, not the fun kind" more than once, always in the service of suggesting that I, at least, am the fun kind. I've always felt a little guilty about it, though, and when Dworkin died a couple years back I was at least a little glad to see how much respect she had commanded, not only among founding feminists of her own generation, but among younger, fun-kind feminists like Susie Bright.

As a fun-kind feminist I necessarily have a lot invested in being able to laugh about pretty much anything (um yes, I have laughed at Holocaust jokes) but I'm not sure I'm willing or able to turn off my squeamishness entirely when it comes to even the non-exploitative, all-in-good-fun sexualization of young children. Heels are about sex, not just fashion, even if I don't buy the Susan Brownmiller-era argument that men think heels are sexy because it's harder for you to get away. Heels certainly do mimic lordosis behavior and emphasize female secondary sex characteristics. They are sexy. And it's not just the sexualization that discomfits me but the premature exposure to the entire end of the female fashion and grooming spectrum which requires sacrifice, pain, extreme inconvenience, and the likely development of a bottomless pit of self-dissatisfaction, with the implied expectation that one's girl-child, currently weighing 15 pounds and wearing a duckie onesie, will inevitably seek out and be mired in same. It feels too fast, and too enforced. "You will perform femininity, and you will like it, missy." "

Oh lighten up, you say? It's just a harmless joke!

Put them on your boy baby and we'll talk.

Which reminds me: the inventors are apparently coming out with something called HElarious for little Jaxon and Caden but it's a secret. What will it be? Chest-hair onesie? Diaper cover with built-in bulge? Foam beer-sleeve for baby bottle? What is the hyper-masculinity equivalent of pink satin high-heeled shoes, and is it funny?

Space monkey

That the themes chosen to decorate things like children's pajamas are rigidly, almost laughably gender-sorted does not come as news, but the come-on I just received from Baby Gap (new PJs 19 bucks when you buy two) just earned a huge "come ON" from me. 

I actually wanted to get some. The trucks, in particular, since Avi is almost out of the trucks he already owns and he does have opinions regarding sleepwear. I liked the trucks; I liked the dinos; I liked the space ships especially.Daring adventures in your sleep, what could be better?

Over on the girls' side, though... flowers. Some polka dots, more flowers. A lady bug. More flowers. Don't little girls DO anything? No hobbies, no adventures? 

Wait, what's this?

Shopping monkey!

Honestly.

And no, she wouldn't wear the boys' ones, so it's pointless to try to strong-arm her into the space ships, for instance.  She does like space ships, but she really llikes pink. I want pink space ships. Why can't I have pink space ships?  

Oh, I prefer not to label myself

Every class at San Francisco Sex Information has at least two of these, the post-labelers, the unlabelers, although in truth they are pretty much always young women with exclusively heterosexual experience and vague aspirations toward bisexuality, but wow, does this ever not have much to do with labeling kids' clothes for camp and school. 

 My brothers and I had iron-in labels for summer camp, painstakingly hand-written in laundry pen. I don't remember school clothes ever being labeled, and I'm sure we would have thought it was dorky (although the preferred term at the time was probably "retarded" (sorry!) or "mental").  If we lost something (and we did) it was our fault, and nobody was going to return it, since they didn't know whose it was and would never have thought to check. A labeled jacket in 5th grade is still kind of dorky, but I'm sure today's super-cautious parents are extending their over-protectiveness to cover not only their children but their children's stuff as well. And I can't guarantee that I won't do the same-- that stuff is expensive!-- and if everyone else has labels too at least my kids won't stand out for dorkiness. Where everyone's a dork...

So here are Mabel's Labels. They make neat little stick-ons to adhere to the size- or care-tags in all your twenty-dollar Gymboree tee-shirts, and super-sticky waterproof, rub-proof ones for your  Sigg bottle and your lead-free lunch bag, neither of which we had back then either (we ate lead and we liked it, darn it), and even cunning dog-tag-style hang-tags for your backpack. None of these seem strictly necessary to anyone who owns a Sharpie, but they are undoubtedly convenient, and a pile of freshly matching-labeled fall clothes will likely provide the ship-shape, everything-in-its-place pleasure familiar from contemplating a nice new stack of school supplies: fresh, clean, full of promise, and best of all, yours. 

I did kind of horrify myself by ordering his in primary colors, with fire-truck icon, and hers in the "princess" colorway, with, what else,  princess icon. I'm getting over it, though. My kids are who they are. The just ran through here, Avi in the same play-clothes he'd been to the park in, and Lilah in her fairy-p'incess dress with matching pointy p'incess hat, and ladybug wings.

"Ooooo, I'm a ghost!" said Avi, pulling a pillow-case over his head. 

"Aaaaaah!" i shrieked, obligingly, while eyeing Lilah who stood there, expectantly, waiting for her shriek.

"You're not so scary," I said. "Sorry."

"But I a ghost ladybug," she clarified. 

What she needed was a label to that effect. You can't leave these things up to other people; they never get it right. 

. 

Her hair in an Alice Blue Bland

It's a hair band:

   

No, I guess not. It's a headband:

Or possibly an Alice band:

 

Whatever it is, it's the perfect (and perfectly obvious) answer to a recently vexing question: how to  fix her hair and get her to school on the same morning. It looks darling (although doesn't she look a bit like a movie star fake-candid posing for Photoplay with a caption about how she likes to relax by painting water-colors in her garden?), It's cheap, it's easy, she likes it. 

If only the phrase "hair band" didn't send off a cascade of word-associations, a domino effect of interlocking ear-worms: hairband -> headband -> Alice Band -> Alice blue gown-> [Bobby Blue Bland] -> "Black Velvet Band."  

 "Black Velvet Band" is (should be) a scurrilous chanty (done here ,iconically, by The Dropkick Murphys) in which the innocent, although likely very drunk, hero falls under the spell of a black-eyed wench who frames him for pick-pocketing and gets him transported, cursing, to Tasmania. This is, oddly, the same song, more or less, as the one murdered here by The Wiggles. And so we come full circle.

In the WIggles version, sickly sweet as a treacle tart, the girl with the eponymous hairdo is not a felonious wench but a princessy type swanning around the town until a prince notices her and immediately proposes. Ick. She's kind of a treacle tart herself, that maiden fair-- she hardly even knows that prince, and yet off she goes, chasing after the crown jewels. Not a lesson I want my daughter to learn, but I do like the hairbands headbands. 

 

The strange case of the bluish-green hat

My "blog ideas" page currently contains a complaint about overly gendered towels and a public confession of intention to make two cakes (fire truck and princess ballerina) for my kids' upcoming birthday, and more or less always has. People's weirdness (my own included) around children's sex and gender was a big part of what got me blogging here in the first place. So, rummaging around for something to post quickity-quick this morning (the morning after a long distracting no-time weekend), I found this, the second post I ever wrote and never got around to slapping up here: 

"I used to think that stories about strangers giving you a hard time about clothing choices were urban myths until now, " wrote an online friend a few years back. "And then
I went to the library book sale with my mom and I had Hayley in the Bjorn with a blue-ish green hat on. It’s been cold here so she’s been wearing some of her brother’s warm clothes instead of all the pink summer stuff I bought for her. A little old lady came up and told me she was a cute little boy. I said she's a little girl, but thanks. She said doubtfully, "But the hat is blue!" and I replied "Still a girl!." Her friend came up and said, "What a cute little boy" and the first woman said to the second woman, still doubtfully, "She says it's a girl" and her friend replied "But the hat is blue.”

I just love the way the old ladies were “doubtful.” I can so see them. 

I dreamed I saved the world in my Maidenform bra

I don't know if anyone but me (and my mom) remembers this but it seriously bugged me. I even made a desultory search one afternoon for the CEO's name so I could complain, didn't find it, and wandered off to do something else. I really did mind, though-- what kind of a message is that to send to kids, or to anyone, that boys will save the world and girls will... wear pink?. And we really did buy one for each twin.

What I didn't admit at the time, though, was that the girl-child never wore hers, and I never even tried to make her, probably for the same reason they didn't try to sell undyed organic cotton to girls in the first place: she would never have cared for the color, or lack of one. So my message shirt (I am usually against these, and rather surprised myself by being so taken with this one, but I guess I really do believe the world needs saving) languished in my daughter's drawer, along with its message. Until yesterday.

I was rummaging around in the artsy-crafts store and noticed these handy little packs of toss-in-the-washing-machine dye* and thought, a-ha!. Easy, and done, and she loves her new shirt, and now I really do need to find that email address so I can show the Gymboree folks that I fixed their stupid mistake for them.

*No, it's not made from fair-trade organic beets, shut up. 

Do the hammer-loop, do the hammer-loop...

So here's a new one for other folks with boy/girl twins or close-in-age gender discordant sibs. What do I do with the fact that girlchild only really wants pink pants and has rejected other contenders for any number of perceived faults, but, more than anything, for being (or even looking like they might have been) her brother's. Since she's a half-size smaller I am regularly tempted to at least try to pass his things down to her, but with the occasional exception (like cah shoes) she isn't having any. And yet simultaneously, both kids want what the other one is having (they express it just so: "Mommy, I want what Avi's having!")

So I ordered him two pairs of jeans with hammer loops, since he seemed desperate to carry tools around and be a "workman." They arrive later today. When he starts strutting around the house with hammer neatly slung at the ready, she is sure to go ballistic, and yet, she won't want his pants, and yet, she won't want to be left out... I hope she doesn't explode.

I could solve this with a pair of pink jeans (they should run slim) with a hammer loop. This is an item that should by rights, exist. But so should lots of things, like flying cars and sugar substitutes that don't make me retch, and they don't, either. And now that I look at her, I see that the child-friendly female "workman" figure  I'd thought to offer my daughter as a role model, Bob the Builder's companion (?) Wendy, apparently rates neither a tool-belt nor a humble hammer loop. She has to shove all her stuff under her regular belt and hope it doesn't fall out. Now how is that fair, or even comfortable?

Let me know if you see our pants anywhere. 

Hey, what gives?

I like this shirt. It is corny but I like it, enough to have mentioned it to my mother so she ordered it, of course, and I was happy because I like it and then I had a thought and I followed it up and now I'm a little mad. The shirt is from Gymboree, it's made of organic cotton, and its boast is, I hope, at least a little bit true. So what's my problem?

They have it in the boy's department only. 

Dudes. We are never going to get this world saved like that. Not even a little.