I will exchange a little mutual appreciation here with the writer for pink is for boys, who emailed me to say she liked this post because I really liked this piece of hers on clothing choices for small boys (which includes some perfect photographic examples):
Mothers I have interviewed describe the dominant theme of young boys’ clothes as “violent” and “aggressive.” Animals are mean-looking, not cute (with vicious dinosaurs being a favorite), and vehicles generally stop being the cute, cartoonish dump trucks or police cars found on infant boys’ clothes. Instead “they’ve got fire coming out of them or a lot of dirt coming off of them; they look aggressive. They make vehicles look aggressive for little boys somehow”.
Another mother agrees: “As I’m shopping for larger sizes, the options almost get more violent. Things that are almost scary looking . . . skeletons, and flames, and there’s nothing soothing about it.” Other examples of aggressive themes and sub-themes include athletic wear, camouflage, and superheroes.
The themes of valiant aggression encoded in images and messages of competition, exploding vehicles, superheroes, and the military begin not only promoting a warrior identity to toddler and preschool boys, but prescribing it. (And the prescription is not always subtle.)
When shopping for clothes for Cormac, who is almost eighteen months old, I try to buy him gender neutral clothing in combination with some clothes obviously from the boys’ section and some obviously from the girls’ section. (And this is exactly how I did it for our daughter too, but I can attest to it being so much easier to walk the varied gender line with little girls). Now that he is a toddler, and a tall one at that, the boys’ clothing choices are falling precisely into the category described above (more expensive hipster clothing outlets aside). Unfortunately the toddler girl choices are becoming almost as restricted. I am very comfortable dressing him in birds and hearts and pink elephants from the girls’ section but not so comfortable putting him in frilly necks and spaghetti straps.
I absolutely love what Pop’s parents are doing but I am not inspired to try the challenge myself. Until Cormac is old enough to select clothing for himself, whereupon he may choose to wear dresses and I think I will be pretty fine with that, my interest at this time is more in giving him a good range of colours and something aesthetically appealing to wear. Sounds simple enough. But I tell you, it takes some work to achieve that goal because hyper-masculine may be a lot of things but it ain’t pretty and it ain’t colourful.
blue milk 
I recently met a mother whose sister frequently sends clothes from Europe for her little boy. He is possibly the best dressed, gender neutral baby at story time. Puffy Victorian sleeved jacket in white and grey stitch, light pink turtle necks, plenty of colourful poka-dots, friendly elephants and squirrels. I haven’t seen one ferocious monster truck yet.
That’s all a bit full on eh? Like you, I also dress my girls in clothes from both departments, and bed linen too. My 3 year old daughter quite likes the mean dinosaur theme (she’s in a phase where likes scary stories too, like in Sleeping Beauty (don’t ask) where Maleficent turns into a dragon). I have no problem with a bit of the dark side, since being a child (or any person) is not all butterflies and rainbows, but it definitely needs to be part of a variety of themes.
But I tell you, it takes some work to achieve that goal because hyper-masculine may be a lot of things but it ain’t pretty and it ain’t colourful.
Yes.
I know you’ve seen me rant on Twitter about this – and as he grows older it is becoming more frustrating (and that is with Tiny Tyrant as small as the name suggests, only moving out of the “baby” sizes recently).
Even sewing, the range of patterns available in most shops in Australia is pitiful and bland. I’ve begun hoarding cute quilting cottons when there’s sales, and have amassed quite the stash of aquamarine fish, sweet little green frogs and a rainbow of birds.
I now pay more attention to his wardrobe than mine – signed myself up for spam newsletters about sales for online stores, ordered pieces and patterns from overseas (http://www.citronille.fr !) and spent more time than I’d care to weighing up whether this glittery shirt will go with anything else in his wardrobe (since he loves “sparkles” with all the fervour a 2 year old can muster).
I know some people consider me shallow, but it makes me truly sad to think that my child could potentially end up with a wardrobe full of images of aggression, exhorting him to be, or representing him as; dirty, violent, nasty, destructive and hyper-competitive. None of those are traits I wish for him to develop, or for others to see in him. And tey’re not characteristis I see in him, now.
Oh how I hate the gendered clothing. It’s especially hard to escape with gifts & hand-me-downs. I plan to sew a lot of Charlie’s clothes.
Re Woodturtle’s point, a friend of mine from Sweden passed on a bunch of her daughter’s clothes to Lily and they are all gorgeous and gender neutral in theme (ie there are some dresses, but the fabric is gender neutral).
This reminds me I need to stock a dress-up box with a variety of gender roles. Then toddlers get everything from dresses to piratical guise for playtime.
That is a great reminder! To keep dramatic play clothes available of all kinds. Thanks Mary.
I shop a lot in the infant girls section for Ollie because apparently they don’t make plain cotton pants for boys, just stiff masculine jeans or cords (totally impractical for newly mobile infants). So Ollie wears stretch pants that are made for 24 month old girls (to fit his huge diaper butt in them) because apparently toddler girls pants are supposed to be skin tight!
Check out the comments on the article about Pop, some folks equate it to child abuse. Really?! Ugh, people are so threatened by any deviation of gender roles. Keep it comin’ blue milk
Jessica, I’ve noticed that too, and that extends to toddlers upwards, where little girls get to wear leggings (which I don’t have an issue with actually) but boys have heavy pants. Less comfortable, hotter, and when you have to pack 2 changes in a kindy bag boys need a much bigger bag to accommodate the bulky pants!
I agree Mary, I can’t tell you how many pants I’ve been gifted or handed down that just went into the donation pile – that and shirts with collars. I think the stretch pants are really quite cute – it’s just sad that even now as an infant people are weirded out that Oliver has on “tight pants”, I get lots of comments, mostly from family about his attire, especially his lavender shoes (God forbid!).
Jessica,
Tiny Tyrant picks his own shoes at the shops now. The current favourites in the wardrobe; pink sandals w/ butterflies on and sparkly hi-top joggers in silver and white. He’s VERY into his shoes.
Oh yes. It drives me insane. Although, I do find it easier to get reasonably gender neutral stuff (or at least absent of cars and dinosaurs and less blue) if I’m prepared to spend way more money than I actually have.
I find it a really tricky one actually – from an environmental and economic perspective, I’d love to go with just hand-me-downs and secondhand but I can’t bring myself to dress my boy in all the crap that comes with it. It’s a tough one to prioritise.
My brother and sister-in-law get all their sons’ clothes when they’re in China (they travel there regularly to visit family). Cheaper, brightly coloured and a wide range of designs. Smiling fruit, numbers, a range of cartoon animals and abstract shapes are common for boys’ clothes. Then again, they conveniently have a 7-year-old, his 7-year-old cousin who is much smaller, then a 3-year-old, so hand-me-downs work well!
Slightly off into the hand-me-downs topic, I have two girls so, aside from seasonal and body shape issues, this should work, but I do find that half of the older one’s clothes look stained and manky by the time the little one gets to them! Is my daughter messier than most?!
Not if our two girls are anything to set a mark by, we are lucky if half of the Hbombs clothes make it to the hand me down pile, and by the time Sherbet has finished with them there is not much left for Vinnies.
No, I call them daycare clothes by the time they get to that point i.e. they are good for wearing while doing craft and active things because I don’t mind if they get ripped/stained/dirty. Anything either of my children wear regularly gets stained and manky. Even things that I carefully put away look careworn when I get them back out again.
Very interesting topic. I, too, have a little boy and have been so frustrated with clothes shopping. As someone else mentioned, I hate the stiff pants with stiff waistbands (which never fit over his cloth diapers anyway), while the girls get leggings and tights, and everything SOFT. I did find these cool cotton “karate pants” from American Apparel which I thought were great, and not really “boyish”. And aside from the tough materials, there’s the motifs. If you happen not to watch/like/support car racing, and your boy doesn’t like dinosaurs, you’re seemingly in trouble. I have ended up getting lots of stuff from etsy.com, where there are lots of great sewers that will fancy-up the basics. I love our owl sweatshirt from this seller: http://www.etsy.com/shop/digthischick
Thanks for the shout out to my post! I love hearing about other folks’ solutions for the boy clothes problem. Here in the US it is hard to shop in the girls’ dept. because they also are hyper-gendered, which in their case results in either ruffles AND lace AND bows AND puffed sleeves or “sexy” clothes (I’ll skip the rant).
We are big into finding high-end clothes (usually brighter and more fun) at thrift stores, and doing simple alterations. Iron-ons and homemade appliques are quick and personal.
I agree about boys’ clothes being less soft (because it might make them soft if they were thus pampered?) — it’s very interesting to notice what’s missing, in addition to what’s there. Another example: variety in textures (silky satin, soft velvet) although we know how much children are into touch. I can tell you that I would worry less about my skirt-loving boy getting the stuffing beat out of him once he starts school if all parents would put a little sparkle on their sons!
My boys used to choose pink things, before they knew they ‘shouldn’t’. They had a pink bike, a pink ball, and pink gumboots. But now they are 5 and 4, they know what’s expected of boys. Not expected from me, but from other people. They used to wear lots of turquoise and purple when they were babies and I got to choose.
The 5 year old won’t wear cartoony tops now, they’re too babyish, he says. One cool thing they sometimes wear are some shirts my sister got for them in Vanuatu, the shirts are printed in geometric designs.
Cotton On has some tops I like. My eldest is called Luke, and I got him a sweatshirt that says ‘The Force is strong with this one.’
Our boy has no interest in clothes, so I’ll usually choose something from the boys’ section (the least offensive item) and something from the girls’ section (the least frilly item) while he looks at toys, then give him the choice. 90% of the time he’ll choose the girl’s item because he likes bright colours and the boy’s clothes will be muted brown/green/grey colours. So he’s worn pink, red, lovely bright colours, and he looks great in them.
He’s been told a few times that pink is for girls but so far he accepts my explanation that that’s what some people think, but that there are no boys’ or girls’ colours, etc. He’s explained that to a couple of his classmates, not sure what they make of it.
We get a lot of hand-me-downs, generally it’s not stuff I’d buy if I was getting everything new. I ditch anything I can’t bear to look at (camo) and he wears the rest regardless. We do spend some money on clothes though, partly because it’s colder here than it is where my hand-me-down source lives and we have a more outdoors life. Generally now that he’s a pre-schooler we can get what we need in camping/outdoors shops. Everything in plain polar fleece. He even chose himself some pink stripey thermal leggings this winter. He loves cars, and dinosaurs and pink legs, people are like that. Varied and contradictory.
I have two girls but sympathise greatly with mothers of boys in this skulls-and-camo culture of weirdly violent children’s clothing.
A friend who is a dad of three high energy kids recommended this site http://www.blanktshirts.com.au for simple, good quality no brand t-shirts in a range of colours. While it’s not as good an option as having cool, funky gender-neutral designs for boys, it’s apparently been a lifesaver for him, and handy for providing shirts you can print your own designs on to.
I agree so much with the point about the stiff clothing for little boys and I too, am looking for soft shorts/leggings from the girls section for Cormac.
Also, something I have noticed after shopping for a little girl and a little boy is how fitted little girl clothes are in comparison to little boys’ clothes. Really, toddler girls are any more comfortable in skin tight hot pants denim shorts than little boys would be?
Someone pointed out to me a while back elsewhere that it’s interesting economically: the market is perhaps a little aware of the desire of some parents for unisex clothes, but cute bright geometric patterns and adorable little animals and such… cost a fair amount of money. Online shops with names like “Chic Parents” and “Hipster Baby” are more likely to have unisex sections. My friends in San Francisco can tell me their online stores.
Gender neutrality of sorts is a class thing, it seems.
I agree very much that it’s a class thing – I mostly shop for my kids at the local Big W which is pretty much the only place in our area to buy clothes at all, and it’s so strongly gender coded that you even struggle to find green in the girl’s section and purple in the boy’s – pink and blue aren’t the only gendered colours!
In contrast, while expensive shops like pumpkin patch do have quite gendered sections as well, they are more likely to have a variety of colour for both girls and boys, and less of the “ick” factor that comes from the sexualised girls clothes and violent boys clothes in the cheaper stores. Their baby clothes have a lot more unisex options, too.
I dread my eldest daughter reaching size 8, because as far as I can see the clothes get even worse at that point.
This forever. Is it really so much to ask for bright-coloured boys’ clothing? Maybe with cupcakes on it?
Or you know what gets me, is that I have been looking all over for boys’ hooded jackets with ears. Target has these little Hello Kitty-esque hoodie jackets for girls that have cat ears sewn into the hoods, but do boys have anything like that? Not that I can see.
… maybe some alteration is in order, as long as I’m going to be starting a plush dragon project.
In the meantime, I’ll just keep buying him girls’ clothes. (He has a shirt that has FABULOUS written on it in giant rainbow-striped showtime font, against a background of metallic gold stars. It is awesome, and he loves it.)
The thing that really blows is that it is completely true that the more you are willing to spend, the more you are able to get gender neutral clothes.
Check out the tshirts in the IKKS fall collection for boys. http://www.ikks.com/eshop/en/25/RA-451/tee-shirt–polo.htm
Shame about the ridic European prices.
Most of my son’s clothes are bought from 2nd hand shops (Oh how I love thee Vinnies) This often means pink gumboots, t-shirts and pyjamas. I think he looks fab,
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My oldest boy just hit 2t and I’m getting about as frustrated, And once he hits 5 I wouldn’t put him in anythig but the striped shirts I see in most boys. I have to go to store after store to find cute stuff. I recenty found a smiling dinosaur in gap in a 5 and bought it even though I won’t need for several years showing my desperation. There’s expensive choices like gymboree, kelly’s kids, hanna anderson. But even those have less cute choices in older kid stuff. gap usually has one ot two cute items each season. crossing over the girls side is getting near impossible because I really can’t stand most of that stuff. (really does every item of girls clothing require a bow, heat or flower on it.) I saw a cute bright blue onsie with a cuddly real looking white rabbit on it and it had a pink bow. was that really necessary. I mean a cuddly white rabbit is not girl enough for you. Incidentally I bought that for my younger son, it was a really cute rabbit. I buy far more trademarked shirts (thomas, muppets etc) than I want because at least they are smiling. I just don’t understand who they are appealing too because all the moms I know hate this and I even get into complaining conversations with other shoppers in the stores. I really don’t want to dress my little boys all the time in just stripes and plain shirts, they’ll get enough of that when they are older. right now when I saw my toddler while shopping these “masculine ” clothes he shoves them away and says no and likes bright colored shirts with smiling animals. the way it should be.
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