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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Boys in Pink Onesies with Blue Satin Sashes

For reasons I've never understood, yellow and white are apparently the new girls' colors. Yes, I know you may be surprised to learn that and even more surprised that you are learning that from someone who is currently wearing a t-shirt that has cartoon moose on it with the slogan "Dances with Moose." I have always really liked yellow and white. With my older son (OS), I found out that I was having a boy at the 20 week ultrasound. Because I like whites and yellows, a good percentage of his clothes were white and yellow. I didn't think too much of it. They were all very cute with different animals on them. Throughout OS's first year, he occasionally wore pink pajamas and pink swim diapers without, gasp!, swim trunks over them when accidents and plain old forgetfulness occurred and I needed to depend on the courtesy of a friend who had a daughter. The Big Giraffe and I never thought too much about it and still don't. (Actually, the Big Giraffe apparently thinks a lot about it, generally amused thoughts toward those who think he should be upset about OS's color preferences.) In fact, pink is one of OS's favorite colors, and we have about a 1/4 pack of the Little Mermaid swim diapers that a mom of 3 boys gave me. Her youngest had outgrown them.

When I found out that I was having a second son, I also bought some new yellow and white outfits (you would think that I would have everything, but actually the seasons didn't match up) and retained the white and yellow outfits from OS that did fit. YS also had some blue items too. For reasons I don't quite understand, whenever I would go out with YS in white and yellow outfits, people would always comment on the cute daughter I had. When I would casually correct someone, the person would get all embarrassed and mumble something about how he was in yellow or white. I honestly didn't care that they thought YS was a girl, but I did think it was odd that somehow yellow and white were girls colors, particularly when just a few years ago OS wore the same outfits and I don't remember anyone asking if he were a girl.

This continued to happen on a fairly regular basis. The kicker was when OS brought home a paper turkey at Thanksgiving time that he had made in preschool. Each feather had a different member of his family that he was grateful for. One of the feathers was marked "Sister". The Big Giraffe and I were actually pretty amused by it. Shortly after that when one the teachers commented about OS's younger sister, I explained that YS was actually a boy and that we were pretty amused by the turkey. She must have told the other teachers because now whenever I go through the pickup/dropoff line at preschool they always comment on what a cute boy he is. Anyhow, this is happening less and less these days, probably because as babies get older, you just don't see as many gender neutral clothes. I still think YS looks cute in his current outfits! Oddly enough the other day I had YS decked out in blue and someone commented on what a cute son I had, then corrected herself for assuming he was a boy.

This leads to yesterday. When I was doing the wash, I didn't see that 3 of YS's onesies had gotten mixed in with a red shirt and washed in hot water (let's just say there was an "incident" with OS and leave it at that.) I was pretty surprised when I went to throw the clothes in the dryer and discovered that there were pink onesies in there. What was particularly funny was that two of them have things written on them like "All boy" or "Baby Boy" in blue with blue trimming (Gerber onesie pack.) I'm laughing just thinking about them. Anyhow, guess what fashionable baby boy will be wearing these until he outgrows them? I would say I wonder how many people will think that YS is a girl, but who knows, maybe people will see the pink onesies and start asking if he is a boy. That would be pretty progessive!

Labels: Feminism, Toys / Clothes / Gear

posted by Alex Elliot @ 10:01 PM 3 comments

3 Comments:

At 4/20/2007 7:45 AM, super des said…

A couple hundred years ago, boys wore pink and girls wore blue. Somehow they switched, and now you're switching them back!
At 4/20/2007 12:45 PM, Cori said…

Matt loves pink, in fact he wants me to paint his toes and his bedroom pink. Toes maybe but no room in my house will ever be pink. :)

Everyone thinks Cam is a girl, he has beautiful ringlets that have never been cut. Yesterday while in the waiting room of the doctor's office an elderly lady commented about my little girl. I just smiled and said nothing. She went on to say that one time she made the same comment about another child and the mother promplty informed her that her child was in fact a boy. Ops.
At 4/20/2007 10:09 PM, soccer mom in denial said…

When the boys were four we went to one of gym birthday parties where the kids have to take off their shoes and socks. The boys, of course, had painted toes (a lovely mauve since that is all I wear on my toes).

One dad, a former college football player, came up to me and moaned a disengenuous thank you. Apparently his son had been begging for painted toe nails.

Go YS in his pink. Who really cares?

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Name:	Alex Elliot
Home:	MA, United States
About Me:	Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

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