Pink & Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America

Israeli fashion writer Dafna Lustig has debuted a very nifty blog featuring online selections that meet her standards for dressing toddlers: well-made, good value and -- if possible -- favoring unisex over stereotyped designs. In an interview with Haaretz.com, Lustig explains her philosophy, including anticipating her daughter's future demand for the shiny and sparkly.  It pains me to see this desire accepted so readily as innate and inevitable. True, most children go through a stage of preferring highly stereotyped clothing in other to feel more secure in their assigned gender (usually around 4 or 5). But the exact nature of those stereotypes is culturally and socially constructed, and one of our responsibilities as parents is to help children move through each developmental stage to the next. 

How have you successfully negotiated a comfortable balance between the 4-year-olds' fixation on the extreme poles of feminine-masculine child culture and the reality of a world where mommies use power tools and daddies wear pink shirts?

Dafna's blog, http://babyfashion.co.il/ is in Hebrew, but the pictures are lovely and Google translate is your friend. My favorite part: the cure little ice cream cone links to "not recommended", "recommended" and "very recommended".

In the last few years, there's been a growing trend for pink clothing for men. For far, it hasn't affected the diaper demographic, but it's encouraging. This article from India suggests that color reversal promises to be big news there this year. 

I continue to collect anecdotes about uses of pink outside the United States. Today's story comes from a Finnish woman living in Saudi Arabia, and she includes wonderful pictures as well. Note the snippet about the gendered meanings of not only pink clothing but long hair/short hair. We don't talk much about hair in the U.S. anymore; why might that be? It seems that long hair for boys and men became as much of a non-issue as pants for women and girls sometime in the 1970s.

Finally, a teaser: I acquired a Fall/Winter 1962 Sears catalog yesterday. Scans to come!

I am (not so) patiently waiting for my book to be released. The publisher says "any day", which takes me back to those last days waiting for each of my children to be born. In all honesty, I had it pretty easy; Maria was 4 weeks early and Danny held off until 2 1/5 weeks before his due date. 

While I am waiting, I have been exploring dozens of blogs about parenting and children's clothing, especially international ones. Here is my "find of the day":

Paul and Paula small style

Peggy is a German-born mom living in Amsterdam with her husband and two small children, "KleinR" (girl) and "KleinA" (boy). She is a wonderful photographer, with an eye for fresh design. Her daughter, 4 1/2 years, wears marvelous, almost whimsical combinations of neutral colors, frilly touches and accents of color. I am willing to bet that some of the clothes on her son are handmedowns from big sister, they look for soft and broken-in. 

It is a comfortable mix for me, and I like the idea of broken-in clothes for little brothers and sisters.

I had a great email exchange yesterday with French-born Agnès Loncke of Bruges, Belgium, who had seen an article about my work. She wrote:

Well, when my sister and I got our boys in the late 60's and 70's, I was surprised we got pink clothes. In Belgium it was pink for the boys and light blue for the girls, also for the sugar 'dragées'.  In France it was the opposite, though, pink for the girls...Pink is not a boy's colour but the colour of life and good for babies of both sexes. There is however no problem dressing boys in light blue.

Of course, that was forty years ago, and even in the United States there were still localities where pink was the color for boys, or at least acceptable in multicolored stripes or polka dots. Judging from today's websites and catalogs from Belgium, pink is more often used for girls and less for boys. What is different from the U.S. is the much larger availability of colors other than pink for girls, and of neutral designs. Take a look at the Prémaman catalog and you'll see. I like their maternity clothes, too. Notice the overwhelming preponderance of neutral styles for car seats, strollers, baby carriers and other accessories. Except for the First Years potties, available in two Disney-themed option: cars and princess.