I spent some time this week looking over more baby and toddler clothing in Sears catalogs*, and have confirmed one of my theses about the patterns of gendering. The dressier the occasion, the more gendered the clothing. This is clear in these images from the 1983 spring catalog. The play clothes include a page each of fairly girlie and definitely boyish outfits, plus a page that are pretty much neutral. The dressy clothes are pull-out-the-stops feminine and masculine. compared with the 2000's, there was much less pink in the play clothes options.
This aligns with what many adults do: more neutral styles for leisure, more gendered for special occasions. The sharpening of the gender binary for some situations, while it is ok to blur them in others, is part of what I am mulling over as I develop my next book.
This aligns with what many adults do: more neutral styles for leisure, more gendered for special occasions. The sharpening of the gender binary for some situations, while it is ok to blur them in others, is part of what I am mulling over as I develop my next book.
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*Sears catalogs are among my favorite resources for studying mass-market fashions. If you live near a Sears store that is over thirty years old, your local public library might have a complete run of the "big books" on microfilm. If not, the best source is now Ancestry.com, which includes online access to Sears catalogs as part of their basic membership. I wish Sears had donated them to a museum or library that could allow free public access, but alas, they are struggling financially and I guess this was the best they could do.
