Think pink
In elite-however-defined parenting circles, online and in the world of living breathing humans, it is entirely acceptable to search for tutus, nail polish, etc. etc. if and only if the child this is for is a boy. If, however, you’ve got a girl, then pink is off limits. It is some impossible to disentangle mix of problematic and déclassé. This is a thing, one that is simultaneously annoying and understandable.
Who knows which came first, but mainstream, for the masses kids’ stuff, from before-birth (think gender reveal parties) onwards, is extremely gendered. The one time I bought an upscale baby garment, an Eiffel Tower sweatshirt for my not-yet-born older daughter, I was informed that this was surely for a son, because the sweater, which is frankly quite girly, is navy. As a frequent navy-wearer myself, and not someone about to win any gender innovation awards, I was just like, huh, and spent the $50 on the sweater ($25 really when one considers that now a second child wears it). But the gender-y stuff is ugh, both in its ubiquity and in the way it makes it take twice as long to comb through the usual mall-store websites to find whichever item you need, according to actually relevant parameters (i.e. cotton or fleece, zipper or snaps, size obviously). A newborn doesn’t care about being misgendered because such a thing is literally not possible.
In reaction to this, or simply in opposition to it, the upscale baby-kids universe is natural fibers and, crucially, agender. The world of wooden toys no child would find interesting is also one of high-end mud-brown knitted garments that could, ala Mr. Humphries, go either way. Which, fine. Were it not for the thing where small children render everything instantanously filthy, I might go in for it, as we have already established on this blog sorry newsletter.
But then something happens where children start to become themselves. People in their own right. And lo and behold, most people are gender-conforming. I do not wish to equate the situation of gender-nonconforming children among the normies with gender-conforming sorts among the beige-bonnet set. No one’s being ostracized or abandoned for basicness. But there is a thing, beyond the affirmation of gender nonconforming when it happens (which is, again, great, although I’m not sure it’s as much of a done deal as it seems, even in the circles where you’d expect it) where one is expected to performatively handwring about a daughter in a princess phase, or to ostentatiously celebrate a princess phase if the child going through it is a son. (Note: none of this has anything particular to do with trans issues. For all the topic’s ubiquity in discourse, toddlers who go by “they” are rare, and I am not personally acquainted with even one.)
With sons, the concern is that gender-conforming means a Bad Man in training. (See: the horrible think-pieces from parents of boys where the parent imagines the boy will grow up to be a serial killer slash rapist because he bit a classmate when he was 1.5 years old.) I don’t know. I don’t have sons, and between this and the thing where you have to decide whether or not to get the circumcized, it sounds complicated. (I know that’s a strong feelings topic, but I don’t have sons and am 500 years old, exhausted, and unlikely to have any so no need to try persuading me either way in the comments, if there are indeed comments on this thing.)
With girls, it’s more that it’s not chic to have a child into nails, clothes, shopping. Which, I mean… did you people (gestures vaguely at own social set) learn nothing from “Legally Blonde,” “Clueless,” or any of the other movies about it being possible to be conventionally feminine and smart, ambitious, etc.? Or is the idea now that conventional femininity and strength are only compatible in people who overcome social norms to get there? Must it be assumed that, when a girl is girly (which most of them are), this was imposed? This, when “tomboy” is, to a point, celebrated? (I repeat: my theory is that actual serious gender-nonconformity is not 100% celebrated in the circles that superficially revere it.)
Anyway, whatever. I type this in a pair of pale-pink sweatpants inspired by a pair I owned in kindergarten, and which I could no longer wear after a classmate vomited on me while I was wearing them.