Almost a response to my recent post... and to a theme that runs through this blog. This article appeared in the June 2011 Smithsonian Magazine online edition.
A few quotes that I would like to highlight:
“What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted,’ ” Paoletti says. (This flip happened right around the time the Kinsey studies were published. Coincidence? I think not.)
Prenatal testing was a big reason for the change. Expectant parents learned the sex of their unborn baby and then went shopping for “girl” or “boy” merchandise. (“The more you individualize clothing, the more you can sell,” Paoletti says.) The pink fad spread from sleepers and crib sheets to big-ticket items such as strollers, car seats and riding toys. Affluent parents could conceivably decorate for baby No. 1, a girl, and start all over when the next child was a boy.
Another important factor has been the rise of consumerism among children in recent decades... they are the subjects of sophisticated and pervasive advertising that tends to reinforce social conventions. “So they think, for example, that what makes someone female is having long hair and a dress,’’ says Paoletti.
So I ask again (and not for the last time, I'm sure): what are the messages that we are sending to our children? Why is the gender-expression of people who aren't even old enough to understand gender of such paramount importance? And who is it who convinced us - sensible adults - that gender conventions needed to be so carefully guarded?
The rest of the article is here.
Yes, I knew it used to be "pink for boys"... and if you want to take it further, think about fox hunting jackets... they are red, but they are referred to as "Pink". And we know all about those long haired white dressed pretty little boys of yore. We have the photos / daguerrotypes on all sides of many families. Eliza, you came home from the hospital in a blue romper with fish on the bodice. Did that turn you gay?... or did it make you love fish? Guarding the gender conventions is much like DOMA... we defend something which needs no defense. We are all who we are... or as the Coors commercials remind us... "they were who we thought they were".
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