No not those kind of blues. So far I have been a very happy pregnant lady, except for when it comes to trying to find gender neutral clothing. Since we are not finding out the gender of Baby George (and also because we are thrifty and would like to be able to reuse baby clothing for future children) we are trying to find clothing that does not scream, “I’m a boy!”, or “I’m a girl!” This is apparently not as easy as one would think. Luckily I am a girl and I love blue and pink so we have gotten a few blue outfits that will probably confuse some people into thinking we have a boy wether we do or not, but oh well. Almost all of the clothing we have gotten has come from thrift stores, mostly because I am cheap but also because when I walk into baby clothing stores and see a wall of pink floral and a wall of blue trucks I get irritated with baby clothing designers.
I remember watching a film in my collage human sexuality class that had a baby in it that they dressed up in pink and then showed people interacting with the baby, they then took the same baby and dressed it in blue and did the same. The every single person interacted very differently with that baby depending on what color it was wearing. When the baby was wearing pink (i.e. female) they cuddled it close and spoke to it in soft voices, when it was wearing blue (i.e. male) they held it a bit further away from their body and used a more teasing but firm voice. So basically even when babies are brand new we are still trying to fit them into gender roles of one kind or another and I cant believe that that will not have some affect however small on how that child turns out. We are not going to go to the extreme of some parents I have read about who keep their child’s gender a secret but I really don’t care if people cant tell if Baby George is a little girl or a little boy. If they ask I will tell them, but I don’t really see why I have to dress girls in frufru outfits or boys in t-shirts with monster trucks and jeans. Bob and I don’t dress like either of those stereotypes so why would we dress our children like that?
I am sure I will get some flack for putting a girl in blue, and I may even put a boy in purple (oh the horror!) but my preference is greens and other colors that don’t scream out our babies gender to the world like it is a defining part of who our child is, because wont be. Now, this does not mean that I wont ever plan on putting our child in a pink dress or whatever the male equivalent of that is (what is that these days? it seems so much more ok to put a girl in overalls with a puppy on the front than to put a boy in a dress), however that will not be our everyday go to outfit.
End rant.
By George, We're Pregnant! 