{"id":1281,"date":"2011-01-11T13:02:22","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T19:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/?p=1281"},"modified":"2011-01-11T13:02:22","modified_gmt":"2011-01-11T19:02:22","slug":"dressing-our-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/11\/dressing-our-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"Dressing Our Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even before Griffin was born, I was disgusted with how horribly gendered all of the baby clothing out there is. Trucks for boys and butterflies for girls; blues, greens, and browns for boys, while girls have every color of the rainbow. I tried pretty hard to put him in gender neutral clothing from the beginning (which mainly consisted of stripes) but as he has gotten older, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s getting harder to do. It seems like anything interesting looking (and not bloody expensive) is either made for boys or girls, not both.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want Griffin to be a boy, whatever that means at this age. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that I hate how important it is. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already going to be getting plenty of messages from others (and maybe subconsciously from Andrew and me) about what boys and girls are supposed to do and say. I want him to like what he likes for as long as possible before he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s aware of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153supposed to-s\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and they inevitably influence his thoughts.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been thinking about this a lot recently because of four pairs of pants I bought for Griffin from the girls\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 section. First off, since he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a cloth diaper wearing kid, he needs at least a size up to fit his gianormous butt, and secondly, many boys\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pants are made of really stiff material (corduroy, jean, etc) which aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t very generous with the diapers or freedom of movement. Many girls\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pants are made of stretchy cotton, which is perfect for his butt and doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessitate buying too-big pants, plus it accommodates his desire to run around as fast as possible. How perfect, right? Wrong. Girls\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pants are\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6well\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6girly. Actually, I would consider them way more FUN than boys\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pants, but if I were being honest, most people, including me, would look at them and think \u00e2\u20ac\u0153girl.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

So living up to my standards for myself, I bought two pairs of rainbow striped pants, one green with multi-colored polka dots, and one brown with multicolored cutesy forest animals. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re super fun and bright, and I think they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re great. They have been part of his rotation of pants for a while now, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been surprised how much of an indicator they are for gender. Most people refer to him as a girl when he wears them and then get embarrassed when I reply with the pronoun \u00e2\u20ac\u0153he.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I try to make it clear that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care if they think he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a boy or girl, but one woman even went so far as to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, of course he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a boy! Now that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m really looking, I can see that masculinity in his face!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Most surprising has been the development of Griffin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s preferences as he solidly stands in toddlerhood. Andrew or I will dress him in some other pants, and if he catches sight of any of the four pants from the girls\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 section, he gets incredibly excited and signs wildly to help put them on. He smiles big as we change him into his preferred pants and giddily prances around the house. I love to see him happy in his ability to choose and am delighted that he finds pleasure in such bright colors and patterns.<\/p>\n

But this is a blog post because I feel like what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing in buying girl pants for him is a statement. I suppose it might also be so if I put a girl in cargo pants and truck t-shirts, but somehow that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem equivalent. I was actually prepared to have a girl to whom I would tell, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You can do anything, wear anything, be anything! You have the whole world at your feet! Pink or punk, whatever you want!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; give her a childhood much like my own where I was encouraged to build and fix things, play sports, cook, bake, and play with whatever interested me. While the pinks and princesses are certainly overwhelmingly popular with girl marketing, it seems more mainstream if a girl isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wearing pink or has trucks or prefers dinosaurs over dollies. I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ready for the fact that while I <\/em><\/strong>certainly would be supportive of my son wearing fairy wings in public, much of the people around me would not be.<\/p>\n

As I read and hear about other parental struggles, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m coming across many more parents distressed about their boys being teased and ridiculed about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153girl\u00e2\u20ac\u009d things than the other way around. It makes me wonder what is going on here: What is it exactly that people are afraid of? If I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m<\/em><\/strong> not concerned about my son wearing girl pants, why should you<\/em><\/strong> be? But here is where I get tripped up in my own thinking as I take it one step further: Would I put Griffin in a dress? Would I put clips in his hair? Would I buy a sparkly princess shirt for him?<\/p>\n

The answer to all of these questions would be an emphatic YES if he wanted them (and frankly, it would be that way with a girl, too). But my intention is not to use my son as a way to make a statement; I just want him to be who he is. By giving him the choice to wear rainbow pants and play with magic wands, I feel like I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You can do anything, wear anything, be anything! You have the whole world at your feet! Pink or punk, I love you for who you are.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
My happy kid in his happy pants.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even before Griffin was born, I was disgusted with how horribly gendered all of the baby clothing out there is. Trucks for boys and butterflies for girls; blues, greens, and browns for boys, while girls have every color of the rainbow. I tried pretty hard to put him in gender neutral clothing from the beginning … Continue reading Dressing Our Boy<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[79,22],"class_list":["post-1281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-griffin","tag-griffin","tag-mommy-reflections"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1281"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1289,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions\/1289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stoccoroy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}