One of the unanticipated benefits of using Amazon Mom is that it's a wonderful window into the mainstream parent-industrial complex. Living as I do in the Bay Area -- land of babies dressed in transgressively hip ensembles and named after Charles Mingus albums -- it is easy to believe that we're all nurturing our kids to chase their bliss, unweighted by gendered expectations and the accompanying baggage.
So when I log into Amazon Mom and see a big ol' display for Disney Cuddly Bodysuits and that those bodysuits are split along baffling gender lines ... it's an unpleasant reminder that sooner or later, I'm going to have to explain to my daughter that her ideas of what it means to be a person and a girl are not the same as the wider world's ideas of what it means to be a person and a girl.
Consider: this green bodysuit, clearly inspired by Pixar's Monsters, INC., is listed under baby boy clothing. So are the three-packs of Monsters, INC. bodysuits, the Cars bodysuits and 101 Dalmations. Little baby girls can get dressed in the Aristocats and Minnie Mouse.
The same day I discovered that the green bodysuit is apparently meant for little boys, I happened to get a Company Kids catalog. Fun fact: little girls get "pony dreams," "ballerina stars," "cupcake parties" and pastel polka dots. Little boys get "travel by sky," "scaryosaurus," "safari expedition" and primary colored stars.
Here is where I unpack my own gender baggage for you: From ages four to seven, I was passionately interested in dinosaurs. Like, to the point where the entire neighborhood knew I was going to be a paleontologist when I grew up. I was also a little girl who liked wearing dresses, and it baffled me that nobody ever made a dinosaur print dress. I didn't want the little blue t-shirt and pants set with the stegosaurus print, I wanted a dress. It fell to my parents to gently explain that the people who made clothes didn't think that little girls liked dinosaurs.
Rather naively, I had assumed that things had progressed in the intervening 30-odd years. My generation -- the generation that grew up on Free to Be You and Me and Star Wars -- is now sufficiently advanced in the workforce where we're product managers and marketing directors. We're making the mainstream commercial culture.
Yet we're apparently perpetuating and imposing an incredibly rigid set of gender signals through consumer choices. It's entirely possible that product managers have run the numbers and concluded that there aren't enough dino-loving little girls out there to justify a sundress with a raptor on the chest. People do buy what they think boys or girls "should" like. When I unloaded five boxes of baby-related stuff at a consignment store recently, the store owner remarked that I must have had a girl because "baby boys don't get stuffed animals. At least, not as many as baby girls." I honestly don't know who to feel worse for -- the little boys who don't get a lovey or the little girls who don't get a toy car to roll around.
My daughter is only eight months old. At this point, her interests are mostly gender-free: She likes to knock down towers of blocks, eat the corners of her board books and play peekaboo. But eventually, she's going to get introduced to pop culture. She'll see Toy Story, and Finding Nemo, and all that. And we may end up having a conversation about why we can't find her a pink Buzz Lightyear t-shirt. I'm already dreading it. And I have no good answer for her if she asks why things haven't changed.
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