Gender neutral clothes & the official palette of newborns
Posted by Ariel · Ariel's Updates

I didnt want to pretty pretty princess out my baby girl either, and tried to do "gender neutral" but Im sure youve seen as I have, that thats pretty hard to do unless you want Yellow. Sometimes we buy her boy clothes just because they look cute. And she does own an orange tutu, and some pink stuff. But I refrain from buying pink if I can, because everything we get from relatives is all 100% pink. Pink is my favorite color, my wedding was pink! But is it her favorite color?

Oh I so agree. My boy has had and still has, purple items of clothing (including converse lol!) and when he was younger, he had long hair. He was mistaken for a girl frequently. He has short hair now because he prefers it that way at the moment. I'm sure his tastes will change again at some point. I imagine him wanting to dye it blue when he's 15 lol! He doesn't seem to have *any* preconceived ideas on what are boyish colours. He states pink as one of his favourite colours.

Amen, BadgerMama! My husband is currently reading a book called Pink Brain Blue Brain, which explores the ways in which how we encourage our children in different endeavors actually shapes changes their brain function to be better at those skills. For example, people love to talk about how "boys are good at THIS, girls are good at THAT" but the truth is that children of each gender get a lot of encouragement to be good at certain things, and that actually creates the skills that are supposedly innate. REALLY interesting stuff, and I think I'm going to make Dre write a book report on OBM about it when he's done.

I'm not a parent, but I used to work in a children's clothing store, and the gender neutrality of it all drove me insane. People would love an outfit for their little girl, say a little dino hoodie, or a shirt that said "HERO" in super hero style font, talking about how she would love that. Then, as soon as they would see the little blue tag, they would put it away, saying "Oh, that's too bad." So, even though their daughter far preferred dump trucks or dinosaurs, they had to wear outfits with kittens or candy on it, because it had that sacred little pink tag. Also, once, because everyone claimed that our boy outfits were not cute enough (it's hard to be cute when you can wear navy, red, and brown) we did a softer line with brighter colors…several people actually came up to me and asked if our store wanted little boys to be gay. It was disgusting.

I'm so glad that my fiance loves different types of children clothes, and has said to everyone in our family, when we have children of our own, get whatever is cute, not what is pink and pastel-y. We will undoubtedly be buying 'boys' clothing, because we are geeks and love things like space ships, video games, and superheros. And for onesies, I will stay away from those pastel horrors (it's fine if you like pastels, I just have always hated soft colors) and instead undoubtedly be stenciling those bright onesies with pictures of Yoda or the TARDIS.

And that's not the only reason girls get mistaken. I didn't have hair until I was almost two and I got mistaken as a boy in my pink frilly dresses all the time. The lack of hair was the only reason my mom could think of as to why they thought I was a boy.

http://www.punkbabyclothes.net/

also: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/kids/

Couldn't agree more. We've been having the same dilemma made even harder/more complicated by the fact that we're not finding out the sex before hand. People keep telling me that we'll never be "prepared" if we don't know what colour to buy things in and my partner and I respond with a list of colours we think are pretty acceptable across the board: orange, purple, bright red, kelly green, etc. We recently bought a bunch of onesies from an organic kids clothing line our friends make and got them in bright blue, brown with orange ringers, and black all with adorable screen prints on them that are pretty gender neutral in our opinion (birds, swings, deer). When we showed them to a friend they responded by saying "oh so you think it's a boy then?" And we were all "huh?" no, a girl could wear these too!

From watching my sister resist frilly things, to my own love of them, and watching my friend's kids grow up around me I think you can let your kid take the lead on fancy vs. tom boy (whether they're a boy or girl) once they get big enough to voice an opinion and in the meantime, we're all for bright kid like colours that don't stick to the pink/blue divide. (And it comes as no big surprise that on my last trip to a Scandanavian country much of the baby/kids clothes were in basic patterns, stripes and colours that were for the most part bold, bright and mixed and not falling into the pink/blue or pastel traps).

I love My Baby Rocks (http://www.punkbabyclothes.net) They have a ton of stuff that is really bold and bright but can work for either gender.

This is great! I'm going to be a first time off-beat Aunt this spring and I can't wait to spoil my niece or nephew with some bad ass clothes.

Great article AND comments! I've always loved how cute the bold, graphic, neutral baby stuff is but have forgotten that even I grew up with very gender defined clothes! I'll be checking out some of the sites people are posting for sure since two of my friends are expecting!

Here's a little true story about pink for girls/blue for boys. I got it at work (I work at a child care center, currently as an infant teacher); this is paraphrased because I currently can't find the paper I saved because it was so facinating:
Somewhere in the early 1900s, a clever paper business man decided to make gender-specific birthday cards for young boys and girls. He chose a pale blue for the girls because the color was soft, delicate, and calm like little girls. He chose pink for the boys because it was vibrant and active like little boys. However, there was a mix-up in printing, and the girls cards came out pink and the boys cards came out blue. Being the smart business man, he decided instead of wasting the money, he'd sell them anyway as-is. And it caught on, within a year toy and clothing manufacturers were spinning out toys and clothes in pink for girls and blue for boys.
Just think how different the world might look if the paper factory had gotten in right!!

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Hanna Anderson has great, bright colors and the stuff is great quality. and on sale its not that expensive and your baby looks scandinavian in those pilot caps!. Tea collection has awesome clothes too. Zutano is probably my favorite for 1-2 year olds. awesome patterns, many gender neutral.

Having a girl and not liking pink, I was terrified to reveal what we were expecting. But then again, what's worse, getting pink stuff or getting all washed out muddy drab browns, greens and yellows that are "gender neutral". I started planting the seed early on, telling people I was hoping for a girl, would be happy with a boy, but hated pink at least pink head to toe outfits. The abundant selection of pink and brown for girls at the big box shops was underwhelming. Everything was pink and brown. I don't know how it became so popular for weddings and baby girls, but that combination causes me to go into near fits. It's silly to be so bothered by the color of clothes and yet it does. And you can't get away by going for slightly feminine boys stuff as it's all done in very "boy" styles.

Luckily the husband and I have slowly picked up fun onesies and outfits that we like, stocking up on Halloween outfits of various sizes to use throughout the year, finding cool onesies on Etsy and other smaller shops that don't play into the stereotypes so much. We've also added a bunch of outfits to our registry, not specifically for people to buy but in the hopes that anyone who does want to get something for our little bot will understand what we like and be able to make choices based on that. But of course the MIL didn't really comprehend that and as soon as we told her the gender, but knowing I didn't like pink, she brought lots of pastel green, yellow, and brown. I smiled and thanked her for them, because really, I think we can offset the dull well enough.

We relied on orange and purple a lot when our boys were little. They wear a lot of Threadless shirts now, at ages 9 and 10, and tend to choose orange and green when picking out solid colors. I remember, though, looking at the list my husband wrote after a baby shower we were given — there were SIX outfits described as "light blue with bears." Damn it, Spouse! Couldn't you have been more specific? We have to put it on him at least once to send a picture to Aunt Cutesie-Poo — why didn't you write "bears with kites," or "bears with blocks," or "bears with bulldozers?" <mumble mumble frickin' bears>

Color has been stereotyped like so many things. I was recently at a music festival with my "baby" a Boston Terrier, Poppy Petal, and this little old country man kept calling her a him. It really didn't bother me much but my partner kept correcting the gentleman stating that Poppy was a girl. He replied with "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm just used to calling dogs him and cats her".

My son has been mistaken for a girl over and over again while wearing full-on blue from head to toe, a shirt that reads "Mama's Boy", etc… so the idea that people are going to stop mistaking their gender because of the color of their onesie holds no ground as far as I've seen. They're going to be mistaken either way.