Gender for Benders

This outfit, donned for the first time last Sunday afternoon [courtesy of Aunt Kat], elicited more "cute baby" comments than we've heard so far. I suspect that many of these friendly strangers assumed Pearl was a boy.

Wearing a diaper, infants look pretty much gender neutral, as far as I can tell. People's assumptions seem to rely strictly on the garments. And because people are often hurried, sometimes they assume Pearl is a boy, even when she's wearing a dress. So far we have not put bows or ribbons in her hair, although we often dress her in pink because, as I've mentioned before, we gained Queens de Pastel status shortly after our baby shower.

Do you [did you/will you] deliberately dress your baby to signal a gender? How do you feel when strangers misread your baby's gender? Did people mistake your gender when you were a child? What was your reaction?

Comments

[Robyn]

believe it or not....when Harris' hair was kind of longish (right before his 1st birthday), we did have to correct quite a few people. but it really wasn't a huge issue for us. yeah...he was wearing boy clothes...but STILL people admired our "girl".

we've had a bigger issue with Cindy being called "sir" in the past. i think i told you...that was one of the reasons she finally decided to grow her hair to chin length. it always bewildered her...cuz her boobs are kinda big.

we were having dinner with friends on Sunday night...and the subject of first haircuts came up. the mom said that her daughter had been 3 before she even had any hair...and so, she'd resorted to putting bows and headbands on her hairless daughter.

honestly...i think that for us...if our 2nd child is a girl...we WILL clothe her in Harris' hand-me-downs...and just not worry what people think/say.

but yes...it does get tiresome having to explain all of the time.

[Robin P]

I remember one time when Lillianna was under a year old and bald but very girly looking dressed all in pink and some woman asked what "his" name was. I said, Lillianna Rose. It took her a few seconds for that to sink in. She was in a pink dress, lace tights and patent leather shoes. You can't win! It doesn't even matter.

When I was in 10th grade my teacher told us the story of "BABY X". It was a story about this baby that was put into school dressed in overalls and neutral colors. Other than the parents, no one was told if Baby X was a boy or girl. When it came time for play in school, the boys played with trucks and blocks, the girls played with dolls and kitchen things. Baby X did both because no one knew which group X should go in. It was a detailed story and of course the moral was that without gender stereotypes, kids are better off.
My opinion? (Ka-ching...2 more cents for you....)Pearl looks adorable in this picture. I was looking for a shirt like that for Lillianna. Rich loves Hawaiian(?) shirts for himself and they don't have them for girls where I have looked. Why not?

[Moxie]

Heh. I don't even think people respond to the clothes you put on your babies. El Chico has looked like A Boy from the moment he came out. Just so very very male. And we were the recipients of many, many baseball-themed outfits (his first summer I could dress him in nothing but baseball wear for 2 weeks straight without repeating--what is with people and sports anyway?) so he was often wearing stereotypical boy clothes, and people *still* asked if he was a girl. People just bring to it what they want to bring to it.

My favorite El Chico gender-mix-up story took place last fall, when he was 20 months old and looked like the poster child for boydom. Short hair, harum-scarum manner of running, jeans, striped shirt, sneakers, etc. He was outside pushing his doll stroller. OK, I use the term "pushing" lightly, since he was really galloping down the sidewalk and using the stroller as a cowcatcher to ram anything that got in his way. His stroller is the standard-issue doll stroller, which means it's hot pink. A woman walked by, glanced at El Chico, glanced at the stroller, glanced back at El Chico, and said to me, "Boy, she sure is active, isn't she?" So I guess only girls push pink strollers. And "Math is hard!" too, I guess.

(Incidentally, my husband cracked me up when I brought home the hot pink stroller by saying, "I'm glad we have a boy, because no one can possibly think we're trying to ram a gender stereotype down our son's throat by making him use a pink stroller, but if we had a girl we'd look like those parents who dress their girls in nothing but pink head to toe and want them to be ballerinas.")

[Angela]

People were constantly mistaking my son for a girl, until he was almost a year old. He had beautiful long eyelashes and I think that was partially the reason. Even if I dressed him in blue from head to toe, I still heard the "What a beautiful little girl" remarks. I guess it didn't help that he had a neutral-ish name (Sage).

[Jenny]

I'm one of those dolts who asks "Is that a boy or a girl" even when the child is obviously dressed in pink or blue. I never want to assume! Besides, I've seen my share of girl babies who wore hand-me-downs from older brothers. But never, come to think of it, vice versa.

My son is always being confused for a girl, and while I never intentionally gave into gender stereotypical clothes, he does wear an alarming amount of blue. In fact, he's getting his first hair cut on Friday, prompted by numerous comments about my "daughter." It doesn't bug me but just made me realize his hair was getting out of control.

My favorite response--after a slew of "she" comments--came from an elderly woman. She said, "Oh, he is beautiful." When I commented that many others mistook him for a girl, she said, "Oh, never! Those long, gorgeous eyelashes that girls would kill for? Only boys get those!"

[trista]

Ok, so it's been a year since you posted this, but I'm going through your archives and had to comment.

Before we got pregnant we began buying baby clothes. I know, we're nuts. Anyway, we bought all gender neutral clothes except for the occassional gendered outfit that was exceptionally cute. Once we found out that we were having a girl I was asked if we intended to use the boy outfits. And I responded absolutely! In fact, one of those "boy" outfits is currently in the hospital bag as a contended for hospital baby picture outfit. Cute is cute, and a baby is a baby. (Or so I hope, since ours isn't here yet, I may change my mind after the birth, though I doubt it.)

We, too, were inundated with pink at our showers -- though we specifically requested no pink -- but I'm beginning to think (using my own experience and from reading new-mom blogs) that we will be too tired to care that some days our baby will be decked out like like a baby drag-queen, though we may wince at the pictures later... and, of course, as a toddler she may choose that look herself.