to think its sexist to split baby, toddler and young kids clothes into 'for boys' and 'for girls'?

[entropygirl]

So obvs for older kids and for men and women there are anatomical differences that mean it is valid to split clothes by gender, but that difference does not exist for younger kids.

I think supermarkets in particular could do something better than reinforce gender stereotypes for babies...

ps sorry just pmed you as I thought you had gone...

I consider it sexist to tell someone you think they should dress differently just based on sex. You arent enforcing that choice just telling them you disapprove.

i genuinely don't understand this notion that it's 'sexist' dividing the boys clothes and the girls clothes. there is no law that says you have to dress your girls in pink dresses and your boys in blue trousers. you can dress your children up pretty much as you please until they start school or have an opinion of their own, so suggesting that you are somehow being repressed by the supermarket's clothing layout is just baffling. dress your kids in whatever the heck you want. and i'll carry on dressing dd in pink dresses cos she looks nice in them.

fwiw, my mother dressed me in boys clothes and cut my hair short until i was about 10. would you believe, it left me with a whole host of issues about how my femininity, funny that.

extraneous 'how' in there, apologies

So you wouldnt find it racist if the supermarket labelled clothes as 'caucasian' and afro-caribbean? You would just say well you can wear whichever you like so its okay to brand things by race?

Sorry, another thing. I am not permanently in the UK but spend a lot of time there. I have bought lots of clothes for DD in fairly neutral tones and designs from the girls section. Yes there is a lot of pink, but you can make a wardrobe entirely of green, for example, if you so wish.

I do see some boys' clothes, basic plain tees for exame, and wonder what makes them boyish, but then DH has shirts I would wear too. In any shop you go into the difference in design for men and women is huge and not just anatomical.

zukie, I think there's a difference between little girls doing "girls'" things because they want to, and doing them because a shop says they should, iyswim. I have no problem with DD wearing pink if she wants, playing with dolls if she wants, liking sparkly pretty things if she wants. I do sort of object to (for example) the Early Learning Centre thinking that she can only dress up as a nurse or a ballerina rather than a doctor or a pirate, or suggesting that she should play with a pink toy bus rather than a red one.

well there ARE shops that sell 'racist' clothing by your reckoning aren't there - not supermarkets i grant you - but there are shops that sell just sari's, for instance, and if i remember correctly from an episode of Don't Tell The Bride there's at least one shop selling traditional nigerian clothes that one might wear to a wedding.

I would bloody love it if I went into a shop and the clothes were labelled according to skin tone I have a dreadful eye for what suits me.

But on a serious note, why not? So long as the notion was not that only black people could buy those clothes, and only white people could buy these. There would of course be a lot of overlap, but generally I see nothing wrong with awknowleding skin colour as a fact, much like gender. It's not something to be ashamed of, black or white. IYSWIM.

Whoops, think I x-posted with a whole page there. Must. Read. More. Carefully

Of course, in my scenario, all kindsof skin and hair colours would be taken into account. Clothes for pale red heads, clothes for duskier blondes, clothes for pale brunettes etc.

I think that there are far more important things to make a fuss about. It is handy having them in sections. You can buy from either. I was not going to put my DSs in pretty smocked pink dresses or even pink flowered babygrows so it was handy not to have to wade through them all.

Gah okay I give up....

It just seems silly to me that we worry about superfluous stereotyping by gender causing problems for adults but the first thing we do to our babies is tell them how very different and important it is that they are either a boy or a girl. I hate supermarkets for being complicit in this.

If you treat your sons and daughter differently from the moment they are born, how can you possibly expect equality later in life?

The race thing is quite a different issue though, isn't it? It's an issue of clothes suiting people's colouring, where are the gender thing is much more superficial.

What I think is more pressing amd needs immediate addressing is the issue of the boys' section being half the size of the girls' section, with far less choice, the most boring, restricted palette, almost no decoration, excpet for the occasional skull that adds a ten euro premimum, and is far too near the girls's section so all the lucky wot nots picking and choosing lovely sparkly, brightly coloured, diverse clothing from a huge range of stuff which pointedly rubs salt in the wound.

I want to have fun buying kids clothes too.

Not just mulling over mud coloured v "so dark blue it's almost black" shapeless trackie bottoms.

Am very fed up. At least when he was a baby there was lots of red and orange and bright yellow amd green in the boys' section.

i wouldn't say that i do particularly treat my sons any differently than my daughter though - or at least only in that they have different personalities.

if i told my daughter she can't climb on the climbing frame because she might muddy her pink dress, that would be stupid and limiting. but as long as she's still able to do all the things her brothers do, i just don't see why you care whether she's in pink trousers or blue ones.

I just think S'buries would get done by the asa if they had a campaign which basically said we have these trousers for white people and these trousers for everyone else.....

I think they are saying girls are expected to ear this and boys are expected to wear the other and btw girls play with this and boys play with the other. And I do still think that is sexist.

Mind you I got an invite to a dinner that said men should wear suits and women dresses....which is on the same level I think.

I did read the OP actually but thanks for your patronising comment, entropygrl.

fastweb havent you been listening? you can buy things from the girls section too! It is allowed!

soup no problem - anytime.

soup So what in my OP made you think that I was advocating that all clothes should be the same? I am advocating clothes should be widely varying but should not say whether they are intended for girls or boys any more than they should say if they are intended for any particular race or (adult) age....

hth

It's not about the clothes you wear though. It's how you're treated wearing them.

I am going to dress my DS like boys and I do get fed up when they don't have as much choice. I also like buying girls things-never having had a girl. A friend has one recently I went into the shop saying 'I want something really girly' -so shoot me.
If I had had a girl after 3 boys then I would go all girly. I remember crying as a 4 yr old when my mother tried to get me to wear my brother's cast offs.