She's a GIRL

[Cashewnutts]

I'm fed up with my 4month old being labelled as a boy. Near enough every time I'm out with her, someone will remain to her as a he: how old is he? Isn't he cute! Oh look at him etc.

AIBU to be increasingly rude to these people when correcting them? Of course it's always random strangers and never the same ones, I'm just hugely fed up with correcting people, especially when she is clearly wearing girls clothes. (Or at the very least, something that identifies her as a girl such as a girls sun hat or cardigan)

Just to illustrate, here are some of the outfits she's been wearing when people have assumed she's a boy. We also have a Cosatto pram with blue and orange pattern but IMO it's very non gender specific.

Oh dear, that reminds me of when my own kids were little. Before that, I had very little contact with any kids. Then all of a sudden other parents of babies were smiling at me and making polite conversation, which was nice.

But, as it turned out, I was completely useless at guessing the sex of their children. I must have offended at least a dozen mothers by making the wrong call before I decided I was just too unobservant to make the call at all.

So I just started saying, "What a gorgeous baby!" to the parents, or addressing the child, "What's your name?" I'm sure I didn't fool anyone, but maybe I annoyed fewer people.

As others have said, once your daughter is old enough, she'll quickly correct people who get it wrong!

I doubt there are many mothers that would dress their girls in all blue clothes, blue blankets, blue pram, blue toys.

Waving. The pram was generic black but the blanket was blue (my friend made it, it's beautiful but very 'traditional boy coloured'). I didn't really have toys for her though. She had little blue leather shoes that had pastel flowers on them but they weren't obvious. Otherwise she was dressed in bright primary colours which I fast learned screamed 'boy' to strangers.

I didn't realise it was a mumsnet thing.

I get it, OP

It's unimaginative to say that girls only wear pink (the OP's experience), or a baby wearing pink must be a girl (I'd guess that if I'd dressed my sons in pink there would be near-on 100% assumption that they were girls)

I really don't know what you're saying!

You said that all the girl babies you saw out and about were in "girl" colours. I asked how you could tell - what if some of the babies in lemon were boys, and some of the ones in blue were girls? And you said you could tell because they weren't in boy colours.

It's not just on MN that girl babies get dressed in blue/brown/green sometimes, I assure you. Sometimes even MN people take their babies outside

Would you be offended if I said " your baby boy is lovely " SnotGoblin? Hope not! smile

If you read back to my previous responses to this thread, no I wouldn't have been fussed.

I dress my son in his sister's hand me down's sometimes. He is the most boyish little boy in the history of boys but when he's wearing leggings with lovehearts on them people compliment my daughter...

Is that wrong now? Or should we assume nothing?

I used a red and black pram for both my girls - and I'd only get comments referring to them being a boy, when they wore pink!

I kid you not, I even had his conversation about my eldest (yes she was wearing pink at the time):
Woman: Ooh cute. What's his name?
Me: Her name is Samantha. not her real name
Woman: Samantha? That's an unusual name for a boy!
Me: That's because she's a girl...

Pretty much every item of clothing my Dd wore until she was around 6 months old was pink. She had a full head of hair from birth - which yes I used to put bows and stuff in so shoot me, and she had a bright pink pram and pink car seat....and she still got called "he" on a couple of occasions.
I think a lot of the time it is just a slip of the tongue, sometimes people aren't sure and "he" is the first thing that they say, and some people just have a slightly larger stupid-centre in their brain than others

I doubt there are many mothers that would dress their girls in all blue clothes, blue blankets, blue pram, blue toys.

Wave
Yep, me too. I've already said, my pram was red and black, but my girls had blue blankets and often wore blues, greens, browns, reds, yellows etc. My mum would buy pink clothes for them, which is why I found it funny that only when wearing pink would I get comments, because it didn't happen very often. I didn't purposely not buy pink, it was just the clothes I wanted for them, happened to be other colours

When my DD was about 4 months old we were in the queue at Asda and she was wearing bright colours but I guess quite gender neutral as an outfit. She didn't have much hair. A nice old man started saying "oh what a handsome lad" etc and commenting on how she was a generally good looking boy. I just smiled. He carried on and then said "what's his name?" It had gone too far and I didn't want to hurt the mans feelings so I just blurted out "Joseph" and for the rest of the time in the queue the man was chatting away to my DD and saying things like "you'll be a ladykiller little Joe!"

If it's an consolation she's two now and definitely looks like a girl.

I dress DD in a mixture of colours, I like blue, she looks good in it, why wouldn't she wear it? I'm guessing by this logic they would sell no blue dresses?

And yes we've had her labelled as a boy when wearing pink. Or a dress.

I had my boy all in blue called she, dds in pink called he...I think people are just making chit chat and poss have poor eyesight!

I dressed my dd in bright coloured clothes mostly so pretty unisex and she was called "he" a lot. That in itself didn't bother me but it annoys me that male is the default for most people.

Ah people just like to make conversation don't they. Perhaps they feel asking if it's a boy or girl will be more hurtful than just plumping with what they think must be the obvious choice. DS nearly 2 and people still assume he's a boy, despite him pretty much always being dressed in very gender-specific clothes (blues/greens, dinosaurs/tractors etc). I just think I must have made a very pretty boy and tbh I go along with it, I don't correct them now, though it gets awkward when they ask what "her" name is!

Alright navy I'll bite.
You've made the assumption that I dress my baby in blue based on what? Three outfits randomly chosen out of a few that happened to have an element of blue on them?

hahaha ^ should have read people assume he's a GIRL

I love pink frilly stuff and don't care what anyone thinks(!) I have 5 girls who often wear really pink/white frilly outfits.

Despite this people have still said "he" when talking about my babies on numerous occasions I wouldn't read too much into it.

I've had it both ways as I have a DS and a DD. DS was very pretty when he was tiny and often used to be mistaken for a girl, mostly due to the length of his eyelashes I think. That lasted until about pre-school age even if his hair was very short. The only time it bothered me was when his first passport came back as the wrong sex and we didn't notice until we were checking in to come home from holiday. Because of that incident we very slightly altered his name when we finalised his adoption, from gender neutral to male.

DD always looked girly when she was tiny as she was my little doll, even though she never wore pink as I'm not fond of it, but once she could voice an opinion she only wanted to wear boys' clothes. She's 8 yo now and most people still assume she's a boy. She doesn't seem bothered by it and only corrects them if she feels like it or they need to know.

My DD was completely bald until a year old. I cannot count the number of times I was complimented on my "beautiful little boy". The only bit of that comment that bothered me was that she was bald (!), but fortunately her hair then sprouted at a year old and the comments stopped.

My DD is now 5yo and is picked out as a girl about 50% of the time - but she has started saying she wishes she was a boy...because people only tell her to stop doing things once they realise she is female....

I've been taking her swimming in a blue batman swimming onesie, and wearing that we hadn't had any complaint about her in the deepend for 6 months. A month ago she chose a new costume which is orange with pink, green, blue shells on it and suddenly every other lifeguard is asking if she can swim again.

Similarly she had been climbing up and down a frame happily for 15 mins when I called her by name for something and then somebody suddenly felt she was too high for a girl her age and said she should come down.

Honestly being able to pass your DD off as a boy is a blessing.

This makes me think of when I was about three years old, fashionably dressed in yellow top and brown trousers and pageboy bob (1970s ) having an ice-cream bought for me in Brighton. Bloke behind the counter says 'There you are, sonny'. I was mortified and didn't wear trousers again until my teens.

Out with PIL for Sunday lunch and random women offered to hold my baby boy so I could eat my dinner, she kept saying she, even though I kept saying HE it didn't really bother me she said she it's hard to tell with babies ... I declined her offer kind of sweet of her but totally random stranger.