{"id":4376,"date":"2018-08-31T19:18:35","date_gmt":"2018-09-01T02:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=4376"},"modified":"2018-08-31T19:18:35","modified_gmt":"2018-09-01T02:18:35","slug":"the-gender-divide-in-preschoolers-closets-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=4376","title":{"rendered":"“The Gender Divide in Preschoolers\u2019 Closets”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I buy my daughter boys\u2019 pants because even in an age of female fighter pilots and #MeToo, boys\u2019 clothes are largely designed to be practical, while girls\u2019 are designed to be pretty.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Sara Clemence, Family, Aug. 28, 2018<\/p>\n

\u201cHow adorable!\u201d crooned the woman in line behind us at the department store. \u201cAnd look at those lashes. How old is he?\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked down at my 3-year-old daughter, Lia, who was trying to scale the counter, and paused. It\u2019s not unusual for strangers to think my little girl is a little boy. People are used to seeing boys with tumbles of curls like hers \u2014 but a girl wearing boxy olive-green pants and a sturdy space-motif T-shirt has a way of throwing off the gender radar.<\/p>\n

Lia\u2019s bucking of clothing stereotypes isn\u2019t her choice (yet). When her older brother started outgrowing his clothing, I put a lot of it aside for Lia. The hand-me-downs saved money and let us squeeze a little more enjoyment out of those tiny jackets and sweet sailor shirts. While I was happy if they also happened to de-girlify her wardrobe, I didn\u2019t set out to turn her into a pint-size fashion iconoclast.<\/p>\n

But by the time Lia was a year old, I was buying most of her clothes in boys\u2019 sections. When she started walking, then running and climbing and jumping, I looked for clothes that were as functional as my son\u2019s: Pants that would buffer her knees against falls and have pockets to hold the rocks and leaves she picked up in the park. Substantial shirts that would shield her arms from the sun and mask grass stains and food smears.<\/p>\n

Instead, I found girls\u2019 sections filled with lightweight leggings, scoop-neck tops, and embellished shoes. I scoured the internet for girls\u2019 pants with capacious pockets and reinforced knees, and found maddeningly few options.<\/p>\n

I eventually realized that, even in an age of female fighter pilots and #MeToo, boys\u2019 clothes are largely designed to be practical, while girls\u2019 are designed to be pretty. Now when I shop for Lia, I hit the boys\u2019 section first. It\u2019s not just about avoiding skinned knees, but also the subtle and discouraging message that\u2019s woven right into girls\u2019 garments: you are dressed to decorate, not to do<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Some might think I\u2019m being sartorially oversensitive. But what we wear matters \u2014 and not just as a projection of our personalities and priorities. An abundance of research has shown that our clothes affect how other people perceive us, as well as how we see ourselves.<\/p>\n

A 2012 study<\/a> by researchers at Kenyon College showed that adults thought fifth-grade girls who wore more sexualized outfits were less intelligent and capable than girls who wore more childish clothes. In another study<\/a>, published in the journal Social Behavior and Personality, ballerinas who wore tights and leotards felt worse about their bodies and their performances than those who wore loose get-ups.<\/p>\n

How we dress can even change the way we act. Studies have found that wearing more formal work clothes<\/a> can get people thinking in a more abstract, big-picture way, and that adults become more focused when they put on lab coats<\/a> \u2014 even if they\u2019re not scientists. It\u2019s not a stretch to think that putting our girls in tighter, frillier, flimsier clothes can imprint them with outdated notions about what they can and should do.<\/p>\n

Though designs obviously vary from brand to brand, experts say that overall, the gender discrepancies in kids\u2019 clothes are very real.<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially in the toddler years, the boys have more pockets, they have more fun active clothes than the girls,\u201d said Francesca Sammaritano, a children\u2019s wear designer and assistant professor of fashion at Parsons School of Design. \u201cThere\u2019s leg room for bending your knees.\u201d<\/p>\n

The differences in cut \u2014 boxier for boys, narrower and more revealing for girls \u2014 have nothing to do with differences in children\u2019s frames. Designers even use the same dress forms for both genders, Ms. Sammaritano said. \u201cThe body is the same, size-wise. You\u2019re growing and developing in the same way until you reach six years, more or less.\u201d<\/p>\n

The gender divisions are a relatively new thing, said Jo Paoletti, a fashion scholar and author of \u201cPink and Blue: Telling the Boys From the Girls in America.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAll you have to do is look at the last 30 years of consumer culture for children to see these stereotypes coming out more and more,\u201d she told me. One reason, she said, is the rise in the 1990s of third-wave feminism, which embraced traditionally feminine looks; another is the prevalence of tests that let parents find out a child\u2019s sex before birth, and have led to the trend of holding gender-reveal parties<\/a> in pregnancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents started reacting to that,\u201d Ms. Paoletti said. \u201cBut all it means is, it prepares you to buy all the stuff \u2014 and prepares you mentally to be able to raise a human being \u2014 according to cultural stereotypes.\u201d<\/p>\n

A more insidious reason: With declining birthrates, clothing manufacturers have been hungry for ways to keep sales up. \u201cIf you can figure out a way to make it harder for people to share or hand down clothes, you\u2019re going to do it,\u201d Ms. Paoletti said.<\/p>\n

To be sure, a few companies have made efforts to break gender ranks. There are unisex lines from new brands such as Primary<\/a> and Svaha<\/a>, and traditional ones like Carter\u2019s<\/a>. Lands\u2019 End started selling girls\u2019 leggings with the same reinforced knees<\/a> its boys\u2019 pants have; Girls Will Be makes shorts and pants with pockets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But much of the industry still seems to be engaged in a color war.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t enlisted. Pink isn\u2019t banned from our house; neither are flowery dresses. And Lia loves both \u2014 though she also recently asked me to replace the blue tee with a train engine on the front that she had outgrown. And I\u2019ve begun mixing \u201cgirlie\u201d colors into my son\u2019s drawers.<\/p>\n

Increasingly, I find it silly that we have \u201cboys\u2019\u201d and \u201cgirls\u2019\u201d clothes at all. I\u2019d much rather buy my children clothes that speak to their actual interests rather than the interests they are presumed to have because of their genders. Why should girls be confined to pastels and kittens, boys to navy blue and construction-equipment motifs?<\/p>\n

My 5-year-old son finds joy in rainbows, flowers and things that glitter. I\u2019ve been scouring the girls\u2019 sections for a shirt for him \u2014 let me know if you see one without puffed sleeves.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I buy my daughter boys\u2019 pants because even in an age of female fighter pilots and #MeToo, boys\u2019 clothes are largely designed to be practical, while girls\u2019 are designed to be pretty. By Sara Clemence, Family, Aug. 28, 2018 \u201cHow adorable!\u201d crooned the woman in line behind us at the department store. \u201cAnd look at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4377,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4376\/revisions\/4377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}