Cort Ruddy looks at how major retailers are gendering the clothing options for young boys and girls and wonders what messages these clothing items are sending to our kids.
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“Don’t be mad, but I got a couple of shirts from the boys’ section,” my daughter proclaimed as she found me and her little brother sitting on the bench outside the Gap Kids at the local mall. Her mom was still inside, paying with our other daughters.
I wasn’t mad, not even close. But I asked why, purely out of parental curiosity.
“All the girls stuff is too cutesy, and the boys stuff is just cooler.”
My daughter is a pretty typical pre-teen—except in the many ways that she’s exceptional, of course. She likes to ride her bike. Plays soccer. Has read the Harry Potter series, the Percy Jackson series, and all the Hunger Games. She used to like princesses and Disney movies, and has recently discovered boy bands. She’s not what society would call a “gender non-conformist.” And that’s not what this is about.
But, it is very much about gender and conformity. And fashion, I think.
I went back into the Gap, daughter and her younger brother in tow, to see what she meant.
Like all clothing stores starting with infancy, this Gap Kids is divided neatly into the girls’ side and the boys’ side. Just like the toy aisle at the department store, pinks predominate one and blues the other. Those are the colors assigned to us in the hospital, after all.
Looking beyond the colors, I read the various sayings and slogans on the graphic tees for each sex.
“Smile” proclaimed the first one from the little girls’ section. “Good as Gold” another. “Have Your Cake” a third, with eating it too being implied, I assume.
On the boys’ side, things were different.
“The Beach Life is the Only Life,” said the first; “All Work, No Play… Property of the Lazy Days Department, ” another; And “Upstate Soccer, Lake George Strikers.” Somebody should tell the Gap the best soccer player in Upstate New York goes by the name of Abby.
Of course, it was the end of the summer buying season, which happens in early July—don’t ask me to explain, it’s also when I start going through shirts like Andre Agassi at the U.S. Open. We were there because of the summer clearance sale and the “Take Additional 40% Off” signs. The racks weren’t exactly bursting, so maybe it was just that our Gap Kids was picked over, leaving behind only the nauseatingly cute tees for girls and obsessively cool ones for boys.
I went online when we got home to discern whether this sample was representative of the larger population of graphic tees. And it was. The girls tees had animals and butterflies, cute sayings, and lots of smiles. There were no “sporty” ones, and only two of 22 fell into the “cool” category. The boys, on the other hand, were all athletic and beachy, and exuded an abundantly laidback vibe.
There was also a boys tee online that read, “I’ve Got the Skills to Pay the Bills.” I wanted to order it for my wife, but I don’t know what size she wears in boys’ shirts. Besides, that’s a different article. (Or maybe the same article, if it were longer and more introspective.)
It’s not just the Gap. On a separate trip to a local Carters, which sells clothes for babies and toddlers, I was surprised at the messages emblazoned across the gender-specific clothes. I expected the pink and blue divide, but not the accompanying words.
The baby girls’ onesies included “Super Cute” and “Queen for A Day.” Not so bad. Until you compare it to the boys, which had “Mr. Macho,” “Ladies Man,” and “Chicks Dig Me,” among others.
There’s no doubt about it—our daughters and sons are getting very different messages, beyond just pink and blue. And it starts when they are babies.
Of course, babies don’t have credit cards. So it’s us parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles buying these things. After all, companies wouldn’t make these shirts if we didn’t buy the product. Maybe it is super cute to see a baby boy with a “Mr. Macho” shirt. And maybe most young girls prefer butterflies to soccer balls and surfboards. But what exactly are we saying here?
When you step out of the kids fashion world for a minute, you notice a culture in the midst of a change. People everywhere, and parents in particular, are bucking age-old gender-based stereotypes associated with work and home life. Women who happen to be mothers are launching startups and leading top companies. Dads are shelving careers to stay home with kids, or working from home to be more involved. There’s a generation of parents working together to raise families, doing whatever they have to do to survive, and trying their best to make sure their kids don’t enter the world with preconceived notions about what it means to be a pink or a blue.
There’s a reason. We need more women in fields like science and math, for starters. And I want my girls to pursue those fields, if that’s where their interest lies, not become obsessed with a need to be cute. The push to make girls conform to just cuteness limits all the things they could become.
And young men need to know there’s more to being a man than being macho. In fact, much of what we think of as being macho is directly counter to what it means to be a man today. Wear that “Mr. Macho” shirt when you’re 30, and see if “Chicks” still dig you.
All of us consumers out there are at least partially to blame. But the Gap Kids of the world should bear responsibility, too. In the design phase, doesn’t someone speak up and ask, “What are we teaching with these t-shirts?”
Isn’t there a parent in the room to say, “You know, my daughter loves soccer, too”?
If not, there should be. It can’t just be about selling t-shirts. There has to be a wider responsibility to the world we all share.
We used to be able to easily point to Disney and Legos as the biggest offenders in this category. Both have been forcing gender stereotypes on our young children for a while, and both have made strides recently (more like small steps) to get away from that. It’s time for the clothing industry to follow, and it starts with big retailers, like Gap Kids.
Our daughter happily wears the few boys’ shirts bought that day, even though the sleeves annoy her because they’re cut different than the Gap’s girls’ shirts.
Next summer, she’d really like to see a soccer shirt for girls. And, no, it doesn’t have to be pink. And yes, we would likely buy that for her, too… after the summer clearance begins.
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Originally appeared on RuddyBits.com; Credit: Header Image—MyLifeStory/Flickr; Other images courtesy of the author
You seem to be much more comfortable with, and advocating, for girls to adopt things deemed masculine than vice versa. Would you have allowed your son or your own self the same latitude and freedom to buy clothes from the girls’/women’s section of the store? Boys and men who are even just a little bit in touch with their feminine side are viciously bullied, taunted, beaten, labeled, and ostracized by both males and females in a way that females who are in touch with their masculine side cannot even begin to understand! Stop pretending that rigid gender roles are applied… Read more »
I agree with you. Even something as simple as a long hairstyle gets a young boy bullied and harassed by other children and adults alike. Gender equality goes both ways and it’s about time people admitted it.
This has been an issue for me since my daughter was three and rejected all thing “girly.” The problem was that companies were deciding what “girly” looked like and should be. Consequently, I created a site/brand called Princess Free Zone (which has a really fun soccer tee by the way – http://princessfreezone.com/pfz-tshirts/ ) to try and combat the gender divide especially as it pertains to product and marketing. It offers some product, but also a blog that addresses this kind of blatant gender stereotyping. I kept thinking, “why do girls not have concert t-shirts?!” The problem is that either way–you… Read more »
Ug, adult girl clothes suck too. Sizes vary from store to store (I wear anywhere from a size 0 to a size 5 in jeans…seriously wth), the shirts are so thin you can see through them or are way too revealing, t-shirts have no sleeves whatsoever and go right up into your pits, jeans pockets are even deep enough to hold a chapstick….it’s awful. More than half of my t-shirts are boys/mens shirts because they’re actually comfortable! As a pre-teen and into my 20s I wore mostly boys clothes, including jeans. Even 15 years ago it was hard to find… Read more »
Atypical, It isn’t exactly rosy for menswear customers either y’know! What one labe/designer/retailer deems as large or extra large can sometimes be totally different from one label/designer/retailer to the next. Also, in some places the menswear section can be disappointingly small – many times I have been in stores where the womenswear section takes up an entire floor (or even several floors – why do women need SO MUCH UNDERWEAR???) while the menswear is all squeezed into a corner of the ‘everything else’ floor. it’s usually either that or it is unceremoniously dumped into the darkness of the low-ceilinged basement… Read more »
Bingo. Not much more to say. I am going to recopy my most on another article here at gmp because my question was serious, looking for a serious response and your article brings up the why of even how I have to ask the question: To people who are so judgmental regarding strict adherence to arbitrary gender rules, I’m going to ask a question, because I really want to know. This is a serious question, and I hope you’ll take it as such, and anser in like fashion. I don’t wish to have a heated debate without real support from… Read more »