I know I’m not the first to ask: what is it with baby girls and pink? I can’t just blame the market, since the need for pink exists somewhere in my brain, too. I make a special effort to find non-pink girl clothes, but often even if I dress one of them in a blue onesie I feel the need to put on a pair of pink socks. Where does this compulsion come from? I have a nagging feeling that by failing to dress them in pink I am somehow rebelling, or trying to disguise them as boys.
This seems to be purely my issue, not D’s, who would dress them in any color, and I’ve noticed this pattern in other couples as well. At the baby clothing swap a couple weeks ago I picked up a few clothing items that were obviously “boy.” One was a pair of navy blue overalls with a very happy-looking green dinosaur on the leg. I showed them to D when I got home, feeling a bit guilty. He liked them. “Our girls can wear dinosaurs,” he said matter-of-factly. Yes, and who owns dinosaurs, anyway? Though I will probably feel compelled to put them in the dinosaur overalls with a pink shirt underneath.
Part of the problem is that when we take them out in the stroller people often assume they are boys, as if boy were the default gender. The first question is always, “Are those twins?” and the second is, “A boy and a girl?” No one has ever assumed two girls.
A friend with an older baby handed down some clothes to us. Among them was a blue fleece onesie with yellow duckies on it. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want it,” she said, “since it isn’t necessarily for girls. But really, what’s so manly about blue with duckies?” Seriously.
Space Monkey Twins 