Given her history for being an outspoken kind of celebrity and one who provokes (and sometimes also really inspires), is it any surprise at all that if a celebrity’s child might just stand out as a push against overwhelming trend it’d be one of Angelina Jolie’s kids? Shiloh has short hair and favors boys’ clothing. That’s the child born to Jolie and Brad Pitt, the one even as a baby all the slick magazines pronounced “gorgeous.”
Brian Palmer wrote a piece for Slate this week that was a history lesson about gender and clothing. I have to say, I was smiling when read things I know that so often don’t make it onto today’s radar screen, like boys wore pink and dresses and clothes weren’t always marketed so heavily by gender (and then, they were again).
Ever since my young teen was a baby, I’ve watched kids’ fashions become increasingly gender-coded. Companies I once adored, like Hanna Andersson with its signature stripes and bright colors that weren’t all pink and blue have changed. There are striped Hannas to be sure, but fewer these days with colors paired so obviously for boys and girls. There are many more flowers and such, fewer stripes. There are lots of girly cap sleeves and flares and boxy-fit boys’ pants. Fewer pages feature boys and girls together.
Back then, in my early parenting years, I wrote a piece about the wish for gender-neutral clothing. By the time I was writing about this, I was doing media critiques on kids’ clothing catalogues (and this was before Al Gore asked me—okay, not personally, but he asked me—to go to Catalogue Choice and opt out of receiving catalogues I don’t actually buy from or need). Here’s an observation from that piece: “One recent children’s clothing catalog described corduroy for girls as ‘soft as velvet,’ while the corduroy for boys was described as ’rugged, nearly indestructible.’ (The thread in both fabrics was exactly the same.)”
Having raised three boys each in some way rocking the gender code, I’ve experienced frustration and wry amusement and general disgust with stringent gender codification. Try finding, for example, fun underwear for a toddler boy being pressured (for preschool entrance, don’t get me started) to move from out of diapers and fast to like this whole underpants idea when the toddler boy cares not one fig about trucks, superheroes, dinosaurs or sports of any kind. He likes fairies, the Wizard of Oz books, glittery things and flowers. Had he only been in this bind now, I’d have gotten him these Crankypants undies.
How many times have my boys been mistaken for girls? I couldn’t count. How many times have some of my boys’ friends been mistaken for boys? Again, their parents have similar stories. So, go Shiloh. Good on you. Let’s pull that Free to Be ethos from the 1972 mothballs and do two things: 1) revolutionize the kids’ clothing world into something more shareable and 2) have it become the norm that you don’t necessarily find not knowing a kid’s gender remarkable, because there’s more accepted room in the less extreme zone between rough and tumble and sugar and spice.
While I’ve written an entire essay ostensibly about girls’ swimsuits, this little essay was inspired by a photograph taken at the most wonderful preschool (sure, I’m biased) Sunnyside, where Saskia, whose mother had forgotten a swimsuit on a hot day wore these trunks outside so she could play in the wading pool and the sprinklers (and swing, because the swings are fun). My little girl, pretty long hair, penchant for too-big shoes—both Disney Princess sandals and brother’s outgrown Crocs—definite leaning toward pink and her Obama T’s and skirts, who sometimes brings a car to nap and other times a baby doll, this gal is a spitfire and she’s a fast runner and a heck of a spinner. If she so chooses, may she wear swim trunks for many years.
