Pink is the new Spider-Man

Linus' favorite color is pink. It was orange, but some time a couple of months ago, pink moved up. He's pink crazy. Anything pink and he's all over it. He's 3, so he's completely free of any bullshit associations having to do with gender and color, unlike my mother. When I was pregnant with Linus, she and I would go baby clothes shopping and she would be horrified when I would want to buy a little floral shirt or something. I hated that even for tiny babies "boy" clothes were covered with sports imagery, or trains, or bears. All in shades of blue or maybe plaid, of course.

So, for my sister's wedding a couple of weeks ago, Linus decided he wanted to wear a pink shirt. Fine with me. However, we gender-stereotype toddlers in this culture way harder than even grown men and women. I could go into the men's clothing section of any department store and buy my husband a pink button down, or maybe a polo shirt, no problem. But you can not buy a pink shirt for a 3-year old boy. Period. Turn around and face the girl's section and you see nothing but pink. A friggin' sea of pink. But at least little girls can go into the boy's section if they want and buy a plaid shirt or whatever without raising too many eyebrows. Not the other way around, however. The clothes in the girl's section aren't just pink. They also have all kinds of other signifiers of girly-ness; bows, puffy sleeves, lace, "girl"-specific imagery, etc. It's really insane. This doesn't come from the kids, people. This is all grown up baggage and it's gross, frankly. Sure, there are innate differences between little boys and girls, but this clothing crap is all cultural.

I looked in 4 different stores for a dressy pink shirt. The closest I could find was a white button down. Pathetic. And, I knew that wouldn't be sufficient for Linus. I finally got sick of finding nothing, so I went into the girls section and picked out 4 pink shirts of various styles. He was psyched to see them, but one was the clear favorite: a pink thermal with slightly puffy shoulders and a big, sparkly crown printed on the front. He calls it his "princess shirt". Awesome. I'll see if I can get a picture of him in it up later.