Sunday, February 17, 2013

Who's Who?

We kept gender a secret until my baby showers for a reason: I didn't want a bunch of gender-specific clothing. Fat lot of good that did me, because as soon as I saw them I wanted to dress her up in girly stuff, whether pink or teal or purple, and I wanted to dress him in baseball onesies and little boy jeans. And I didn't realize how much I've come to rely on those markers of gender to identify who is who. I mean, they really don't look alike at all so it's not hard to tell them apart, but at a quick glance across a room, if I see pink I figure that's Periwinkle, and if I see little footballs on a sleep n play I figure that's Indigo.

Well, some of that gender neutral stuff did get sort of "assigned" to one baby or another, so now I associate certain outfits with certain genders/babies, even if the outfit is green or yellow and so on. Yesterday the in-laws were babysitting so we could go to a marathon of four of the nine Best Picture nominees (so far Argo has my vote), and I packed two extra outfits per baby. One of those outfits was one of the gender neutral ones, and when we went back to pick up the kids, Indigo was wearing what is, to me, Periwinkle's outfit.


She soon spit up on her outfit, and thus ended up in a very boyish dinosaur sleep n play because all we had left there were Indigo's two outfits. Fast forward to this morning and me napping hazily on the couch after their 7am feeding (PS they slept until 7:15am! After a 10pm feeding! Holy crap!) and gazing across the room and I was just totally confused as to who was who. Even once I'd woken up a bit and was holding Indigo, I kept forgetting I had him and not his sister, just because he was wearing the teal PJs with bunnies on them and I could see dinos across the room. CONFUSION!

I'm not proud to admit it after all my "no gendered stuff" insanity, but gendered clothing is useful, particularly for twins, and I've internalized gender-specific colors and themes and that's just the way it is, I guess.
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2 comments:

  1. Lady SnarkFebruary 19, 2013 at 12:06 PM

    We're all susceptible to genderizing clothing colors. Quite honestly, I think that trying to make some kind of statement about gender equality by dressing the kids in the "wrong" color clothes is more antagonistic than helpful. And it is nice for people to know on sight which gender your baby is, because then they feel more comfortable saying, "What a beautiful girl!" or "What a handsome fella!" (Okay, nobody uses the word fella anymore... but you get the idea.)

    That being said, I don't think there's anything wrong with dressing them in the colors YOU prefer. Babybird still doesn't wear nearly as much pink as she might because I don't like it (and people know that). She wears some, but it's not the dominant color in her wardrobe. Of course, when she gets older she can wear whatever colors make her happy :-)

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    1. Red and BlueFebruary 19, 2013 at 3:16 PM

      Yeah I don't intentionally try to dress them in "wrong" colors or anything, although Periwinkle looked pretty darned cute in her football t-shirt for the SuperBowl. I might have her wear that outfit again just because. Her ruffle-butt red pants helped though. She wears a lot of pink because that's a lot of what's out there, but I do tend to personally be drawn to her in yellow, purple, or teal. I wish there was more girl red stuff. Indigo looks great in red but it all seems to say "Daddy's Little Man" and things like that so I can't have her wear his red stuff.

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