Baby Clothes Rant

Looking for baby clothes, I sometimes cringe at the messages on some of the things I see - some overt, and some less obvious. I'm mainly talking about some of the things I see on Pinterest. There are onesies that say things like, "All mommy wanted was a backrub", or "I'm cute, Mom's hot, Dad's lucky". Eww. There are even more sexualized ones that I won't mention, but you can google image "onesie sexualized" if you want to see more. Then there are the ones that are for little boys with pictures of things like deer antlers that say, "Little Man", and little girl ones with crowns that say, "Princess". Puke. Or, ones meant for either gender depending on the graphic that say, "Heartbreaker". Less bad, but still gross. Babies are babies. They want sustenance and comfort and then eventually learn how to do life skills. That's it. Don't put your kids in clothes that creeps will be attracted to, or that encourage them to be creeps when they grow up. Even if they are too young to understand, just don't. Baby boys don't need to man up, and baby girls don't need to be encouraged to act passively feminine. Ugh. Cringe.

All that being said, I'm not saying a girl can't enjoy wearing a pink skirt sometimes, or a boy can't wear some camo pants. I'm not saying everyone should wear yellow unisex jumpsuits. I'm just saying, give the kids some variety and don't put clothes on them that send certain messages. I wore really girly tutus at one point when I was little, and I didn't become an adult that dresses like that. But, I also wore corduroy overalls and sneakers and hand-me-downs from my brother sometimes too. 

Just comparing what I've seen in US and Australian stores, Aussie stores are a little bit better about having less sexist and more gender-neutral stuff. Bonds, for example, has really fun, colorful prints that are unisex. Here is another list of children's clothing brands that don't fall into stereotypes either - note, they are mainly smaller companies that you are less likely to hear about, and are not generally sold at bigger stores.

Anyway, I like to think we already have a good variety of clothes accumulated - some hand-me-downs, some bought, and some even homemade.