LITTLE BOY BLUE—AND LITTLE GIRLS, TOO?

American studies professor Paoletti explains the gendering of clothing in Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys From the Girls in America.

By Kacie Glenn, The Chronicle of Higher Education

When a new mother approaches with an infant swaddled in green, the modern-day American faces a dilemma: Is it a boy or a girl? Better not guess wrong. "Is that your, um, son?" we might ask, cringing inwardly if the child turns out to be a girl.

Americans of the 1800s would have been puzzled by the awkwardness, writes Jo B. Paoletti in Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys From the Girls in America (Indiana University Press).

Before the early 20th century, it was acknowledged that male and female babies were virtually indistinguishable. Though gender mattered very much later in life, a baby was a baby. To underscore that fact, infants were dressed in flowing white dresses.

Paoletti, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland at College Park, studies apparel design and textiles, as well as the psychology of dress, consumer culture, developmental psychology, and the history of childhood. In her new book, she describes how, over the past 100 years, parents have increasingly gravitated toward children's clothing that telegraphs their offspring's gender to the world.

Read more...