Pink, blue, flowers & animals..

S and I have been trying to stay away from the stereotypical pink vs. blue thing for our boy. The pink vs. blue mania extends not just to clothes but all the way to crib sheets, blankets, bouncers, sippy cups and what-not. And it is very hard to not get sucked into this stereotype. Last week, we went with my sister-in-law to buy a bouncer for little G. The only bouncer that was comfortable and met all our requirements was a beige-brown color with a couple of pink flowers.

"Are you sure you want to buy this? It has some pink in it", said my SIL.

I shrugged, "This is the only one that looks comfy and it doesn't have any other colors".

"But your kid might curse you later when he sees the photos with the pink flowered bouncer."

S started looking a bit doubtful as he imagined his son cursing him in later life. He looked at an appropriately blue bouncer which wasn't as comfortable as this one. After about 10 minutes of much convincing and wrangling, we settled on the beige one. After we got back home, we ruminated on how easily we could've bought something that was not comfortable just because of the "right" color!

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In the US, boy babies have a very limited selection of clothes - striped or plain shirts/onesies with either an animal on it or wordings like "Silly monkey" or  "Wild thing".  The colors are nothing to talk about - dull brown, yellow, blue (of course), green (if particularly lucky). While all the girl infants of this world are carted around in cute, frilly frocks with polka dots & flowers in bright colors, my boy goes around wearing a shirt that says "Cat's meow". I honestly don't know what "Cat's meow" means. I think the makers ran out of cute things to say for boys and made something up. Hopefully, G won't have to wear shirts with "Dog's bark" or "Cow's moo". If boys' stuff doesn't have animals on it, it will have cars. I guess someone decided that the male gender can't have anything to do with the finer things of life like flowers or artsy stuff.

S accurately ( but politically incorrectly) points out that G isn't exactly going to care about all this anyway. According to him, this is just the feminine craving in me to buy cute things. Hmph. I don't know about that but it definitely makes S's life easier as far as shopping goes.