I’ve been reading and enjoying Lisa Wade’s edited collection of essays Assigned: Life with Gender. (It’s kind of a greatest hits from The Society Page‘s website.)
Chapter 1, “on queering parenting and gender-neutrality” has a great discussion of gender neutrality and baby gear. The authors, D’Lane Compton and Tristan Bridges, review for us the many things that are gendered–including patterns and animals. Geometric shapes and lines are masculine. Polka dots and florals (of course) are feminine
But animals too. Dogs, bears, lions, and dragons are masculine. Kittens, unicorns, horses, butterflies, and dolphins are feminine.
This leaves little room in the gender neutral category for kids’ stuff. The one colour is yellow. And the one animal is a duck. Everything that’s meant to be gender neutral is yellow and if there are animals, they’re ducks. This got me thinking about gender and animal inspiration for athleticism. For example, I’ve written about running like a wombat. See run like a wombat! I’ve also written about penguins and yoga, see Penguin yoga galore. Tracy our guest blogger has written about finding her athletic inspiration in seals.
I’m not sure how ducks fare in sporting competitions. Is your athletic ideal gendered or gender neutral? Still mulling. Quack quack.
We didn’t find out the sex of our first baby and purposefully registered for what we considered neutral items in case we had a second baby of the opposite sex. We did yellow, green, white, tan, and red colored items. And everything themed as monkeys. I thought they were pretty gender neutral. When we were pregnant the second time we found out we were having a second boy, but had it been a boy or girl, we were going with alligators. I have to admit I was planning blue and green for a boy’s room and purple and green for a girl’s alligator room. But also found lots of girl alligator stuff that was teal and yellow that I was hoping to buy. There’s so many more choices than just pink and blue out there!