More Than Blue for Boys

Abandoning the Gender Binary & Letting Kids Be Kids

Ever since my son, Loren, started wearing dresses about a year ago, we’ve been confronted with consistent gender biases, an issue likely exacerbated by the fact that we live in a conservative Midwest town.

This week I’m highlighting a few stories about how my toddler continues to disrupt and defy the gender binary, discussing how gender division is a fairly recent social construct that limits and harms kids’ development, and calling for an end to this homophobic and sexist divide.

We have family photos next week and the sweater I had bought for Kai was too big, even for that adorable, oversized sweater with cuffed skinny jeans look, so off to Target we went for a last-minute clothing substitute.

The second we were through the doors Loren was “ooohing” at the displays in the women’s section. “Look at that one!” he shouted. “Where are the clothes for me?” This was the first time Loren was old enough to express his likes and dislikes during a family trip to Target, and he was clearly delighted to be there.

We walked to the toddler section near the center of the store. Loren was unimpressed with everything in the boys’ section and began scanning the area. His eyes landed on the girls’ section, and he immediately lit up, ran over to a vertical display of dresses, and began pointing at the ones he liked. He literally started jumping up and down at this point.

“I like this one,” he said, pointing to a yellow corduroy dress with an airy floral blouse underneath. We pulled his size from the rack and he hugged it to his chest. “Ooooh this one!” he said, reaching for a white sweater dress with silvery sparkles throughout the fabric and lacy hems and sleeves. “I want this one.” This continued until Loren had five dresses and was tasked with choosing one. This seemed like a reasonable compromise because he did just get three new fall dresses less than a month ago.

After Loren chose his dress—the white one with silvery sparkles—we let him shop around a bit more. He picked a pair of pink dinosaur leggings, a pair of purple “Elsa” leggings with colorful snowflakes, and a rainbow long sleeve.

After that looked at shoes. I showed him two pairs of “boy” shoes that I thought were cute, but he wasn’t interested. Instead, he spotted a pair of pastel high tops—and ran to them. His shoes featured pinks, purples, yellows, greens, and blues. It was the only pair left of its kind, and they were a perfect fit. He put them on the moment we paid for them.  

A few days after our Target trip, I took Loren to the dentist for the first time. At the end of his visit (which he rocked!) the dentist opened a drawer full of stickers and a drawer full of toothbrushes. While Loren was picking out two stickers, the dentist proceeded to choose three toothbrushes for Loren to choose from: a blue Olaf toothbrush, a blue and green Buzz Lightyear toothbrush, and a blue and red Paw Patrol toothbrush. 

Loren, not interested in any of the options presented to him, reached into the pile of toothbrushes and surfaced with a pink and purple Moana toothbrush.

He held the toothbrush up with wide eyes and a giant smile and locked eyes with the dentist, as if waiting for her approval. 

She glanced at his choice and quickly retorted, “But that’s a princess one.” Her tone was playful, but silly, the kind of tone I’d use if Loren were to put his underwear on his head instead of on his butt. But it was also condescending, and corrective.

“But that’s a princess one,” was child-speak for “That’s not for boys. You’re not supposed to like that. Don’t be silly, that’s for girls!” “But that’s a princess one” was child-speak for “Let me tell you what you should like, how you should act, what you should wear. Let me tell you all about gender norms and how you should conform to them.”

The gender binary is a cultural belief that there are only two distinct and opposite genders: man and woman. In their book, “Beyond the Gender Binary,” Alok Vaid-Menon writes, “The real crisis is not that gender non-conforming people exist, it’s that we have been taught to believe in only two genders in the first place.”

I was surprised to learn that childhood gender divisions—the idea that pink is for girls and blue is for boys—is an early 20^th century construct.

“There is nothing natural about these childhood gender divisions, nor are they good for kids, even if they are good for retailers’ and manufacturers’ bottom lines,” writes Lisa Selin Davis in an August 2020 article titled, "When children’s stores reopen, let’s leave boys’ and girls’ sections behind.” The article goes on to explain the evolution of gender lines in commercial America, and starkly reveals that the gender construct has nothing to do with faith, religion, or the LGBTQ community.

Davis explains, “Gendering kids’ toys and clothes limits their growth and development in all kinds of ways, and creates an environment where kids shame and police each other for reaching across that divide.” Thankfully, Loren has yet to experience this type of shaming among his peers (to the best of our knowledge), but he has experienced it from other adults, including the dentist.

It still surprises me when people respond in a gender-normative way, because I want to believe we’re all ready to move past that. Far from it. Phrases like, “But that’s a princess one!” attempt to confine my son to a neat box, to make him into something predictable, familiar, obedient. Phrases like this assume (and assign!) people gender. It drives me crazy that people insist on “knowing” my kid’s gender. They wonder, sometimes out loud, Is he a boy or a girl? His hair is short, but he’s wearing a dress. He’s a boy, but he likes pink. I don’t get it.

Experiencing this has helped me to identify my own assumptions around gender. Whenever we’re meeting people for the first time and we are unaware of their preferred gender, we’ve started using “they” pronouns in attempt to teach Loren that we cannot know or assume someone’s gender based solely on appearance. And frankly, someone’s gender is none of our f*cking business anyway.

It’s especially concerning that we have created names for people who don’t fit neatly into the gender boxes. Take the term gender creative, for example, which implies a person is exceptional for liking a color or wearing a specific type of clothing outside of the gender binary, when really, what we’re not saying by using this terminology is that society is severely gender deprived. This is a red flag—that societal gender norms are so restrictive and shaming that we must label anyone exploring outside of them as “other.” Yikes!

During our time at Target, we intentionally avoided using labels when discussing clothing options with Loren. We didn’t say “this is for boys,” or “that is for girls.” We simply asked him: What do you like? What makes you happy? What feels good? Anyone hoping to abandon the gender binary can ask themselves these same questions.

I believe that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression, and that clothing departments should operate under two basic criteria: 1) Do you have a body? 2) Do you wear clothing? If so, these are for you!

We’ve recently started shopping at online clothing stores that work to eliminate the gender binary. One of our favorite kids’ clothing stores is Primary. There are no “boys’” or “girls’” sections. Instead, people are invited to shop by size, style, or color. Sweatshirts are for everybody, pants are for everybody, dresses are for everybody. All clothes, in all colors, for all kids.

The gender binary complicates, creates conflict and division, and does anything but celebrate creativity and diversity. The hyper-gendering of kids’ material worlds is harmful and homophobic. It places unfair limits on their expression, squelches the dream of becoming anything you want to be, and places a stigma on anyone brave enough to step outside of those boxes.

We’ve asked Loren what he wants to wear for our family photos next week, and it’s no surprise that he’s chosen his yellow dress. Knowing this, we planned the rest of the family’s outfits around Loren’s choice. I hope our photographer captures him spinning and full of joy, and I’m so grateful that the truest version of Loren at three-years-old will be preserved in our family pictures for years to come.