Xander Week 60 - Biased Department Stores
December 14, 2007
I love my son, and I wouldn’t trade the experience of being his mother for anything. That being said, before he was born, I wanted a girl. I wanted a girl to dress in skirts and pretty dresses. I wanted a girl to play dolls with and have tea parties with. So far, I haven’t missed that stuff too much. Playing trucks is ok, and for the most part, dressing Xander is just as fun as I imagined it would be to dress a little girl. The one complaint I have is with department stores and holiday clothing. I have been to lots of department stores, and this time of year I always scope out the holiday outfits.
In every single store, there are racks upon racks of little red velvet dresses. Dresses with lace, dresses with polka dots, dresses in every style and holiday color you could imagine. Then I begin my search for the boy’s holiday clothes. In places like Sears or JC Penny, there is typically a big column of dresses - 3 racks wide and 4 racks tall on all 4 sides of the column. The boys section is 2 racks wide, 3 racks tall covering two sides of a column. These clothes are far more generic - red sweater vests, black pants. I finally found a cute sweater with a little train on the front this year. Of course they only had one, and it was too small. Places like WalMart are even worse. They don’t seem to have any holiday clothing for boys, unless you count the red on the Emo shirts.
Why is it that girls can get dressed up but boys can’t? I don’t understand why little boys get shafted when it comes to holiday clothes. Why not more sweaters with winter stuff on them - snowmen, toys, teddy bears, etc. And why are these clothes always buried. Why is it that the girl’s dresses are right on the edge of an aisle, but the boys clothes aren’t next to them - they’re buried in the back of the clothing section.
I just want there to be some equality. I want to walk into a store, and not have to dig through an entire section of clothes looking for a holiday outfit. Every time I walk by those red velvet dresses I get angry at the inequality I see. I know in the grand scheme of things this is really nothing, but it still irritates me for the whole season.
I have been whining about this for ages. It isn’t just holiday clothes, it’s ALL boy clothes. I am tired of going to stores and seeing 3/4 of the infant/toddler section full of cute girls clothes. Old Navy is the worst, because even the “boys” section has girl clothes in random places. Everywhere I go, I lament about how unfair it is that there are 3 boys shirts and 300 girls, the boy shirts being in size 3mo, 6mo and 5T, when the Little Monster wears a 24mo or 2T. It’s awful, and I hate it. I wish there was something I could do about it!
I’ve been lurking for awhile. Just wanted to say that I had better luck at specialty children’s stores. They are usually a lot more expensive but you can shop the after Christmas sales for next year. I got my son two really cute Christmas outfits at a small specialty shop. It is disapointing that the bigger retailers haven’t caught on.
I know you are right but sometimes, I still find myself looking at a baby blue sweater vest that goes over a baby blue and brown plaid shirt and thinking “What kind of bow would I have to put in Emily’s hair to get away with that?”. I suppose that comes from the fact that I had only sisters growing up and always secretly dreamed of having a boy that I could dress in baby Carhartts and flannels so he would look like my husband. Alas, the grass is always greener right? Good luck finding more boy clothes. Do you have Target where you live? That always seems to have a fair ratio, at least where I am.
I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who has noticed this difference. One of my co-workers suggested trying Gymboree - she said that their sales are usually pretty good, and they always have nice clothes - so chalk another one up for the specialty stores. I do have a Target sort of near me. They have some nice clothes. I’ve got a Carter’s and Osh Kosh even closer, and their clothes are also nice, but a bit more expensive. At least they’re fairly evenly distributed between boys and girls.