Grrrrrrrr...Part I

Lately, I have become increasingly irritated with baby clothes, specifically the size and shape of "girl" clothing. As none of you will know because we're slackers and never got it up on the blog, Maddie recently had her nine-month "Well Baby" check-up, and let's just say, she's a little larger than the average nine-month-old. Okay, so she's 24 lbs., which puts her in the 98th percentile for weight, and she's 28.75" long, which puts her in the 81st percentile for height, and her head is still a gigantic melon of a cranium, measuring in the 88th percentile. (For those of you not familiar with the whole percentage thing, this means she weighs more than 98% of the kids her age, she's taller than 81% of the kids her age, and she'll soon pull small planets into her gravitational field.)

Having a big, healthy baby is not a bad thing. This weekend, at the Farmer's Market in Lawrence, a woman came up to Maddie tickled her legs, and called her thighs delicious. I would happily hand over the keys to my car if someone called my thighs "delicious." (Unless that person happened to be a certain Dr. Lecter, and then I would run, quickly, in the opposite direction.) However, dressing said above-average child is a completely different matter, one that is becoming increasingly frustrating.

See, for some reason that totally baffles me, even in the 12-18 month clothing range (That's what you have to wear when you're 89% larger than your peers; I averaged it, and no, it doesn't really work that way.), clothing for girls is different than clothing for boys. It's not such an issue with the shirts. Luckily for Maddie and her little pot-bellied-stove of a tummy, the empire waisted looks is back, and shirts for girls tend to be a little roomier anyway. (This is also a good thing for her mother, who inexplicably decided to eat an insane amount of doughnuts and Taco John's on Sunday. Bad idea...) The pants, though--the waists are all lower, the waistbands tinier, and the thighs tighter than on boys pants for the same age range. How do I know this? Because I've been trying to squeeze her into 12-18 month "girl" pants for months with little success, and I bought a pair of boys jeans at a garage sale, and they fit like a dream, that's how. They may not look as cute, and they may have a faded, almost acid washed, kind of 90s look to them, but they don't make it impossible for her to continue sitting up because her joint movement is restricted!

I'm sorry, but am I the only person who finds this ridiculous? I've seen a lot of babies, especially recently, and I have to say that aside from the fact that every baby is different in their own way, I don't see that much difference, physically, between girl babies and boy babies. (And yes, I know there are a couple rather noticeable differences, but all the babies I've seen have been clothed, and they all wear diapers, so let's not go there.) Babies are babies, and I don't see why we have to gender their clothing at such a young age, especially when it comes to fit. Put your daughter in all the sparkly, pink, feathered (read stupid, ridiculous, and pointless) stuff you want, or dress your son in head-to-toe trucks and rockets (again, silly), but there shouldn't be any difference in the way the clothing fits.

I guess what really bothers me is the signal this sends at such a young age. I know she's not really old enough to be aware of what she's wearing, but I feel like society is already telling her that her thighs and butt are too big, that cute babies don't have a stomach that hangs over their waistband, that she is not, in fact, delicious because she doesn't fit into "girl" clothes. As a woman who's had her own share of body-image issues, this makes me angry. What am I supposed to do? Dress her in onsies all the time? Tell her she's a "plus-size" baby, so she doesn't deserve clothes that fit well and look cute? (By the way, I think that's crap with adult people, too.)

I know I'm projecting a lot right now (and just for disclosure's sake, I should probably note that her clothes might fit a bit better if we didn't use G-diapers, but why should clothing only be made for babies that use disposables?), but I'm really, really bothered by the idea that people think girls are so much different from boys, even at such a young age. No wonder we can't get through the glass ceiling. We can't even sit up because our pants are too tight!