Those of you who have been with this blog for a little while know a few things about me:

• I live my life as an open book
• I become type A and compulsive about just about everything I do
• I'm a staunch empiricist (data driven and proud!)
• I like to get deep
• my egalitarian feminism is hard-core

With regard to the last one, I've written several posts about what an atypical woman I am. Few people get how my mind works since I tend to think and behave so, well, differently than most other women...hell most other people, truth be told. So tonight I want to get deep about something that's been bugging me for a bit: unnecessary gendering.

One of the things that I've noticed since becoming a parent is that the kid is barely out of the womb, cord cut, placed on the warmer and cleaned up before the gendering begins. The girl babies get the pink hats and the pink teddy bears on their bassinet cards that declare, “I’m a girl!” The boy babies get blue hats and little blue teddy bears on their cards that shout, “I’m a boy! See my penis?” (OK, it doesn’t really say the last part, but it might as well.) Can somebody tell me who decided that pink is for girls and blue is for boys? This seems to be accepted gospel in our society. But what I want to know is who decided which colors were supposed to represent each gender? I mean why can't girls be chartreuse and boys be puce? I just don't get it.

And then, of course, these newborns get dressed by their doting parents in onesies that either have girl images, like princesses and fairies, while boys get onesies adorned with trucks, cars, or monsters. So what if I wanted to put my daughter in a onesie that had a monster on it? Why would I have to venture to the boys section of the store to buy that onesie? At that age they don't know gender from tiddlywinks. Why not just have a baby clothes section with a broad range of selections that would please everybody? Why do we have to create these artificial divides between girls’ clothing and boys’ clothing, or girls’ toys and boys’ toys, or a girl’s potty or a boy’s potty? What the hell is that about?

Of course, I am the mother who ended up with the most girly of girly girls. Or to be more scientific about it, I have a girl who adores that which has been deemed by society to be “traditionally feminine.” That's not a problem. She's free to like all the pink, frilly, stereotypically femme accoutrements that she desires. Sure, it would have been cool to have a girl who didn't come wired in a Pinkalicious way, but hey, she likes what she likes.

But what if, for the sake of argument, my child had turned out to be a pink-loving boy? How the heck would that have been handled? Yes, I could have shopped in the girls section for him but then we would have to deal with that drama that ensues when one wears opposite-gendered clothes. I’m not speaking about drama in my family with this imaginary son. I'm talking about what the other parents would no doubt say, and say, and say. Knowing who I am, I'm sure I'd be quite comfortable ignoring the admonishments and dire warnings that a son wearing pink is a sure sign of pre-gayness. But I'm sure that after the 500th admonishment about my son wearing a pink tutu, I might just snap and hurt somebody. That would be bad.

This all begs the question of why any of this gendering is even necessary. Kids could just have clothes in different colors, with different looks and both the girls and boys would be free to select whatever floated their boats. The possibilities would be endless. It makes sense to me.

So what's making me bring up this topic right now, since I’m way past onesies and my daughter is a gender aligner? Well, it was the preparation for that silly holiday that just passed yesterday that raised the issue yet again.

I noticed that many of my photog buddies were offering Valentine's Day templates to use to make kids’ Valentine's Day cards. But what really got me was that the templates were always divided into girl templates and boy templates. Again, I found myself wondering why we need to gender Valentine's Day cards, for goodness sake? Why can't we just choose from Valentine's Day cards that have a broad range of appeal: from fairy princesses to fiery monsters? Each kid could pick what s/he likes without gender being assigned to it?

I made the mistake of bringing this up to a photog I used to be connected to on Facebook.  She had just posted on her fan page that she had some new boy Valentine's Day templates available. And I, feeling both wistful and thoughtful that evening, commented that it’s kinda sad that we have to gender or label Valentine's Day cards. You kinda wish that cards could just be cards.

Her response, which surprised me, was to inform me that boys and girls have different preferences. For example, her son would never pick a pink card because he says that his favorite color is green. But I went on to ask whether his choice could really be innate since we come into the world and are plopped into gendered onesies right from the start. From then on we are told that girls wear these colors and designs and boys wear those colors and designs. It is so written (by the person who came up with the girl pink and boy blue dictum). Thus societal norms have a major influence on our preferences.

All you guys who know me would completely understand that this type of verbal pondering is normal everyday conversation for me. I like to think about things, what can I say? But my formerly connected Facebook friend did not appreciate my musings. In a private message she wrote that she found my comments to be inappropriate for her professional page and she deleted them.

I was shocked, but offered about 100,000 mea culpas which went nowhere. I still am not sure I understand her pique, but I was more than willing to respect her boundary. Later though, I reached out to her to say that she had fostered a cool idea for a blog post. I told her that she was welcome to participate in the discussion because I thought it would be interesting in light of our previous aborted discourse. Again, I got shut down. Sigh…

Yet, as I mentioned, she was just one of the many who offered these girl and boy templates. It was so damn frustrating. I ended up getting templates from another photographer/designer that included a range of templates in her set. Unfortunately, she did choose to label them as being boy and girl templates. I offered all the choices to my kidlet. She, of course, picked the set with the pink fairy and the pink princess. What can I say? I have a gender aligning child.

(The cards were cut in half in the middle to make 2 different 5x3.5 in cards)

But seriously people, wouldn’t it just be simpler if clothes were just clothes and Valentine's Day cards were just cards? Anybody out there feeling me?