Fashion for Little Girls

Obviously, baby fashions have not caught on to the concept of gender equality. Baby girls still wear the pink frills and bows so popular in their mother’s and grandmother’s day. For what is probably a complex collection of reasons, our society wants to see little girls in pink. However, I’ve often suspected that parents buy pink, “feminine” clothing for their little girls because that’s all they can find in the stores. We don’t really have a choice about continuing the “pink is for girls and blue is for boys” mind-set if clothing designers offer no options. Right?Well, not exactly, according to Freddie Curtis, director of the fashion design and fashion merchandising programs at Harcum College in Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania. Curtis knows firsthand what fashions sell for little girls and what don’t because she makes baby blankets and sweaters that are sold in upscale boutiques in large metropolitan areas such as Philadelphia, Washington D.C., New York, Miami, and Houston. Curtis has found that no matter how sophisticated or educated parents may be, they still want to dress their little girls in pink. She says that although she’d like to offer a wider variety of colors, people don’t buy them. In fact, Curtis says that every time she uses a blue floral print or even a soft blue plaid for her little girl’s line, she gets stuck with it because nobody wants to put a baby girl in blue, even if it’s floral or pastel. “Once in a while a store will buy items in gender-neutral colors,” she says, “but very rarely do they sell well.” As infants grow into little girls, parents do have a bit more flexibility in their fashion choices (and in the way they think about gender identity) than parents of little boys. Curtis points out that although parents will never dress their sons in pink, some will put their daughters in blue clothing—usually with a pink flower embroidered on it somewhere. It’s an interesting cultural phenomenon that we’ve decided somewhere along the line to associate pink only with girls—and we’re not ready to budge from that conviction. So for now, the stores stay fully stocked with pink dresses with lace and bows for little girls. The truth, however, is that your daughter could care less what color or style her clothes are. And wearing or not wearing pink won’t change the way she views herself as a female as she grows up.