Predators, Prey and Pink Overalls

I get a bit over the fact that boys’ clothes are apparently required to contain a truck, a digger, a shark or a T-Rex.

To be fair, my boys actually do like some of those things. Despite me making precisely zero effort to encourage a fascination with cars and trucks, they are extremely interested in anything with wheels.

So I’m certainly not going to pretend that every gender difference is invented by the childrenswear department.

But becoming a mother to boys has made me notice how early we start giving children messages about who they’re supposed to be.

My four-year-old has a set of brightly coloured overalls made up of patches of lime green, purple, pink and orange. I bought them from the girls’ section at Kmart and he absolutely loves them.

When he puts them on, he dances around.

He loves wearing pink and, if I’m wearing it (as I often am), it’s his favourite game to try to match our outfits.

My eighteen-month-old has beautiful curly hair, and I bought a pack of neutral rompers, one of which was dotted with muted pink hearts. It was the exact same comfort, quality and fit, and I saw it and thought: Who cares? He can wear pink.

And yes, a few people assumed he was a girl.

And no, I really did not care.

But once you start noticing the way children are marketed to, it gets a little strange.

Boys get sharks. T-Rexes. Lions. Predators.

Girls get rabbits. Butterflies. Deer. Gentle little herbivores.

Are we handing children a script before they can even read?

Men as predators. Women as prey.

And look, do I think a shark on a toddler’s T-shirt determines what sort of man he becomes?

Obviously not.

But I do wonder about the accumulation of all those tiny messages.

Boys are strong, wild and loud. Girls are pretty, gentle and quiet. Trucks over here. Drawing over there.

The thing I’m trying to be conscious of is not replacing one restrictive script with another.

My boys can love cars, climbing, wrestling and dirt. They can also love books, drawing, puzzles, colour and pink.

I’m not trying to make a point by steering them away from “boy things.” I just want to make sure they’re actually being given a choice.

Because sometimes I wonder how often we mistake what children have been offered for what children naturally prefer.

I don’t know exactly where nature ends and conditioning begins.

But in the end, I just want to give my boys enough room to discover who they are before the world gets too busy telling them who they should be.