thanks for the great reply!

my heart is still broken for him for the day last year when the “naughty” girl on the playground told him the dora bandaid he was wearing was for girls and he refused to wear one again for ages (and i think he still hasn’t worn one to school, though he does love the rainbow unicorn bandaids now). that was our first run in with that nonsense. i talked and talked his head off to try and make sure he understood it’s okay for him to like whatever he wants to like, no matter what anyone says.

that is fantastic about the boys with the skinny jeans. how hilarious. you’ve done a great job raising that little boy. he’s lucky to have such fun parents.

oliver is still at that age where he totally loves whatever just happens to be in front of him, though i think i see some signs of that starting to change. he tore me a new one this week for using a vintage drawing of rainbow-colored monsters for the base of his birthday party invitation. he disliked them for looking scary and not for being rainbow-colored.

the tshirts have arrived and are pretty awesome. i’m almost disappointed the violet isn’t a little more violet and a little less grey.

Oh bethie, how awesome you are! yeah, it’s tough to find a middle ground. i mean, on the one hand….why the hell not, right?? on the other hand, I COMPLETELY hear you on the “Shoot, we don’t want people to pick on him” thing either. I mean, it’s one thing for a parent to have really strong views about making everything gender neutral, but then there is the reality of life on the playground and your child having to deal with stuff. I think the key is to try and instill confidence in your child about their choices….encouraging them to “think different” but also allowing them to just be a kid and wallow in all the stuff that their friends like. I always try and remind myself that I can’t impose my vintage loving ways on my now-2nd grader. (When they’re toddlers I don’t think they care as much and are happy to just go along with whatever mama decides!) If they like Bakugan or Pokemon or other characters, let them enjoy them. Here’s an example of something we had to deal with: Wolfie was pretty early on in the colored skinny jean trend. Last year, he was the first boy in his class to rock some purple skinnies. I can’t lie, we live in an urban area where the majority of the kids are wearing baggie jeans and oversized tees and I was a little nervous someone would say something. To balance out the purple jeans, I had him wear an Angry Birds tee (or maybe it was Pokemon….something more his peers were in to). Sure enough he came home and said, “Morris asked me if these were girl jeans.” I asked him (casually….though I was dying inside) “So, what did you say?” and he looked at me and said, “Um, DUH….I’m a boy. Of course they are boy jeans!” And he said that was the end of that. I asked if he still wanted to wear his jean and he said “Yep!” I was SO PROUD of him. (And def took the route of, “I am not going to even make a big deal about this….”) Fast forward to 2nd grade… numerous boys in the class (including his pal Morris!) are wearing skinnies. One kid (who is a little bit of the class bad ass) admitted, “Yeah, I had to get these blue skinny jeans from the girls department. I couldn’t find them for boys. Isn’t that dumb??” And the boys in his class were all, “Yeah, totally…wow….they should have them for boys AND girls.” haha. I Love it. I mean, we were lucky. I could see the situation going the other way. But Wolfie in his quirky way is quietly confident about what he wears and what he likes (and rather opinionated, I might add!).
By the way violet/purple is an awesome alternative! keep me posted!! xoxo

and my husband, who was quite flamboyant when we met, has been saying we should say no to pink or it might give kids a reason to pick on him (in addition to being very tiny and mostly a vegan). living in dallas certainly doesn’t help. plenty of people with unfounded ideas about how people should be and look. ugh.

yesterday, i found a nice middle ground and for his bday, ordered him one violet and one flamingo pink tshirt from biome5 (who appears to be ending their tshirt line and has the remaining stock at half off, btw).

believe it or not, when i think of a boy wearing pink, it’s wolfie who pops into my head. i’m not sure if i’ve ever actually seen a photo of him wearing pink, but i know he can pull off anything.

anyhow, THANK YOU for posting some positive reenforcement. it’s ridiculous that so many people actually believe there are boy colors and girl colors and make a child feel bad for liking something that they think doesn’t align with their gender.

I remember that! I think Wolfie looks great in anything!