“Oh what a cute baby!”
“Thank you, I-"
“He’s so smiley, oh it is a boy isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, he’s a boy.”
“Oh I can see that, he looks like a real little boy!”
And thus starts another brief conversation with a perfect stranger who is captivated by the sight of Wriggly, aged however many weeks it is today. Right from the start people, known and unknown, have been correctly assuming his maleness, and telling me, in words now carved firmly into my neural pathways, “he’s a real little boy, isn’t he!”
However it seems to me that there is nothing exceptionally male about Wriggly’s appearance (beyond the genitalia of course, but those are rarely on display). Most of my friends and whanau have had daughters and my observation is that Wriggly doesn’t look all that different from them. He has his own personality, and I certainly wouldn’t mistake my baby for anyone else’s, but I wouldn’t expect a stranger to be able to pick Wriggly out in a line-up after a break-in at the Super Dummy Store, even if every other usual suspect would never be able to pee standing up.
I’m coming to the conclusion that the reason Wriggly looks like a boy isn’t because he looks male but because he looks like a baby. And therefore that the default gender setting for babies is XY.
In considering the stereotypical gender identifiers, as they apply to babies, I think hair is possibly the only marker of note. Babies don’t have curves, or bulges in particular places. And often we can’t really see much of them, all bundled up as they generally are in public. All we have to focus on is the face, and usually this isn’t giving much away as to gender. So we fall back on the hair.
In the Western tradition we expect that hair will be short for boys and long for girls. But all babies have short hair. Some of them have no hair for a long period of time. When we were still counting their ages in months rather than years, both of my nieces had very slow growing blonde hair, made shorter still by its curly nature, and they were frequently mistaken for male. My sister took to affixing a pink bow to the head of her firstborn, because she got so sick of correcting people. Even the usually very funny xkcd has to put a wig on the female figures so we get that they aren’t men.
So that leaves us with external cues such as clothes. Perhaps I have stumbled upon one reason why girl baby clothing is all pink princesses and purple ponies? Parents have to saturate their daughters in gendered clothing to ensure that their tiny Tina isn’t mistaken for a teeny Timiti.
Maybe I’ve got this all wrong. After all, I’m pretty new to this baby lark and to date my experiences are with a little baby boy who, it is widely agreed, looks just like a little baby boy. What say you, gentle readers?
15 comments:
People are able to tell with a high degree of accuracy what sex an infant is. Not infallible, but more often right than wrong. I have two daughters and people most often correctly picked their sex when they were tiny. It's something in the movement, the eyes and in the nature.
You know it when you see it and if you can't see it you'll make a lot of wrong guesses, I guess. :-)
My girls were more often in blue than pink, so colour was no cue.
I found the problem was easily solved by letting our son grow long hair. Now everyone tells me what a lovely daughter I have. Meanwhile our daughter refuses to sprout much hair yet so balance is restored to the universe and people still get to say "isn't that lovely, you have one of each".
My very pretty little girl is often told how handsome she is, and what a strong boy she is. Probably becasue she hasvery little hair (we tend to get hair late in my family).
Funnily enough, she is more likely to be called a boy when wearing her bright pink striped dress or pastel pink outfits than more gender neutral clothing. Now that seems very strange to me.
Maybe not in the first few months when I think they do look quite the same but thereafter I think boy babies tend to look different to girl babies somehow. It's not just about hair and clothing- maybe gender imprints itself on facial features a bit. I remember looking at a friend's baby son one time and in his face I could see the young man he will one day become. Actually at the time I may even have used that exact phrase " a real little boy"
The girls clothing all being pink and purple etc is partly because a lot of little girls refuse to wear anything not pink. At least mine did from when she was about 18 months old though thankfully she has loosened up a bit now.
I was constantly referred to as a 'handsome young boy' as a baby due to a lack of/very fine blond hair.
I have 3 girls and only with #3 has anyone ever thought she was a boy. I guess we took the pink route early on because were given so much
I find it fascinating when people mistake our gorgeous wee lad for a girl; fascinating because of the fear they betray that they've caused offence. I always hasten to add that I don't care because to my way of thinking a baby is a baby, and that I don't begin to think in gendered terms until say puberty when there is clearly a basis for doing so.
Similarly I'm intrigued when people are concerned by children's nudity. I feel that to be worried about this is to tacitly sexualise children.
By the way, I love our wee guy's long hair: it suits him!
Like Undomestic Goddess I've had my boys mistaken for girls more often when they are clad in blue and 'boy' type prints than in more gender neutral things (or even when my oldest was going through his everything purple phase). I was amazed to discover that it bothered me when people got my kids' gender wrong (and #1 is a very pretty lad so it happened quite a lot).
There are not too many babies in my social circle, these days, since many of my friends with children whelped quite young. But I am thoroughly guilty of gendering the dogs I have bred, from the moment of their birth.
This doesn't always occur in sexist terms however; my fifteen-months-old bitch puppy is "a real little explorer, a proper girl", whereas her litter brother is a "tender little boy who loves his mum".
I wonder if babies are a conduit for people's perceptions of gender? In girls I value independence, in boys, tenderness and a kind expression, and project gender accordingly when I imagine I see these things in the very young.
People always thought my two boys were girls. Didn't matter how I dressed them. The amount of hair made no difference either, as the first boy was almost bald for the first year of his life and the second came out with 15cm long brown hair tinged with gold. I've found that most people will guess "girl" when it comes to babies as well, from observing many such guesses of both sexes.
My daughter used to be mistaken for a boy when she was really young - though she had plenty of wispy hair and often wore pink (just because people gave us pink stuff).
But what upset me was when she was shy around strangers, and they'd say that it's appropriate for girls to exhibit shyness.
I don't think anyone ever guessed correctly that she was a girl. Maybe she is particularly male looking? Who knows.
She now dresses in head to toe pink (not my choice.) and has longer hair so is distinctly girlie. Making up for lost time??
By she, I mean Hannah btw. I deleted the first bit of my post which explained that. ha.
people always assume my little one is a boy. Especially when she wears pink, though that's not too often. It's funny how embarrassed people get when they get it wrong. You'd think after centuries of this people would learn not to assume.
Great comments folks, thanks for the feedback, sorry it's taken me a while to get back to this post.
I freely admit that I suck at picking babies' genders. I usually say something like "what a cutie" and wait for someone else to make a remark that reveals gender. Unless Baby is in pink, which is usually a pretty safe bet.
On the issue of the pink thing - I don't remember pink being such a mad everywhere thing when I was younger, is this part of the Barbie invasion? Certainly I remember seeing a link around that showed that in the 1920s (I think) pink was considered the colour for baby boys, and light blue for baby girls.
Certainly we've been given enough light blue stuff to be able to have entire washes in that colour. (Are pastels whites or colours for laundering purposes?)
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