OK, can I just vent?

I'm a new mom and sometimes I get excited about buying cute or fun clothes for my little boy. So I'll look at websites, catalogs or at a store in the mawl for a little something for Jack.

First of all, over half the store is girl's clothes. Really fun girl's clothes with appliques and prints, cool cuts and rows of decorative buttons. Boys clothes on the other hand, pretty much amount to long-sleeved (or short sleeved) T-shirts and khaki pants of one variety or another. BOR-ING!

 Then the themes: boys clothes are made to look like 1) sports uniforms or 2) military wear. OK, the whole political and gender identity things aside---from a design standpoint it's just hideous.

And the other day I noticed something else---the girls in the ads are generally standing around in front of a mirror or having slumber parties, the boys are outside playing games or doing other sorts of outdoor activities. But saddest of all: the girls hold hands, from the time they're babies through adolescence. The boys never hold hands.

It does not take a rocket scientist nor a social anthropologist to figure out what the messages are here.

The tirade will most certainly continue. 

But thank goodness once again for Angela! (You may recall she is the one who encouraged me to start a blog in the first place) For she has shown me these super cool Japanese sewing patterns where the boys get to wear clothes that are as cool as the girls and I'll be damned if I don't put an applique octopus on Jack's first shirt!