“The Gender Divide in Preschoolers’ Closets” (nytimes) has a subtitle explicitly referring to #MeToo:
I buy my daughter boys’ pants because even in an age of female fighter pilots and #MeToo, boys’ clothes are largely designed to be practical, while girls’ are designed to be pretty.
In a paragraph adjacent to “#MeToo” the following sentence:
I scoured the internet for girls’ pants with capacious pockets and reinforced knees, and found maddeningly few options.
A close reading of the article makes it clear that the author writes “girl” to mean “young children who happen to be female,” but the reader who skims and parses “girl” as “a young unmarried woman” (Merriam-Webster definition #3) may be a little shocked that “pants with reinforced knees for young unmarried women at work” is the latest demand from self-described gender equality advocates.
The editors are too busy reviewing each others’ old tweets to look for stuff like this?
Related:
- “Pink Wasn’t Always Girly” (Atlantic): “In the 18th century, it was perfectly masculine for a man to wear a pink silk suit with floral embroidery,” says fashion scholar Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at the Fashion Institute Technology and author of several books on fashion. Steele says pink was initially “considered slightly masculine as a diminutive of red,” which was thought to be a “warlike” color.
In our totalitarian age, a NYT editor identifying as a man wouldn’t even risk revealing that he had thought of the issue you’ve identified. Thought crimes are crimes!
Red Guard uniforms are practical, inexpensive, and not over-sexualized:
http://www.morningsun.org/living/redguards/uniform.html
My wife made the same observation to me many times. The half-life of girls’ leggings seems to be a single use. Yes, even the allegedly tough Target ones. My 6 year old girl may be energetic, but she’s hardly a tomboy.
The problem is that the number of parents who want sturdy but frilly clothing is too tiny, apparently, for the market to serve. My girl children wear jeans under tulle party dresses and are pretty happy with the results. But sure, I’d buy Goretex play dresses if they were on the market. Just not sure nyt writers lamenting the state of activewear for little girls would.
The New York Times won’t be happy until everyone’s wearing unisex work coveralls. (Except “creative” people who can wear what they want)
M: I see that you beat me to a similar conclusion. Also: Isn’t it kind of hilarious that those commie-lovers have a website that relies on flash?
@SuperMike: Sometimes we forget.
We forget that little girl who stole some meat in the farmers’ market, made Chinese New Year dumplings hiding from her mom and then got onto a train to a remote place where her father was held in a concentration camp so that she could wish him a happy and prosperous Lunar New Year.
That little girl is the love of my life, my wife of many years. She came to America and not to the Soviet Russia. Don’t ever forget what communism did to people, and if you wish to thank someone, thank Bernie Sanders: he may be entitled to something that your children can’t, so that he can protect you better.