Girl joys and woes
It's all of a sudden getting hot here, and it's time for Lucy gal to start wearing her next round of clothes (we're up to 12 or 18 months sizes now). As it turns out, lots of people gave her presents of 12 month dresses and skirts and rompers. Adorable ones. But mama isn't always sure where/when she should wear them. At school all day it seems that she probably needs to wear pants, as crawling in shorts or a skirt makes her little knees all red and rug burned. Any tiny little piece of dirt on the floor makes a big red mark or scratch. As you can see from these first two pics, she really doesn't seem too bummed about this and it doesn't stop her from crawling all over the place.















But it makes me feel like an irresponsible mom who is sacrificing her comfort in the name of cuteness when I see her red little knees. Of course, this is what girls and women are supposed to do all the time. Nylons, uncomfortable shoes, clothes you can't move in... On the one hand, it's fun to dress up and be able to experiment with all manner of colors and accessories--it's a fun thing about being a girl. Boys don't get nearly the permission to experiment with their appearance that girls do. Even little boys clothing is far more "practical" (and not nearly as cute) as little girls clothing. If you go by their clothes, it seems that baby boys have no interest in ducks or rainbows or butterflies. It's all trucks and cars and maybe a dinosaur or two and they only get dark colors. That seems limiting. BUT their clothes are more practical. And often cheaper--when comparing two almost identical pairs of denim overalls at Old Navy I found that the girls overalls that were actually a little bit simpler than the boys were $2.50 more. What's that about?
So even though they don't seem good for school, I want her to get some use out of all those dresses hanging in the closet. So I decided to put them on her for things like going out to dinner or to church, when she won't be needing to crawl around so much. The darling blue dress here has a particularly fluffy skirt and Lucy loved it. It was a whole new experience to have so much fabric around her that she could play with and chew on! The problem came when she tried to crawl or pull up--the dress really cramped her style. I witnessed her try 3 times to get her knees clear of the dress so she could pull up on the couch and she finally gave up and just sat down. It made me wonder if boys' supposedly superior physical prowess is due in part to how we dress them. But then our gal did something that girls and women have been doing for eons--something remarkably innovative. It took her a few tries to get it down, but as you can see from the last picture she figured out how to deal with that extra dress fabric and crawl, too.


She'll hopefully outgrow this technique by the time prom rolls around and learn other ways to move around in impractical clothing. Or she'll decide at some point that she doesn't want to wear girlie clothes, which will be fine. But for now I'm proud of her ingenuity--the gal's got beauty AND brains! The feminist in me celebrates her creativity in the face of difficulty while at the same time still feeling a little guilty for letting her appearance be an issue at only 10 months. The first of what I'm sure will be many paradoxes of feminist parenting. And we haven't even reached the Barbie age yet...