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Clothes maketh the baby
May. 13th, 2009 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inspiral_roseI have a dilemma. I want to have mostly second-hand clothes for my daughter for environmental reasons but almost all the clothes available through Freecycle are sure to be girly girly pink stuff, and probably not natural fibres. So if I want to teach my daughter to be strong and that she can wear any colour she likes (and more than one colour!) and dress her in cottons and silks and other natural stuff, then it has to be new and contribute to the consumer economy. Sigh.
It's come up today because I went to the Pure Baby sale (organic cotton) where most of the girls' clothes are pink but there are some red things for girls (better than just pink but still -- ugh) and I bought a gorgeous khaki green shirt with autumn leaves on it (presumably for boys but it's lovely). They occasionally have girls' things that are less predictable -- Harper used to have a onesie in brown and pink butterflies on cream and she has a gorgeous brown and white dress from them and they have a range in caramel as their "non-gender specific" stuff. But if even the cool organic place has such predictable gender divides, what hope do I have with regifted stuff?
It's not that I'll refuse to dress her in pink -- she's already been given a few hot pink items by family, some of them quite awesome. And I did buy a white top and shorts today with pink cherry blossoms and red ladybirds (it looks quite Japanese and is lovely). But I want variety!! I don't want the whole "boys get the whole world and you get this little slice of it" to start at such an incredibly young age.
What's the solution? I *think* it's to collect the bags of regifted stuff, sort through and regift again the stuff I don't want and supplement the wardrobe with carefully chosen fairtrade clothes from Oxfam or Fairground Child and organic cotton items from other places. Ideas?
It's come up today because I went to the Pure Baby sale (organic cotton) where most of the girls' clothes are pink but there are some red things for girls (better than just pink but still -- ugh) and I bought a gorgeous khaki green shirt with autumn leaves on it (presumably for boys but it's lovely). They occasionally have girls' things that are less predictable -- Harper used to have a onesie in brown and pink butterflies on cream and she has a gorgeous brown and white dress from them and they have a range in caramel as their "non-gender specific" stuff. But if even the cool organic place has such predictable gender divides, what hope do I have with regifted stuff?
It's not that I'll refuse to dress her in pink -- she's already been given a few hot pink items by family, some of them quite awesome. And I did buy a white top and shorts today with pink cherry blossoms and red ladybirds (it looks quite Japanese and is lovely). But I want variety!! I don't want the whole "boys get the whole world and you get this little slice of it" to start at such an incredibly young age.
What's the solution? I *think* it's to collect the bags of regifted stuff, sort through and regift again the stuff I don't want and supplement the wardrobe with carefully chosen fairtrade clothes from Oxfam or Fairground Child and organic cotton items from other places. Ideas?