Ditch the Pink

Baby J. in Red Overalls

Whenever we go out anywhere like the store or the mall or wherever, people are always coming up and saying "hi" to Baby J. Now, unless we have dressed her in pink, everyone refers to her as "he". "Aw, he is such a cutie?" or "He's a really beautiful baby." Now, how come boys get every color in the spectrum except the color pink? I'll grant you, maybe if we dress her in a more pastel color with butterflies on it or something, people will figure out she's a girl, but if it's a basic, normal color like red or green or blue or yellow, people invariably assume my baby is a boy. Sometimes, I can dress her in the girliest fashions, and people will still ask, "Boy or girl?"; for example, we had her dressed in a floral red dress with a red bonnet, and a man asked if she was a boy or girl. "Yes, sir, that's my son, I just like to dress him up in daisies."

I used to politely correct people. One day, after an older gentleman referred to Baby J. as a beautiful boy, I innocently replied, "Yep, she's a cutie" (applying only a slight emphasis on the word she). The man was actually offended. He said back to me, "Well, you confused me with her colors." I was pretty annoyed. So what if I corrected him? I didn't say it in a mean way. I responded back in an equally rude manner, "Yeah, we ditched the pink."

Does this happen to everyone? I know at this age just about every baby looks androgynous, and people tend to favor calling babies "he" over "she", but still, it irks me that so many colors are reserved for boys and that people are actually offended by your color choices for your child. Maybe I don't want my baby to have a pink-only wardrobe, and maybe I don't care if she wears overalls instead of dresses. And I'll say right now if I ever have a boy, I'm dressing him in pink at least once. But hey, that's me. What do you think?

D.