“Is it a boy or a girl?”: Distinguishing between genders in children (by Caroline)

When I was younger, my sister went through a haircutting phase. For a year or so, every couple months she’d sit me down at the kitchen table and give me a trim. She did the whole nine yards- I’d wear an apron, and she’d put my hair up with those skinny hairdressing clips. She even had special haircutting scissors she’d bought from CVS (I never told her that I sometimes cut paper with them too). As the months went by, she began experimenting more- with side parts, layers, and bangs. My hair looked fine, so I didn’t complain. Until one day, she decided to go all out. She cut all my hair off, leaving me with a bowl cut. A boy cut.

Sure enough, many people began mistaking me for a boy, especially from the back. I didn’t wear super girly clothes, and so, with my 4^th grader’s round face and skinny figure, it wasn’t hard to do. One time a lady told her little boy not to cut the “bigger boy” in line; another time someone at my piano lesson called me a “he”. Ironically, that fall I started at an all girl’s school (obviously I wasn’t mistaken for a boy there). But my sister would sometimes tease me, telling me I was the “only boy at the school”.

For me, the whole “boy cut” experience is amusing to look back on- a cute anecdote to tell when people talk about bad hair cuts. But if I look deeper, the story tells a lot about gender divides in society. When people are kids, they generally look similar, whether they are girls or boys. As I know from experience, when kids are dressed in gender neutral ways, it’s easy to mistake them for the opposite sex. Only when kids get older do they begin to look more gender-specific. So why are children dressed so gender-specifically at such a young age? And what makes certain styles girly while others are for guys- who decided that girls should have long hair and wear pink while boys get short hair and wear blue? Is this choice really just a natural occurrence, something that developed with evolution?

When people think of dividing genders in children, they often think of dressing girls in pink and boys in blue. But interestingly, pink was not always for girls, and blue not always for boys. As recently as the first part of the 20^th century, pink was considered a boy’s color. According to a New York Times article, “Near the end of World War I, The Ladies Home Journal advised new mothers that ‘the generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.’” It was only when femenists began rejecting the color pink as too girly that pink ended up being the color for girls. But recently again, pink returned as a multi-gendered color. Stores such as Abercrombie and Fitch began selling pink men’s shirts, and now it is normal for men and boys to have pink in their wardrobe.

What about hair length- another thing that traditionally divides girl and boy children? Although we now think of girls’ hair as being long while boys’ is short, this trend too has not been constant throughout history. In the 18^th century, long wigs with ringlets (sound girly?) were in style for men. In the 1920s, short bobs were the fashion for women. And today, many girls sport short hair, and some men opt for longer. So, though it may seem traditional, dividing colors and hair lengths up by gender seems to be a social construct that changes over time.

Though what constitutes male or female clothing may have changed overtime, has society always divided children by dress from a young age? In fact, it hasn’t; even dressing children to show their gender is something that has not always been a part of society. Though, when children got older, they have traditionally begun dressing to look like their mothers or fathers, in the past younger children have customarily worn the same outfit, whether they were male or female. After leaving their swaddling clothing, all young children in the 17^th and 18^th centuries would wear skirted, feminine clothing (aka dresses) until they were about 5 years old.

Throughout history, gender divides for children in terms of color, hairstyle, and clothing have been varied or even nonexistent. But today, people don’t seem to remember this history- diving children by gender remains important to many. For instance, when a Swedish couple decided to keep their child’s sex a secret so the child would not be influenced by gender divisions, many people were angry and confused. The couple’s friends constantly asked them whether the child, Pop, was a girl or a boy. The story was such a big deal that it became international news. So why, today, are we so eager to distinguish between girl and boy children? Really, we shouldn’t be, because dividing children, who are so similar at a young age, by gender, is a social construct, not a natural phenomenon. When I got my hair cut short in my “boy cut”, I was only following in a centuries-long tradition of not always distinguishing between boy and girl children.