Maurice Chavalier nightmare

Let's talk baby clothes. Girl clothes

During the hagim I was speaking to the mother-in-law of a friend due to have a baby in about a month. She said that, if it is a girl, her daughter-in-law requested no pink. I laughed, for I, too, once felt the same way but have since given up the battle against pink. Yelena's crib set and such is neutral and jungle animals, but a good portion of her wardrobe is pink. That's what people buy her and hand down -- and I even bought her a pink hat, because it looks like a flight helmet with a pompom on it and who can resist such a thing, and a pink footie with a cat -- and at least it looks good on her. Pity the poor baby girl for whom pink clashes with her complexion. What amuses me to no end is Eli, who used to make faces whenever I put on a pink sweater, but is now a danger in the baby clothes department. "Oh, look at this itsy bitsy outfit!"

But what I do find disturbing is this whole "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" emblazoned on many the item of girls' clothing. I am sure that someone, somewhere, must think this is a way of celebrating girlhood, a pastel grrrl power thing. But to my hyper-sensitive feminist mind, it seems a bit like reverse psychology revealing society's preference for little boys. Like, oh I wish we had a boy, but thank heaven for little girls! Too bad they grow up into uppity feminists. Yes, for me the phrase "little girls" is condescending -- it diminishes a girl. (A teacher at my high school kept referring to a friend as, "Young lady" despite her frequent requests for him to stop doing so. When she finally retorted, "Ok, old man" he was quite flumoxed.) I think of Oingo Boingo's song, "I love little girls/they make me feel so good/I love little girls/they make me feel so bad... they don't ask me questions/ they don't look for answers/ they just like to hold me." And worst of all, the phrase is straight out of Gigi, Maurice Chevalier singing, "Zank heaven, for leetle girlz," with his pedophiliac leer. Hello, Gigi was training to be a courtesan! And Maurice was thanking heaven for her! Only instead of becoming a high paid whore, she marries young instead. Not exactly the ideal role model.