Brushing Hair (and some Androgyny)

Ok, so, I've posted before about how we did not find out ahead of time whether we were having a boy or a girl. This resulted in us getting a lot of gender-neutral stuff, including gender-neutral clothes. We also got a bunch of clothes that, at the time, I thought were borderline gender-neutral. Turns out they're really not.

In this video, you see R having a grand time brushing her doll's hair. She will do this if you say to her, "R, go brush your doll's hair!" She seeks out the brush, the doll, and proceeds to brush the doll's hair by generally hitting the doll in the head with the brush. (This is also how she brushes my hair. Yes, we're working on it!)

Anyway, in this video you also see her wearing a t-shirt that I initially deemed to be gender-neutral out of the piles of clothes my aunt sent us before she was born, and thus I kept it even after we found out she was a girl. When J put her in it the other day, I realized that it's really not so much gender-neutral.

Wearing it makes R look incredibly boyish. I think this speaks to the general androgyny of little kids, and also to one of the dangers of gender-neutral clothes. Technically, girls wear lots of red too. But girl shirts have to have some kind of froo-froo addition: a gathered sleeve or some lacy bits on the collar or a ruffle somewhere or a bow on the end of the sleeve or on the center of the neckline or something.