Boy's clothing

I've been the mother of a baby boy for just over a few months now and I have a beef with almost every single baby retailer, clothing designer, manufacturer and distributor of baby boy clothes. YOU ARE MISSING THE BOAT! The clothes are tacky, lame and depending on your particular situation - OFFENSIVE. Please stop adding words, phrases, animals, transportation, sporting goods and heavy equipment to the fronts, backs, butts and feet of boy clothing. Enough is enough.

I mean, I knew that little girl clothes are much cuter than little boy clothes, but I didn't realize how unbalanced the world of baby fashion was until a trip to Target in December. It all started out innocent enough. We were Christmas shopping, so I figured that I'd buy Baby B a cute little outfit for one of his many Christmas engagements. We headed to the baby department, looking for something fun. Nothing too crazy, just a cute, casual outfit. What we found was a teeny, tiny boys' department, next to a gigantic girls' department. This is when the ranting started. I saw racks and racks of frilly dresses, not-so-frilly dresses, cute little girl outfits and Christmas-specific ensembles. What I didn't find was the male equivalent because the boys' section was lacking in both size and selection. Instead of leaving with a cute little outfit for Christmas dinner, I settled for a Santa sleeper for Christmas Eve.

After I calmed down (pregnancy hormones were still in full force), I started thinking about how surprising this was from a retailer like Target. Target knows its consumer. Just think of the last time that you left there without spending $50 on a cartful of things that you didn't go there for in the first place. The store and the products are almost always spot-on when it comes to enticing their consumers (WOMEN!), so why are their baby clothes missing the mark? My thought is that they are creating these clothes as if the boys are buying them. Newsflash: They aren't. Their mommas are buying them and their mommas are getting frustrated.

I might be able to look past the imbalance in clothing offerings if what was offered was even remotely closer to what I was looking for, but it isn't. Walk into any boy's department and you'll see that the clothing is not clothing. Its a mini billboard for what a "typical male" should like or be. Instead of making mini versions of male-type clothes, designers feel compelled to plaster add-ons all over the place.

I know that someday, when my son has more of an opinion, that there is no way to escape the inevitable character t-shirts and movie-themed outfits, but right now, I have full control . I just don't understand why outfits have to say things like "Daddy's Hero" or "Daddy's Rookie" or anything about Daddy? If my situation was different, and my baby Daddy wasn't in the picture, I just eliminated approximately 1/2 of the Babies R Us clothing department. This also applies to "Mommy" messages. These aren't as tough or heroic as the Daddy messages, but usually say something about "Mommy's handsome man", "Mommy's All-Star", etc.

Don't get me wrong, I've made exceptions to this rant. B has some dinosaur outfits that we love, a couple of train outfits and more than a few outfits with animals on his feet or butt. Don't think that my heart is made of coal - even I can't resist that, even if it has some sort of label about being "Mommy's boy" attached to the front. I've also made an exception for his shirt that says "My mom is cooler than your mom" and that exception was made on the basis of it being his first "Your Mom" joke.

Overall, I don't understand why baby clothes can't be miniature versions of men's clothes. Everything mini is automatically cute and it is probably more environmentally friendly if they just use the leftover fabric to crank out some plain pants (without sporting goods on the ass), striped shirts (with no words or phrases) or fleece sleepers (that don't advertise who his hero or heroine is). Is that so hard? I understand that the retailers are going for the cute factor - but incase you haven't noticed, a baby is cute and I could put him in a brown paper bag and he'd still get 50 likes on Facebook.