A Horse of a Different Color

I did a search for 'Boy's clothes with animals on them' a little while ago and found these on the first three pages of results.

• 2 wild animal assorted
• one each lion, cheetah, and cougar
• one farm assortment
• one dinosaur assortment

• 2 tiger
• forest assortment, bear prominent
• one dog, one farm, one lizard

• 2 assorted forest animals, bear prominent
• one bats and one dogs
• 3 jungle assortment, elephant lion, rhino prominent

~~~~

I did a search for 'girl's clothes with animals on them' and found these on the first three pages:

• one dog, one giraffe, and one fox
• four with ponies
• one cat

• 2 giraffe
• one with deer
• 4 with cats

• one each with dogs, unicorns, dinosaurs, birds, and foxes
• 4 with cats

What Am I Doing?

I did this quick search to see for myself if the theory spelled out on this @Threads video is true.

The video explains that clothes for boys feature most often animals that are predators, and clothes for girls feature animals that are prey.

What I found seems to prove this to be true. Here's the results of the most frequent themes by gender:

``````````````````Boys`````````````````Girls

• Domestic Cats..........0.........................................9
• Killer Cats.................5.........................................0
• Jungle Animals........5..........................................0
• Ponies.......................0.........................................4
• Giraffe.......................0.........................................3
• Forest Assortment....3.........................................3

So What?

Well, at first glance, it looks to me that we actually are influencing girls to mature into Cat Ladies. In order to turn that into something else I would need a much wider set of data. Certainly more in depth than a quick Google search.

Also- I could have inspected the jungle assortment, and perhaps thrown a giraffe the boy's way, but I made the decisions as I did and (for now) the judge's decisions are final. There were no solo-giraffe's on boy's search, or giraffe-prominent. There WERE bear-prominent and lion-prominent assortments: two alpha-predators, on boy's shirts.

Also- I wasn't aware that giraffe's were possibly more sought after than unicorns for girls. So you learn something new every day.

I Ask Again: So What?

Granted, I would have potentially assisted with the back-to-school shopping, but a lot happened her in the States, both professionally and citizen-ly, that took my mind off of this story. In fact, I came across it in my drafts and bazinga! I knew I had to finish it.

It's the delivery of self-confirming algorithms that divide us on social media, that influence the people with whom we speak, the words that we read, and so one right down to the clothes we wear and buy for our non-earning children.

We dress the children in the clothes that have emblems and preferences that reflect the things they enjoy, the things we hope they will enjoy, and that mesh well with the clothes worn by other children within our social circle, schools, places of worship and leisure, community, and family.

We want the children to stand out as clean and presentable, not odd and out of step. Our children can be seen as extensions of our own awareness and world-views.

However subtle it may be, the clothes also reveal a corporate view of the predilection of who they will become, too. Boys are brave predators, girls are demure prey.

Do I believe that every yaya that reaches for a Thumper the Bunny t-shirt is positioning their granddaughter to be compliant? Perhaps not consciously; I wonder, though, if they would be as likely to buy them a sweatshirt with a bear driving a motocross bike? Would that same fictional yaya buy their grandson a purple sweatshirt with a unicorn and butterflies?

I believe that the answer is likely: some would. Some would buy any item no matter the color or the image coding. This article, though, is not about 'Some', it is about 'Most'. Most people buy what they see, neatly separated by gender in stores or by search engines.

Most people buy according to the pre-designated items revealed to them by buyers and merchandisers in stores and websites. I get it: it's how we shop. This article, though, is a call to be aware why you buy what you buy, and see if it's the message you want to give.