Two posts this past week highlighted novelty clothing for babies: Brett's post on high heels for newborns, and Madeline's post on the "I'm an accident" onesie. And I was a little surprised by how many readers were offended by these items, some even going so far as to predict dire outcomes for these young sartorial victims - such as emme, who foretold, "These will be the 14 y.o. moms of the future."
Look, dressing babies is and always has been about the parents, not the babies. If all we cared about were what our babies would want, we'd probably dress them in footie pajamas all the time, or maybe just cotton sacks. But we don't, because we know how our babies look reflects our own personality, aesthetic, and worldview.
For example, my favorite T-shirt to put on my two-year-old son says, "I still live with my parents," which I love in all it's beautiful irony. Of course, Aaron has no idea why it's funny, which is probably why he's starting to reject it in favor of shirts with animals on them. For another example, my sister just announced her intention to go out and spend money on clothes for her newborn when she literally has eighty pounds of girl baby clothes sitting in our attic passed down from my three daughters. She just doesn't like a lot of it - my sister, that is, not her daughter. I'm sure Molly couldn't care less.
So, I have to agree with Sara, who pointed out, "Putting an infant in high heels is not at all the same thing as putting a toddler in high heels." When they come out with string bikinis for preschoolers, or shirts that proclaim "I'm an accident" for kids old enough to know what that means, I'll be the first to rail against them. But I don't think there's anything wrong with having fun dressing your baby - as Archaea said, "I don't know that it's any more harmful than sticking foreign objects into a child's ear lobes, gluing a bow to her head, or putting colored enamel on her little nails!"
