The Pink Diaper

I bought a pink diaper today. Okay, two. Both for Bugbear.

Not because we know the sex, and not because we’d be announcing it over the internet with gender-normative colors if we did.

But because they were both really good deals on Bububebes, diapers that I’ve heard great things about, but generally run around $30+ shipping if purchased new.  And while we certainly love Bugbear, paying $60 for two diapers that we’re not 100% sure about seemed unreasonable.

So I went to Spots Corner, got lucky, and bought one that’s in good condition with a small hole near the elastic that says it doesn’t impact functionality for $6, and another with bleach stains on the insert for $9.50. Two less than perfect but perfectly functional diapers for less than half the price of one new one? I like that.

But they’re pink!

I thought that too.

But.

There’s nothing wrong with being female. Or femme. Or girly. Or perceived as these things. Regardless of biology. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a woman. Gloria Steinem is credited with saying that we’re beginning to raise our daughters more like sons, but few of us have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters. I think I like that. I think like that. No child should be raised to be meek, cower before authority, or assume s/he is inferior because of his/her body. But I also have to believe that if every child were raised in an atmosphere where caring for others, understanding the ways that different people have different experiences, and having to confront various sorts of questions about what makes people who they are, were all valued, we would have a more colorful, interesting, sensitive and fabulous world.

Who would have thought that would be radical? 

Blogger The Feminist Breeder writes about her family’s commitments to feminism and gender-neutral parenting here, here, here, and here, and you should read all of them.  She is amazing. I kind of idolize her. I’d like to email her and be like “I just moved to Chicago, will you be my friend?” but I blush just writing that here, and that’s one email that’s never getting sent. It’s also not the point.

The point is that until we, committed feminists, ambivalent feminists, feminists who have had to temper their calls for more women in politics because of Sarah Palin, women who don’t identify as feminist but hate inequality and want to change the world…whatever your label of choice, until we stop saying “Girls can wear blue but boys can’t wear pink, because that would be weird,” we are perpetuating the idea that there is something better, more acceptable, and more desirable about being male than there is about being female. 

So if Bugbear is a girl, she will have at least two pink diapers. And if Bugbear is a boy, he will have at least two pink diapers. Much like s/he will have trucks, and dolls, and aprons, and toy hammers, not because those things are “right” or preferable for a particularly sexed child, and not because we like the idea of screwing with people via what we register for, but because those are the things that we want him/her to have as options for play. What s/he chooses is not our choice. But we are committed to not only offering options,  but to reworking the system both from the inside our within our family and also by impacting those who see our choices and question them.

Even so, Bugbear still has way more diapers with blue than pink. I’ve spent my diaper budget for the month, or I would make it my next goal to fix that. Fortunately, we have time.