Little Girl Clothes

My baby boys were roughly ten pounds each at birth and were roughly 30 pounds each at 12 months old. So not small. The rule of thumb was that they wore twice their age in clothing. At 3 months, they wore 6 month clothing. At twelve months, they wore 24month or 2t size and so on. Even now, while they have slowed down, the 5 year old is in 8-10 boys and the 3 year old is in 5-6.

The girl is admittedly beefy for her age - there is no doubt about it. She weighed in at 24 pounds 7 ounces today. So not exactly svelte. But get this, she, at only 8 (almost 9) months old, its wearing 2-3t clothing for tops and bottoms. Even by the boys twice-age-in-clothing-calculations she should only be wearing 18month size at the maximum and she is smaller than they were!

Clearly, baby girl clothes are much smaller than baby boy clothes when comparing the same size. And yes, I know baby girls themselves are often a bit smaller than baby boys, but I wouldn't say there is a massive difference. And if there is a difference, why not make the clothes the same and just let the baby girls grow into them?

I think I know why and here's my theory - let me know what you think.

~ Proposition one - baby girl clothing is infinitely more adorable than baby boy clothing - it just is. I like a cute boy's blue and green froggie outfit as much as the next mommy, but the cute factor of girl clothing is through the roof, far surpassing the boys department by any measure you could possibly use.

~ Proposition two - there is simply more variety of baby girl clothing. Boys have tops and bottoms - long and short pants and sleeves and if you want to get crazy, some overalls and maybe a sweater vest. Baby girls have long pants, yoga pants, sweat pants, long skirts, footed leggings, footless leggings, short skirts, frilly skirts, short pants, capris, shorts, any of which might be separate or calculated to be worn in conjunction with their matching t-shirts, embroidered tops, babydoll tops, cotton blouses, halter tops, tank tops, hippie chick tops, sequined tops, casual dresses, dressy dresses, jumpers, overalls, shortalls, and so on. There are a myriad combinations of vastly more designs. And they are all really cute.

~ Proposition three - people like to buy girl clothing. Parents. Grandmas. Neighbors. Aunties. Mommy's best girlfriends. Come on - they do. We do. We all do. Why? Well it's effing cute for starters. And people think little girls should look nice (a whole different topic) and should look pretty and that they like to look pretty and if they aren't old enough that the mommy wants them to look pretty. And let's face it, right or wrong, we all like pretty baby girls in cute little outfits. So we buy them, lots of them. In all the various combinations available, of which there are many.

So my hypothesis is this - I think that manufacturers make the clothing sizes for baby girls smaller intentionally so that we have to buy more of their products more often. It's brilliant - we are forced to go shopping for simply adorable clothing in all the adorable combinations they offer even more often than we otherwise would and the typical mommy is none the wiser. In fact, except for the financial expenditure, we kind of like it. So the clothing makers win big and we conspire along with them by "needing" their offerings. Interesting.