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interested in, what are you thinking about?
Tamara: I have two things I want to show you. I have others, but these are the kind of things that you get [pulls out two baby onesies that read: "I'm so good looking I'm always getting picked up," and "Little Ladies Man."]. We are the kind of people who don't really like clothing with writing on it, cause they almost always are really gender stereotyped. There are some sexualizing things, and we have a problem with sexualizing your children. Like "I"m always being picked up," or "Ladies Man," are inherently flirting.
P&B: That is interesting, cause you do see stuff like that all over clothes.
Tamara: And nothing that implies "Boys will be boys," because I really think that implies a terrible sentiment too, I think that's the root of a lot of the rape culture we see, the way men are treating women. Either that says that we don't pick either.
Rockets & butterflies
P&B: What about toys?
Tamara: I think with kids this young, toys are pretty neutral cause they're just like rattles, but pretty soon...So he's pretty noisy and he grunts a lot, and my dad was here the other day and he would grunt and my dad would say, "Well, he's a man, grunting." And I was like, "Actually, he just has poor lungs," but just the idea that he can make those sounds because he is a boy.
P&B: And your dad isn't trying to make it have to act like a boy, it's just so engrained...
Tamara: Right, and we were all girls, we didn't have any brothers, and we grew up not playing sports, we were just never into sports. And my dad is like, "He's going to be an athlete, I'm going to
come to every single game, can't wait."
P&B: So you don't have to think of this much right now, with toys, but have you thought about it at all, or room decorations and colors?
Tamara: I feel like everything in his room we would use again if we had a baby girl. Part of it is because a lot is hand-me-downs, and the same with a lot of his clothes. I don't feel like I'm really culturally extreme in any way, but with most of his clothes I feel like if I had a daughter, I could put her in the same ones.
With toys we were watching my niece and nephew before he was born, and he were playing with a Duplo Lego set, those ones made for toddlers. And in those sets all the girls wear pink shirts with butterflies and all the boys wear red shirts with rocketships. It's just like with the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), boys go into STEM and girls wouldn't. So we switched the heads on the people, because it's like every single girl and every single boy in the Duplo sets and those are made for kids under 3.
We've talked about toys before, because I loved the American Girl dolls growing up and I read the books and knew the history, I just thought those were really awesome. But there's not any American Boys
Just a few of the gendered onesies the Olsens have recieved for their baby boy.
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