Comments on: BEAUTY BANGS: EMPHASIZING BABIES’ FEMININITY

By: Sociological Images Update (Feb. 2010) » Sociological Images

Sociological Images Update (Feb. 2010) » Sociological Images — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:48:23 +0000

[...] S. sent us a link to a Saturday Night Live skit making fun of the idea of wigs for baby boys. We added it to our post on wigs for baby girls which is not a [...]

By: Jeff Kaufman

Jeff Kaufman — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:35:37 +0000

If you’re going to be unhappy when people use the wrong adjectives or pronouns for your kid, you should dress them in a way that makes their gender clear.

By: Carissa

Carissa — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:01:22 +0000

I remember that my mom dressed my little sister in a gender-neutral way fairly often and she was often ‘mistaken’ for a boy when we were out shopping or something. I always thought it was great how my mom didn’t really care about this. An idea like putting a wig on her would have been met with disbelief and hilarity in our family. How insane.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:05:09 +0000

Weird. I normally associate bangs with boy babies because they get those terrible bowl cuts.

By: Kate

Kate — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:08:17 +0000

And not to mention that we think that babies who look like babies, without that extra frilliness, are male. Because male is the default. And if you aren’t male, then why do you look normal/natural? Everyone knows that being female is all about ‘enhancing your natural beauty’

By: Asada

Asada — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:49:52 +0000

it just looks like another BS move to make money.
These days ppl need to do anything to make any money.
Yeah, its sexist, also a terrible product.

By: Reggie

Reggie — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:58:29 +0000

I think it’s interesting that on the site’s front page they have a black baby wearing hair that is obviously white-textured. I think it looks quite odd.

By: » Sign of the Apocalypse The Pursuit of Harpyness

» Sign of the Apocalypse The Pursuit of Harpyness — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:34:59 +0000

[...] to Sociological Images for exposing me to one image that’s burning my retinas and hurting my [...]

By: Charlotte

Charlotte — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 06:25:11 +0000

Meant to say “application process in the instructions.”

By: Charlotte

Charlotte — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 06:22:41 +0000

A disgusting product, to be sure, and ridiculously impractical to boot. No baby would quietly sit through the SIX STEP application instructions–especially the part where they recommend using hairspray to glue the monstrosity in place.

Hairspray+infant=child abuse

By: CJ

CJ — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:05:15 +0000

I’m not sure what disturbs me more – the atrocious product or the atrocious grammar throughout the site.

By: SarahMC

SarahMC — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:07:20 +0000

My mouth is hanging open. This is so so so sick. Poor babies.

By: el

el — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:39:18 +0000

I had a look at the website. Have you seen the other “before and after” pics? Clearly this is not only about gender confusion but also other standards of “beauty”.

See this picture – the “before” baby is wearing glasses while the “after” baby sports not only strangely bouffant hair but big brown eyes too: http://www.babybangshairband.com/sc_images/fleurs/closeups/big/gv/gvbeforeandafterpics003.jpg

So apparently kids can never be taught too young that their natural hair is ugly and wearing glasses is too. So instead of enhancing their vision (bad!) we enhance the hair (good!).

I think I’d better go and stick my (thin-haired, short-sighted) head in the oven.

(Also note the absurdity of this picture – I can’t believe anyone would say that child had “little or no hair”: http://www.babybangshairband.com/sc_images/fleurs/closeups/big/ftf/ftfbeforeandafterpics005.jpg)

By: Aire

Aire — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:45:31 +0000

This is scary. I used to work in a nursery in Scotland and I was terrified by how early children are thought about gender stereotypes. 2 year old boys would never wear anything that had even a pink dot on it, because it’s “girly” – even if these were combat trousers with a thin band of pink across the waist. Girls, on the other hand, would not wear a plain blue T-shirt, because it’s “boyish”, and insist on being dressed in something pink and frilly. I’ve seen 12-month old baby girls, just learning to walk, constantly tripping over long, frilly dresses their parents would constantly dress them in. And the gender segregation was clear to everybody at the first sight due to colours of children’s clothes – pink and white for girls, blue, brown, and red (mostly) for boys. It seems it’s never too early to start training children for their future gender role…

By: Dubi

Dubi — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:12:28 +0000

Jeeze, WIGS FOR BABIES? That’s messed up.

People always thought my kid was a girl until he was about 18 months old (when we gave him his first haircut). I never really understood why. I mean, yeah, we never dressed him in blue, but neither did we dress him in pink. We generally stayed away from both of those out of sheer boredom with that colour scheme, so he had orange, red, purple, green, brown and whatnot clothes, but hardly any blues and just a couple of pinks (which I bought, cause I’m colour blind). But regardless of the colour, people thought he was a girl. Which drove me mad, not because I care about gender sameness, but because in Hebrew, adjectives and verbs are both sex-specific, and it annoys me when people use the wrong one.

I wonder what magic idiotic solution the people who came up with baby bangs would come up with for MY problem.

By: Penny

Penny — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:28:11 +0000

I suspect the average baby will remove that thing in 9 seconds or less. And then chew on it. And then maybe reattach it across her chest, like a drool-covered merkin, soundly defeating the original purpose. Good luck, moms.

(I was a bald baby too. I wore a lot of hats, but that was primarily for sun protection. Still do, still is.)

By: valerie

valerie — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:02:01 +0000

Reminds me of SNL’s Baby Toupee sketch:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/19589/saturday-night-live-baby-toupee

By: Weekly WTF « satisfiction

Weekly WTF « satisfiction — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:45:06 +0000

[...] the rape comes too late, why not start enforcing gender roles early, with some baby wigs for little girls without much [...]

By: Vidya

Vidya — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:37:22 +0000

Yeah, I find this pretty disturbing. I think it plays into a number of sociological themes — imperatives of gender differentiation and female self-presentation, the transformation of babies into ‘accessories’ for fashionable parents, and the increasingly powerful social mandate to make conforming to beauty norms a prerequisite for visibility and participation in the public sphere.
(Also, even if I didn’t find this item/practice disturbing, they would have lost my business at the get-go by their glaringly improper apostrophe usage, LOL.)

By: Ms. Liberty

Ms. Liberty — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:40:52 +0000

I would not have stood for that b.s. as a baby! When my grandma tried to put me in dresses with scratchy frills and seams, I physically fought her, and she ended up just setting them on top of me so she could take pictures where it sorta looked like I was wearing them.

However, I did enjoy wearing sunglasses and hats. I had fashion sense!