Children's Clothing: Magical Happy Funtime World

One day this week, I was dressing Leah (for the second time that day, after she did an impressive job of spitting up all over herself) and talking to her, as I often do, about the world around her.  We talk about lots of things when she's getting dressed, because I'm not very fast at it, and because she thoroughly enjoys not wearing pants.  On this day, as on most days, we went through a ritual: I said, "What do you want to wear today, Leah?"  And she flung her little arms about, and I reached into her drawer and pulled out a brown onesie and proceeded, as I always do, to explain it to her.  "How about this one?  It's brown.  Can you say 'brown'?  And look, it has some animals on it.  It has a giraffe, and a rhinosorus, and an elephant, and a crocodile.  And it says right here 'best friends.'  And that's--"

And I stopped talking, because it hit me right then that my daughter's clothing was complete bullshit.

I think I was OK until I got to the crocodile.  Someday, we'll take Leah to the zoo, and she'll say, "Mommy, why is the alligator all by himself and not with the giraffe?  I thought they were friends."  And I will have to say, "No, Honey, I'm sorry.  In real life the crocodile and his very sharp teeth would tear the giraffe to shreds if he could."  Not to mention all the complexities of different habitats, which I really hope some biology teacher explains someday, because although I can play Zoo Tycoon like a boss, I fully admit to the occasional purchase of a penguin or peacock just so I can put it in with the lions and see what happens.

I've since taken a survey of my daughter's clothing, and I noticed that most of it has this same "happy world where everyone and everything loves each other" motif.  The animals all smile and have big, innocent eyes and look absolutely adorable and not vicious at all.  And I get that we want our children to feel safe, and to protect them from the knowledge that there are bad things in the world, and to teach them to love all animals and whatever.  That's all well and good.  But she doesn't care what's on her shirt.  When we say that the giraffe and the elephant and the rhino and the crocodile are best friends, who is that message for?  I could put her in blue plaid with orange polka dots and she wouldn't know the difference.  All her current wardrobe is teaching her is that she can feel free to go climbing over the bars of the gorilla habitat at the zoo and it will hug her and cuddle her and smile at her for all of time and they will be the most happiest of best friends forever.

I'm pretty sure the most honest piece of clothing she owns is a onesie that says, "I love my mommy, even though she's a bitch."