A Rant on Buying Clothes for a Little Boy

My cousin Kylie is getting married next week in Indiana, and Jack was invited. Kate and I thought that even though Jack has some nice clothes, it would be fun to find him a dressy outfit to wear. We figured that we would just run to Target this weekend and pick him something up. After all, we were not going to try to be too fancy and buy a suit--just something "dressy." Were we in for a surprise. Apparently, only little girls dress up. We found tons of fancy little dresses for baby girls, but nothing for boys. (I am not counting a couple of winter items we saw in which he would roast.) Not being ones to give up we tried Kohls. And J.C. Penny's. And Babies 'R Us, Gymboree, The Children's Place, Baby Gap, and Sears. It was the same story at every place: rack upon rack of dressy girl clothes, and one or two shirts for boys that were almost dressy except for the presence of bugs, lizards, footballs, surfboards, etc. For example, if you go to J.C. Penny's "dress-up" web page, you will see that they have the following categories: newborn girls, infant girls, toddler girls, girls 4-6x, girls 7-16, girls plus, communion (with white dress only), and...boys--sizes 8 and up. Maybe Kate and I are expecting too much, but why the huge discrepancy?

We finally found some cute outfits at Macy's, but even they were not exactly what we had in mind. (I am sure you will see pictures of Jack in it on the blog next week, but it is a blue and brown polo, khaki bibs...and has a basketball and athletic number on it.) Actually, we did see exactly what we wanted at Macy's, but it was Ralph Lauren and cost forty bucks...just for the shirt. We want to dress him up but not for that much.

Of course, we could just take him to the wedding dressed like this: