This continues from last week:
Becoming a girl: a story in pictures
Here I am, at not quite two weeks old, with my parents, Esther and Bob. We were living in student housing near the Midland College campus in Fremont, Nebraska, where my dad was studying on the GI Bill. Home was a quonset hut: a corrugated metal half-cylinder duplex, with a family living at either end. Dad worked as a printer with the local paper, which is probably why he looks tired, sweaty, and unshaven. The shirt I am swimming in probably belonged to my brother, born two years earlier. My mother carefully recorded in my baby book all the gifts I received from friends and relatives, which included everything from the mundane (rubber panties) to a matching pink satin bonnet and dress from Madeline Ihler, my dad’s “friend” from his time in Paris during the war. (We called her “Aunt” Mady and she visited us several times in the 1950s, until the cat got out of the bag.) Mady’s gift and a “Kate Greenaway dress” from Aunt Nanette were the girliest items on the list. Many of the rest might be considered feminine today - shawls, bonnets, and even dresses - but could have been worn by babies of both sexes in the late 1940s. My brother had worn white cotton dresses for the first month or so in 1947, and I don’t doubt that some of his dresses were handed down to me, along with undershirts, sleepers, and snowsuits. It wasn’t just that we were poor. In the days before gender sonograms, baby clothes were mostly neutral.
Between birth and puberty, I was expected to learn these basic lessons:
I was a “girl”
I would grow up to be a woman.
Women achieved happiness through love, marriage and motherhood.
Girls and boys are different; we call these differences “femininity” and “masculinity”
Learning to be “feminine” would enable me to be a happy woman when I grew up.
Learning how to dress was a key part of my education.
Baby girls dress code, 1949-1950
White cotton dresses are not just for girls; this is a hand me down from my brother.
Children grow fast! Snowsuits and other expensive clothing are neutral so they can be handed down. (That’s what a quonset hut looks like, by the way.)
The same goes for sleepwear. Sleepers are sleepers are sleepers.
Pants, T-shorts and overalls are fine for play and great hand me downs!
However, public appearances require more feminine clothing. (Is that Aunt Mady’s’ bonnet?) Young ladies dress up for special occasions, though it may take a while to learn a ladylike pose.
Toplessness is fine! Brothers and sisters sharing a bedroom or bathtub fine. In fact, it is endorsed by experts who believe that children need to see boys’ and girls’ bodies in order to develop their own sexual identities.
What else were “the experts” telling my parents? Stay tuned!