My son was four when he picked out a dress for his first day of kindergarten. He wanted everything about getting dressed to be beautiful. It was that morning that a spark was ignited.
Gendered clothing for kids stopped being an abstract idea in our house.
It took about a week to find the real problem, and it was not the dress. It was the underwear drawer. Every soft, plain, pretty pair in the store sat on the girls' wall. My son's side had trucks and dinosaurs. This is what we did about it, and the six things that actually helped us in our house.
Key takeaways
- Children's clothing has not always been split by gender. American children of both sexes once wore white dresses until roughly age six or seven, when boys were put into trousers in a ritual called breeching.
- A 1918 American retail trade publication told stores the accepted rule was pink for boys and blue for girls, the reverse of today's convention.
- Underwear is the one children's garment that cannot be casually swapped between kids, which is exactly why a mislabeled aisle does the most damage there.
- Unbinned Wear names its fits by shape rather than gender: Flat Front, Contour and U-Shape, in sizes 2T to 12.
- Unbinned Wear is pre-product. There is nothing to buy. The Founding Families waitlist is the only thing to sign up for.
The morning he picked the dress
He had two weeks of warning, and he used all of it. The dress was cotton with a small pattern on it. We laid out his clothes together the night before, ready to head to school the next day.
In the morning, he got dressed by himself, came out to the kitchen, and turned around once so I could see his back. Then he asked whether his underwear was beautiful too.
I said it was fine. It was not. It was a five-pack of navy briefs with a cartoon shark on the hip, and he had noticed it and was asking me to fix it.
Then we went looking for underwear
I want to be precise about this part, because it is the part other parents recognize instantly.
The children's underwear section in most stores is two facing walls:
- One wall is trucks, dinosaurs, superhero logos, and licensed characters, printed loud, on a cut with more room at the front.
- The other wall is where anything soft, plain, pastel, seamless, or simply pretty lives, on a flatter cut.
- There is no third wall. No plain option on the print side. No roomier cut on the plain side.
So a kid who wants beautiful underwear and also needs a certain shape has to be told, out loud, in a store, by a parent, that his side does not carry it. I said some version of that sentence to my son and then went and sat in the car.
That is the moment this brand starts. Not the dress. The aisle.
Why is kids' clothing gendered in the first place?
Children's clothing is gendered because of retail convention, not because children's bodies require it.
Young American children of both sexes once wore white dresses until about age six or seven. Color coding spread through twentieth-century stores, and the pink-for-girls and blue-for-boys rule did not firmly settle until mid-century.
Once I started reading, the history was almost funny. The split I was standing in front of is younger than my grandmother.
Brief history
According to Smithsonian Magazine's account of the history, young children in the United States wore white dresses regardless of sex until roughly age six or seven.
White was practical, because it could be bleached. Boys moved into trousers at that age in a ritual called breeching.
Then color arrived, and it arrived backwards.
In 1918 the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department told American retailers: "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl.
The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."
Historians are careful with that quote, and so am I. It was one trade magazine, stores were not consistent, and Smithsonian reports the rule we know now did not firmly settle until the middle of the twentieth century.
The dress historian Jo B. Paoletti, whose book Pink and Blue is the underlying scholarship, traces the whole arc across more than a century: the end of white dresses for everyone, the rise of pink and blue as gender markers, a stretch of unisex clothing, and then a swing back to intensely gender-specific clothing for babies and toddlers in recent decades.
So the wall I was standing in front of was not tradition. It was merchandising, roughly a hundred years old, reversed at least once, and currently in its loudest phase.
What the label on a pack of kids' underwear is actually selling, compared to what the garment does on a body.
| What the label sells | What the garment actually does | The question worth asking instead |
|---|---|---|
| "Boys'" | Delivers vehicle, dinosaur and character prints, usually on a cut with more room at the front | Does my child want room at the front? |
| "Girls'" | Delivers plain colors, pastels and small patterns, usually on a flatter, higher-cut front | Does my child want a flat front? |
| Pink or blue color coding | Nothing. Dye has no relationship to fit, comfort or construction | Which color does my child actually like? |
| A licensed character | Adds a printed panel, which some kids never notice and some kids feel all day | Is the print on the outside or against the skin? |
How much a gendered label tells you about the garment
Rated by what a parent can predict from the word on the package before opening it.
Qualitative comparison based on how each option is constructed, not measured data.
Why underwear, and not t-shirts
People ask why I did not start with shirts. Shirts are easier and the market is friendlier.
The answer is that underwear is the one garment that genuinely cannot be swapped between kids. A t-shirt from the boys' rack fits a girl. A pair of jeans crosses over without anyone noticing.
Hand-me-downs move sideways through a family for years. Underwear does not do that. It is bought new, it is bought by size and shape, and it is worn against skin all day under everything else.
That makes it the garment where a gendered label does the most damage and where a fit-based system does the most good.
If the aisle is wrong about a t-shirt, your kid wears a different t-shirt. If the aisle is wrong about underwear, your kid is uncomfortable from breakfast until bath time and often cannot say why.
So we sorted by shape instead. Three fits, named for what they are:
| Fit name | What the shape is | Who tends to reach for it |
|---|---|---|
| Flat Front | A smooth front with no added room | Kids who want nothing bunching or showing under clothes |
| Contour | Gentle shaping through the front | Kids who want a little room without a full pouch |
| U-Shape | A rounded U-shaped front panel with room | Kids who need room at the front and say so |
A parent picks the shape, then picks the color and print separately. Those two decisions stop being welded together, which is the entire trick.
Our fit guide to Flat Front, Contour and U-Shape walks through how to choose without making your child stand there and answer questions about their body.
What helped us
This is one house. It is not advice, and I am not going to pretend I know your child. These are the six things that made our mornings shorter and calmer, offered in case any of them are useful.
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We let him pick. Every time. Not "you can pick on weekends." Not "pick something else for picture day." If he had to earn it back each morning, then getting dressed was a negotiation, and negotiations are exhausting for everyone at 7am.
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We briefed family in advance, in writing. A short message to grandparents and my sister before a visit: here is what he is wearing, here is what we say, please do not make it a thing. Nobody had to improvise in front of him. The one relative who could not manage it got fewer visits, which was a quiet decision and not a fight.
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We chose the school conversation over the school surprise. A ten-minute email to his teacher a week before kindergarten, plain and short, no manifesto. She wrote back the same day. It cost me one evening of nerves, and it saved us an entire fall. The Welcoming Schools resources from the HRC Foundation include a parent guide for exactly this conversation, and I wish I had found them before I wrote mine.
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We found support. We have my sister-in-law, who is a child psychiatrist, who was there for support. When he came home upset because the kids lined up in “girl” and “boy” lines to come in from recess, he was so frustrated that the good-intentioned but incorrect children kept trying to get him to go into the “girls” line.
And when he confided his frustration with the lines to a teacher and was told that “if he didn’t want to be treated that way, he should dress differently,” we called her first. She was the one who calmed us down after that comment, assuring us that it was likely meant to prepare him for the future, though it was not appropriate for a kindergarten.
If you have supportive family, that's wonderful. There are many resources for family as well. Gender Spectrum runs free peer parent groups, and PFLAG has local chapters in most states.
- When something worked, we bought more of it immediately. This sounds trivial and it is not. The pair he liked went in the wash and then he was back to the shark. Doubling up on the thing that worked removed a recurring bad morning from our week.
The goal was never to make my son brave about getting dressed. It was to make getting dressed boring.
One thing I will not do here is tell you what your child's clothing means. I do not know, and neither does anyone selling you a theory about it.
The American Academy of Pediatrics draws a plain line between gender expression and gender identity, notes that clothing and hairstyle sit on the expression side, and encourages parents to build spaces where kids feel good about themselves.
That was enough of a map for us. If you are earlier in this than I was, I wrote a separate piece on what to say when your son wants to wear dresses.
What Unbinned Wear is now
Unbinned Wear is kids' underwear sorted by fit instead of by gender, in sizes 2T to 12. Three fits, named by shape: Flat Front, Contour and U-Shape.
The construction matters as much as the naming. We patterned the garments with flat-lock seams and no tags, so the seams lie flat against skin instead of standing up as a ridge. That was not originally a design goal.
It came from the sensory families who found us early and were extremely specific about what their kids could and could not tolerate. If you want the detail, we wrote up what a flat-lock seam actually is, and there is a separate piece for a kid who refuses underwear altogether.
There is nothing to buy yet. We are pre-product, funding is coming through crowdfunding, and the only thing on this site to sign up for is the waitlist. I would rather say that plainly than dress it up.
What to do next
If you have stood in that aisle, you already understand the product. Founding Families get first access when the first run is ready, and they are the people whose notes are shaping the fits.
Join the Founding Families waitlist
Frequently asked questions
Why is kids' clothing gendered?
Children's clothing was not always split by gender. American children of both sexes once wore white dresses until roughly age six or seven.
Color coding spread through twentieth-century retail, and Smithsonian Magazine reports the pink for girls and blue for boys rule did not firmly settle until the middle of that century. It is a sales convention, not a fact about bodies.
What is gender neutral kids underwear?
Gender neutral kids underwear is underwear sorted by fit and shape instead of by a boys' or girls' label.
Unbinned Wear uses three named fits: Flat Front, Contour, and U-Shape. A parent picks the shape their child is comfortable in, then picks the color and print separately, so the two decisions stop being locked together.
Is it okay to let my son wear what he wants?
That is a decision for your family, and it helps to get information from people who study child development.
The American Academy of Pediatrics distinguishes gender expression, which includes clothing and hairstyle, from gender identity, and encourages parents to create safe spaces where children feel good about themselves. Your pediatrician is a reasonable first conversation.
What are the alternatives if my son does not want printed underwear?
Most parents solve it by shopping the other side of the aisle for plain colors and accepting that the fit is wrong, or by buying plain adult styles in the smallest size available. Both are workarounds.
A fit-based system fixes the underlying problem by letting the shape and the look be chosen separately, which is what we built.
How do I know which underwear fit to order for my child?
Start from what your child already reaches for and what they complain about. If they pull at the front of everything, a flat front usually helps.
If they need room, U-Shape does. Our fit guide walks through Flat Front, Contour, and U-Shape with the questions to ask, and sizes run 2T to 12.
Sources
- When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?, Jeanne Maglaty, Smithsonian Magazine.
- Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, Jo B. Paoletti, Indiana University Press, 2012.
- Gender Identity Development in Children, HealthyChildren.org, American Academy of Pediatrics.
- Welcoming Schools resources, HRC Foundation.
- Family and educational programming, Gender Spectrum.
- Find a PFLAG chapter, PFLAG.