My MO is to generally take whatever free baby clothes are available in my buy nothing that I like looking at. 
It hurts me inside to buy all new sets of things that are done in months.
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My Mom seems fine with “gender neutral” for my daughter, but not my son. But she also buys things SO HEAVILY gendered for my daughter there is no way I can pass them down unless son picks them out himself.
My son demands a “pretty” (hair tie) anytime his sister gets one. So if she has braids, he gets a ponytail or pigtails. And he’s adorable and happy. My Mom keeps saying “no, take those pigtails out.” My son’s favorite pajamas are pink pigs. My Mom sent us “boy” pajamas instead. I pointed out to her that PIGS are pink, and he loves his piggies. It reminds me of the ladybug in Bug’s Life that has to keep saying he’s male even if he’s a "lady"bug. I’m not taking my son’s piggies away. She’s gonna be really annoyed when i left him have a pedicure- we start those at age 2 (manicure when you no longer put your fingers in your mouth…)
But my daughter can like trucks and dinosaurs; my Mom just sends her pink ones… (and my daughter DOES love pink.)
I really wish I could do hand me downs more because of the environmental impact and the cost; but I also don’t want to force “girly” on my son if he doesn’t want it.
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I hate pinkification so much. No kid yet but if I had/have a girl, my response to pink might be that I hate looking at it. But at the same time I feel like it’s inescapable.
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The problem is -I- really love pink. Without a doubt super bright pink is one of my favorites. So I also don’t want to let her -not- like pink, if she does. But there are so many other great colors too.
Like cerulean. Or turquoise.
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My problem is less with pink itself but the quantity and widespread use. Also that everything “girly” is pink. What about frilly yellow things with daisies? Forest green tutus. Little red roses. Fotget me nots. Violets. Sparkly indigo like the night sky.
We’ve pinkified dinosaurs, trucks, and pi. Can we maybe de-pink some florals and tulle, too?
One of my friends has 2 boys and a girl. She’s soooo cute in her brothers’ sweats and blue plaid flannel. Especially paired with princess accessories 
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Basically I don’t want to hate on pink. I hate that it seems to be the only option!
Who knows, this may never be an issue. Although I really want to raise a girl, I will admit.
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I just want pink to be like, a color for anyone rather than the color for girls.
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The pink/ blue problem is real but with careful selection of clothing and places to buy clothing, I assure you that there are deep blue tutus and peach t-shirts. We own some of those items from the “girls” section of the cheap clothing stores for my son. It’s been really fun looking over the clothes we saved and I can pick out my favorites - a bright rainbow of colours. Tiny baby stuff trends to be pastels, and most of ours is white but there’s also peach, lemon, and mint.
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Oh, I believe it! But hand me downs, gifted toys, etc. How much will I value “not pink” vs “available used or free”? Also when the kids get Opinions which is apparently early. Probably influenced by kids at daycare… It feels like there are strong pro-pink forces in this world (for presumed-girl children). I’m lamenting the state of the world, not claiming impotence in the face of it. 
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Lament away. The problem is real. I couldn’t face getting any of the hand-me-down bundles on buy & sell pages or buy nothing because of it. Girls were So Pink and boys were Murky colours + stiff fabric. But for gifts from other people, I just had to spend some time on my soap box training them.
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Oh, that’s true about the fabrics. My son is so jealous of his sister’s little leggings, because they’re soft and fun colors and patterns. He refuses to wear jeans because they’re ridiculously uncomfortable in a 4T, just super thick and stiff. He wants pants he can put inside his boots. OTOH, our daughter’s pants don’t have pockets, so…
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Truly unfortunate. I wonder if that’s all they got, or if they wore out the bright, soft, etc or they gave to friends and this was left over?
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The answer for me was definitely “all of it, give me all the free stuff” which is why we have a pink crib and lots of pink dinosaur pjs. (And if you have a small child in the next year or so, I will happily pass along the pink dinosaur pjs :-P)
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If my mother things my son won’t be wearing aqua and pink dinosaur jammies that she sent for my daughter…she’s wrong.
Although, he is very opinionated, so he might not want them. He refuses to drink from the purple water bottle. That’s his sister’s only. The pink bowl is fine.
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Raising Pikelet I have realised that I have an internalised hatred of feminine things. Dressing her in “gender neutral” things when she was a baby was easy for me because I just avoided what we generally accept as hyper feminine, which I didn’t like anyway. She voiced other preferences as soon as she could.
Now I have a boy almost none of Pikelet’s hand me downs challenge anyone’s ideas about gender except my own. I haven’t needed to buy him much in the way of clothing yet, when I do, will I buy him any of the the pastel pink/floral/frills that I avoided with Pikelet?
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I do not know the answer, but I am trying to work out if it’s OK to buy and dress Pumpkin in a dress (before she can voice a preference) if I didn’t do the same with Duckling.
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tl;dr - I’m there with you.
I got Kiddo (boy) a unicorn shirt a few years ago because he liked unicorns, but there were options for the main color of the shirt so I got blue. He likes blue, sure, but I also got it to try to balance out the “girly” unicorn picture for when he had to wear it to school. He was attending pre-K classes at an elementary school, what if one of the big kids were mean to him about his shirt?? His class rarely came into contact with older kids and there probably would have been an adult nearby anyway, so this was probably an overblown concern. But what if? He does not come with me when I do his clothes shopping so it very much limits his opportunities to weigh in on fashion preferences, although 99% of the time he doesn’t care at home. If he had strong preferences at home I’d make an effort to include him and his opinions when getting new clothes for him.
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I got enough pink things for Duckling that I was asked if “he has an older sister or just excellent style?” by a daycare teacher. In case anyone was wondering, this was an excellent way for them to enquire. There haven’t been kids old enough for me to worry about him being teased for the clothing we buy him from the girls section, and next year he’ll be in a uniform, but I’m not sure how his play clothes will change…
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The dress thing is hard for me, too (even without an older brother!). So far she has worn two dresses, both are from a company that makes gender-bending clothing (trucks and math on dresses, unicorns on clothes marketed for boys). I personally love wearing dresses because they are so comfortable and easy so I don’t want to have some sort of vendetta against dresses…but they aren’t especially practical for a small baby.
ETA: ‘gender-bending’ isn’t the right word because obviously trucks vs unicorns are not about gender…maybe bending gender expectations is more accurate? I dunno…hopefully the point is clear even if the language isn’t quite right.
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I used to think baby gowns were a historical frivolity. Now I realize they make for super easy diaper changes, and Baby Spore has a couple! One is printed with vegetables and has a purple frill. When he wears it we call him The Royal Eggplant. I don’t know how this will evolve as he gets older and has preferences.
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